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Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

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Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#351

Post by BatteryMountain »

Jskewel wrote: post #122

Adsense has been a nightmare for us. They have been putting thousands of scam adverts on our website for some time. Think "you have been looking at xxx and must pay a $100 fine" type popup nonsense. Hosted on the following websites: azurestaticapps.net azurewebsites.net herokuapp.com ondigitalocean.app digitaloceanspaces.com netlify.app Google doesn't allow you to block these domains, because they consider them "TLDs…

A friend of mine runs a web agency company (you know, the oldskool wordpress dev shop). Clients from almost all industries, some very high traffic & publicly visible (think magazines). About two years ago they recommended all their clients remove random ads (primarily via Adsense) as they were injecting crypto-scams and porny/gaming ads for trashy site/apps on sites where they really shouldn't be. Some clients completely dropped it just fine (meaning, no replacement ad engine), while the bigger clients are using purely targeted/specified ads where they know the brand being advertised, typically from within in their own industries, and no more random ads being shown. People are fed up with ads/Adsense. Just the the stuff kids see while playing mobile games are atrocious.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#352

Post by nubinetwork »

stevage wrote: post #219
snailmailman wrote: post #25

Google can reply and confirm whether or not a report did anything? I’ve never seen that. I report ads on YouTube all the time. I’ve reported ads for illegal drugs, illegal firearms, pornography, and all sorts of various scams. I’ve seen similar advertising to the example in this article, mimicking the phone’s UI. Ive reported them. I’ve never once seen Google reply to any of my reports to confirm what happened. I’ve…

Why do you keep reporting them, when clearly that does nothing? And since, as this article points out, Google does not need reports if they actually wanted to block such ads, it seems completely pointless.

> Why do you keep reporting them, when clearly that does nothing?

Because some of us don't want to give in to the dead internet theory yet.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#353

Post by protocolture »

stillpointlab wrote: post #76
akersten wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you subjecting yourself to that instead of downloading Firefox + uBlock origin? See the headline of this article for Exhibit (I've actually run out of letters in the alphabet) why adblocking is a moral imperative.

As much I love a good old "Why don't you just ..." response that terrifically misses the point - in this particular case I was watching YouTube through their Apple TV app. Now, there may be another "why don't you just ..." or "well, actually ..." response you have queued up, maybe some ramblings about a pi hole, or some anti-Apple hate, or some other solutioneering. Go ahead, tell me. But it is the structure of incen…

>The YouTube creators that make the content do need to get paid.

The world would honestly be better if they didnt.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#354

Post by qaq »

jacobgold wrote: post #77

Someone 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.

Google Cloud revenue grew 82% year-over-year I am guessing they gonna survive fine

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#355

Post by Den_VR »

hansvm wrote: post #204
sysguest wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hmm could you explain more?

- The big problem is that malicious ads are being displayed without appropriate attribution - Add that attribution -- blame Google (or, supposing the ads are good, credit Google; a good header goes a long way toward swaying people's opinions) - But it doesn't matter if a single website appropriately attributes Google's highest/lowest-quality ads. The last step (speculative and hand-wavy) is to incorporate that behavi…

Ad viewers are about as empowered as the cow the goes into your cheeseburger. No agency, and no communication mechanism to the rancher’s actual customer.

These companies that abstain from adsense and it’s revenue are WWW vegans.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#356

Post by ksajadi »

My girlfriend just got scammed by a super convincing ad for UK Visa which looks identical to the real thing.

I have no idea how you can get that wording and that landing page get passed the google review.

I’ve done a lot of ads on google and every time my ad was just a little off (use of trademark word or competitor’s name with a reserved keyword) it will be blocked.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#358

Post by HlessClaudesman »

1over137 wrote: post #337
Jskewel wrote: post #122

Adsense has been a nightmare for us. They have been putting thousands of scam adverts on our website for some time. Think "you have been looking at xxx and must pay a $100 fine" type popup nonsense. Hosted on the following websites: azurestaticapps.net azurewebsites.net herokuapp.com ondigitalocean.app digitaloceanspaces.com netlify.app Google doesn't allow you to block these domains, because they consider them "TLDs…

>They have been putting thousands of scam adverts on our website… Is it your website or theirs? YOU are the one putting such ads there as YOU have chosen a sketchy ad company (google).

The problem is that Google has enshittified their service, destroyed their reputation for quality control, and that information is very slow to disseminate.

Brands work as a trust heuristic, so a fallen brand continues to trade on its old reputation for a while.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#359

Post by paganel »

conception wrote: post #345
kamma4434 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also invented the whole big data Ai industry, and managed to become a second tier company there. So…

By what measure? Alphabet just reported another blowout quarter for Google Cloud — revenue jumped 82% year-over-year to $24.8 billion.

Generated via ChatGPT, as google-ing it would have taken too much time:

Rank Cloud Approx. annual revenue Growth My assessment

1 AWS ~$129B ~20% Clear leader

2 Microsoft Azure ~$90B ~40%+ Strong #2, rapidly closing

3 Google Cloud ~$59B 36% Fastest-growing historically, but smaller

which is to say that Google is still way behind AWS and Azure. Also, lots and lots of people have switched to using AI-interfaces now, I'm not hearing "I've googled that and that's what I found" anymore, it's all "I've chatgpt-ed and this is what it told me".

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#360

Post by autuni »

icoder wrote: post #123
HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #107

Every 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.

I've flagged an AI-generated add once that promoted a small device that could cool a hot room (many degrees celcius lower, very quickly, for very little energy and very little money and without external components), defying the laws of thermodynamics. They said they investigated it and concluded it did not break any rules and no actions where taken.

I flagged an AI-generated ad for an online casino that is not legal where I live. They run weird filters over the logo, never say what they actually do in the audio and also don't mention the company name just "look at our logo and find us online", it seems like they try to dodge some auto detection. They also replied they investigated and concluded it did not break any rules.
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