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Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

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Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#101

Post by discardorama »

Fuxy wrote: post #65
blueskin_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Pirate Party UK >broadband tax proposal The Pirate Party is supposed to be pro-internet. This is just a perfect example of how shambolic and badly-organised the UK Pirate Party is, and the reason their membership has been dropping since launch. They are basically a joke party in the UK, where in other countries they have emerged as a significant political force with influence above its size.

With such a proposal I'm not surprised how ca a party of technically skilled people and intelligent people ever come up with such a dumb idea. There are plenty of obscure artists that were able to monetize their work to a certain degree. Now are they making millions? No. They do make a small chunk of change though. With the internet and access to so many good songs the value of a song has decreased and the entertainm…

> With such a proposal!

Isn't UK the place where you have to pay license fees to watch television? Those fees are then used to support outfits like BBC. So it isn't a far stretch to imagine a similar broadband tax. I'm not supporting the tax; I'm just saying that to someone who grew up in the UK with a "license fee" model of television, a broadband tax isn't an intellectual leap, it just feels like an extension.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#102

Post by mpeg »

troymc wrote: post #80
mpeg wrote: post #16

Just want to point out that AdChoices is NOT owned by Google, and they do NOT serve any advertising. It's a program organised by the DAA (Digital Advertising Alliance) which is itself formed of several other advertising associations, the goal of which is to be a self-regulatory program allowing to opt out of online behavioral advertising, so that you do not have to see any behavior targeted ads if you choose not to.…

You wrote "it's expensive to fact check every single creative that comes through" I'm surprised they fact check any ads. Many publications don't have the budget to fact check their news, features, or editorials, never mind the ads.

Definitely, the usual things that are checked would be whether the page loads, whether the creative is offensive, etc.

Facebook gets a lot of flak for having poor ads, but they have a pretty comprehensive list of rules [0] and they actually enforce most of them through semi-manual audits of the first few ads each account creates.

Most networks will say that content of their ads must not be deceptive, but ultimately they can only audit a small percentage of them.

Usually they have heuristics to try to identify the most "high risk" categories such as adult / alcohol and they will make sure those are not being targeted to minors, as they would get in trouble otherwise. But "miracle pill" and "doctors hate him!" ads are harder to automatically filter out.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#103

Post by discardorama »

mpeg wrote: post #16

Just want to point out that AdChoices is NOT owned by Google, and they do NOT serve any advertising. It's a program organised by the DAA (Digital Advertising Alliance) which is itself formed of several other advertising associations, the goal of which is to be a self-regulatory program allowing to opt out of online behavioral advertising, so that you do not have to see any behavior targeted ads if you choose not to.…

> Facebook uses a whitelist approach

Yahoo used to use a whitelist approach too; but with RTB (programmatic buying) it is no longer feasible to do that. And unfortunately, the whole world is moving to RTB... :-(

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#104

Post by coldpie »

phamilton wrote: post #85
coldpie wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why ad networks don't have two fields for advertisers: a plain PNG image and a URL to link to. I guess the answer is somehow "money," but I feel like client websites would have enough incentive to switch to the network that works this way to avoid this BS for their users.

Most ads use multiple tracking pixels for various 3rd party analytics and measurement. Some of these analytics require runtime inspection of the page to confirm things like domain, viewability, height and width, page language,etc. So your average ad requires loading a dozen empty images ("pixels") and running a bit of JavaScript.

And people are baffled when they learn I use NoScript.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#105

Post by mpeg »

discardorama wrote: post #103
mpeg wrote: post #16

Just want to point out that AdChoices is NOT owned by Google, and they do NOT serve any advertising. It's a program organised by the DAA (Digital Advertising Alliance) which is itself formed of several other advertising associations, the goal of which is to be a self-regulatory program allowing to opt out of online behavioral advertising, so that you do not have to see any behavior targeted ads if you choose not to.…

> Facebook uses a whitelist approach Yahoo used to use a whitelist approach too; but with RTB (programmatic buying) it is no longer feasible to do that. And unfortunately, the whole world is moving to RTB... :-(

RTB and programmatic are not the same thing though, I agree that Real Time Bidding makes it hard to both let everyone play and enforce ad quality (I think it could be done if publishers took a stand).

