Because that’s how they make money. Same reason Meta doesn’t flag fake news/information and actually even amplifies and serves it in echo chambers. It’s a business model. They do it because they can. No one is stopping them. Why would they leave the money on the table?
Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
271–280 of 430 posts
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the 3.8 Flash release shows they are doing just fine at AI. Unlike OpenAI and Anthropomorphic, Google doesn’t have to release new models to capture VC sentiment every three months. They have the hardware, data and money. And when they release a model it’s very good. Now their product strategy however…
I think Google's big bet (and Microsoft's before them) is in centralization of AI services, hosted using their model, and that AI at the edge will always be a bit player. But what I see and hear from technical consumers, businesses, and govts is that they would prefer their data stay local, and like the idea of edge compute being used for AI. Claude/OpenAI's direction with their Apps enabling deeper integration is a…
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Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#273Every YouTube ad I see now is an AI-generated scam ad hawking everything from free electricity to anti-aging products to birdhouses hand-carved by an AI-generated senior citizen. I've seen some multiple times, days or weeks apart. Their advertising standards are a complete joke.
The AI-generated video ads are getting really bizarre on YouTube. There's class of them that feature some AI-generated song with AI-generated animated characters. One song began with lyrics about having sex with a Jewish billionaire's wife and learning some secret (at which point I was able to skip the ad) and another is some grotesque looking creature singing about foamy urine. Normally I have an ad-blocker and don'…
I'm so happy someone else has seen the Jewish billionaire's wife ad it's so weird and no one I know IRL has seen it and if you try to describe to someone in person you sound insane.
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#274Apple News does this too. In some ways it's actually worse. It's a real problem, and those who are less technologically ept are inevitably going to be scammed. I expect a lot more from Apple than I do from Google, so it's surprising that it's been going on for so long.
I find Apple News to be so frustrating. Even way I paid for the premium service, so much of the content was behind paywalls, and the ads are so pervasive that it was a truly awful experience.
I have to believe Tim Cook never actually tried to use it. I don’t know how any executive using that app could allow it out the door… not at a company that claims to pride themselves on providing a good user experience.
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#275My understanding is, it's a multi-party cat-and-mouse game that never stops evolving. The publishers (websites or apps owners) that provide free content to users need a way to support the free content, and typically it's either donation (like wikimedia) or ads. To most publishers, ads revenue is far more predictable. By right most publishers also would like the ads to be reliable and relevant to the users consuming t…
> Most advertisers are honest players in the game with real products or services to offer to users
Yeah, but
> trying to find ways to maximize the impression, click-through and conversion rate by optimizing their creatives, targeting, and bidding strategies etc
Rapidly turns them malicious and anti-human, preying on psychological bugs.
> End result is many dodgy ads keep slipping through the policy filters.
Therefore their platform / process is not fit for purpose, no advertising platform has effectively solved scaling.
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#276Cloaking.
Google bans people, but mostly the innocent ones. If you're running blackhat, you've built a setup that gives you very good avoidance, and the bans are calculated into your sheets. The reviewer and the system sees something else than the customer clicking the ad. And even if they get banned, they will just burn a cc and domain and then get back to printing after a few hours.
While a legitimate business never suspects it can get banned, and when it does, the process is Kafkaesque.
Our case: a month of back and forth on the appeal, no success. The best we got was a suggestion to read the TOS and check whether we had any "brand affiliations" we don't have in real life. Previous replies were pasted slop. We don't have any affiliations, and we still have no clue what they were talking about. Meanwhile our conversion rate on other ad platforms was decimated by us constantly changing stuff to please the Google reviewer.
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#277Google doesn't care because they figured out no one will hold them accountable any more. The US regulatory authorities DGAF ever since Lina Khan exited the picture and the EU regulatory authorities might have the legal basis to hold Big AdTech accountable, but the EU is at the moment busy trying to fend off BS from the Trump admin, they do not have time and risk appetite (aka Trump retaliating on behalf of Big AdTech…
I look forward to any country putting forward very heavy advertising regulation as a proxy for the tax avoidance schemes they all use.
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#278Someone who has spent $100M+ on Google Ads explained to me that Google is doing everything possible to juice their revenue right now, in ways they've never seen before. Seems like two things 1) Google is losing at AI and Sundar wants to mask this 2) AI is going to destroy their ad business and they want to get while the getting is good.
I think the 3.8 Flash release shows they are doing just fine at AI. Unlike OpenAI and Anthropomorphic, Google doesn’t have to release new models to capture VC sentiment every three months. They have the hardware, data and money. And when they release a model it’s very good. Now their product strategy however…
How are they going to generate revenue if their old model is Ads on search and the new model is yet to show how revenue can be generated. ChatGPT (on free) is showing ads now but they are not targeted and I highly doubt they are worth anything.
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was feeling very guilty last night as I was watching YouTube and getting 30s+ unskippable ad blocks every 10 minutes in some video. And the repetition and low quality were grating on me. I thought: being rich is never having to watch another ad You don't have to be rich to avoid getting those ads. You can make them go away for ~$15 a month. If you can't afford that, you have bigger problems in your life than YouTub…
Yeah, but that also says to Google that their methods are successful. That makes my skin crawl.
(Shrug) The creators need to get paid one way or another. Do you want them to start running their own commercials, as if sponsored segments aren't bad enough?
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#280We need strict liability on this front. Google is complicit. No newspaper or equivalent publication in the days before web ads would allow ads that are down at the level of scam that seemingly make up the modus operandi of Google today (and even the ads back then that did bend the truth a bit, overpromised, or showed products that didn't actually have any legitimate use, shouldn't really have been legal back then eit…
There were so many scam ads in magazines and newspapers back in the day. Same with all the made for tv stuff and infomercials.
The difference for the newspaper and magazine ads is you couldn't just click on it in an instant. You had to spend a lot more effort and had more chances to realize it is a scam.