However, RTB is just a kind of programmatic, I wouldn't be surprised if these ads were being served through the self-serve platform instead, which is probably still API-driven but doesn't need to be real time.

Advertisers shouldn't be using RTB exclusively, you could get better results when you play to the strengths of each different way of buying.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#106

Post by r1ch »

wdr1 wrote: post #87
r1ch wrote: post #15

Adwords is becoming increasingly bad with these kind of ads lately. Yahoo are lucky that they don't have the automatic redirecting version that simply takes visitors away from your site onto these fake landing pages. Most of them seem to be coming from compromised adwords accounts. As a publisher it's very difficult to do anything about this since Google apparently let adwords publishers insert arbitrary javascript i…

As others have pointed, it doesn't look like this a Google ad. However, as a publisher, you do have a fair bit of control. You can choose to only allow text ads, and you can also block specific advertisers, categories & the like. https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180609?hl=en

Unfortunately even the simple HTML 5 image ads (rendered using canvas) can have malicious scripts in them. The only way to stop the bad ads would be to only use text ads from Google which would likely lead to unsustainable revenue loss.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#107

Post by GhotiFish »

hellbanTHIS wrote: post #68

Seems like branding is the way to go on the internet, rather than throwing crap in peoples faces. Example: Yahoo News, brought to you ad free by Nationwide Insurance Then people think "I like Yahoo News, I like Nationwide Insurance" instead of "I hate that scummy ad, I hate Yahoo News".

personally, if I see something branded, then of primary concern to me is if their opinion is compromised.

That said, I wouldn't expect much that is trustworthy coming from yahoo anyway.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#108

Post by skygazer »

troymc wrote: post #80
mpeg wrote: post #16

Just want to point out that AdChoices is NOT owned by Google, and they do NOT serve any advertising. It's a program organised by the DAA (Digital Advertising Alliance) which is itself formed of several other advertising associations, the goal of which is to be a self-regulatory program allowing to opt out of online behavioral advertising, so that you do not have to see any behavior targeted ads if you choose not to.…

You wrote "it's expensive to fact check every single creative that comes through" I'm surprised they fact check any ads. Many publications don't have the budget to fact check their news, features, or editorials, never mind the ads.

I worked at Earthlink in the mid nineties, and happened to sit next to the girl that approved all the ad placements on the site's (yahoo-like) start page. She would casually lean over and ask me if this or that medical claim seemed plausible. I typically said no. The claims were often so snake oily even the most modest biology background, or just common sense would refute them. Thankfully she had the sense to ask.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#109

Post by easytiger »

na85 wrote: post #99
puranjay wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do it myself from time to time Which means that most of the time, you don't pay for content. Which means that you basically pirate music. Which means that you are the parasite, not the musician.

Perhaps they listen to the radio, youtube, or a free streaming service. Don't be so quick to jump to conclusions.

Perhaps they also go to more concerts etc as well.

Re: Yahoo Homepage – Now Featuring Extra-Scammy Scams

#110

Post by blueskin_ »

discardorama wrote: post #101
Fuxy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With such a proposal I'm not surprised how ca a party of technically skilled people and intelligent people ever come up with such a dumb idea. There are plenty of obscure artists that were able to monetize their work to a certain degree. Now are they making millions? No. They do make a small chunk of change though. With the internet and access to so many good songs the value of a song has decreased and the entertainm…

> With such a proposal! Isn't UK the place where you have to pay license fees to watch television? Those fees are then used to support outfits like BBC. So it isn't a far stretch to imagine a similar broadband tax. I'm not supporting the tax; I'm just saying that to someone who grew up in the UK with a "license fee" model of television, a broadband tax isn't an intellectual leap, it just feels like an extension.

Yes, unfortunately, although there is growing resentment against it every year and even some high profile celebrities are now refusing to pay. An internet tax would ensure whoever brought it in would not win an election again, especially as the old people (largest TV tax paying demographic while many younger people ignore it) are dying while huge numbers of young people are only just reaching voting age. I would be surprised if even the TV tax still existed in 10 years. If the BBC want funding without adverts, they should encrypt their channels and sell subscriptions; I think they'd find that the number of people who want to pay £150/year for 1 or 2 good programmes is a lot less than they have convinced themselves it is.
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