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How we fought bad ads in 2015

googleblog.blogspot.com

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Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#61

Post by Retric »

lazaroclapp wrote: post #51
eevilspock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, all ads are bad. And let's call the advertising business model what it is: a get rich quick scheme. Undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you're offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? Or make something "valuable" that no one is willing to pay for (WTF?), so again make it appear free. Only the tru…

This is not quite as straightforward, though. One advantage of our ad supported internet is that quality of access to ad-supported services varies very little with one's wealth. A teenager in Mexico (or India, or... you get the idea) with a low end smartphone, coffee shop wi-fi and no credit card gets the exact same Google, Youtube and Facebook services than a Silicon Valley VC with a Mac Book Pro and a huge bank acc…

As to Mexico, language barriers are still a thing.

However, the real cost is the content that's not created. If an author is paid by the book then they tend to be of reasonable length. When paid by the page, you get content that never really ends. Compare MMO's with single player games and generally MMO's last much longer, but are less fun while your playing.

Advertising driven content is similarly insidious. You don't want people to spend a lot of time reading or thinking, just click click click.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#62

Post by tomtang0514 »

wmeredith wrote: post #35
sp332 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have malware injecting malicious ads?

If he does, we have the same malware. I am running Chrome 47 with Adblock on Mac OSX and I can reproduce 100% of the time. I can even reproduce it in an incognito window.

Then you guy are probably targeted by geo location

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#63

Post by fixermark »

Flow wrote: post #52
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #40

Google could have fought bad ads in 2015 by not serving up such manipulative 20th century dreck in the first place.

I know very little of how the ad business work, but everything on that blog seemed like "after the fact". Don't they look at the ad first then and approve it? They make it sound like they maybe run the ad through some automated tests and then just send it out. A decent human approver of ads would never approve an ad that looks like a big green button that says "Download now".

They do not. The volume of ads Google deals with is far above the capacity of human reviewers.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#64

Post by fixermark »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #59
boomzilla wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is value in advertising: as an information source and a mechanism to establish trust. The former value has been diminished by the internet (which some people call the information age). Advertising is still valuable for establishing trust between the two unknown parties though. Ads in Google work partly because of Google the brand name. Ads on Reddit r/HateSomething will not because, well, you know why. So it's…

My trust in a product and company is usually inversely proportional to the amount of ads they run. The more one is aggressive with their ads, the less I trust them.

While I don't doubt your analysis of yourself, you are an outlier.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#65

Post by Sir_Substance »

billmalarky wrote: post #19
Sir_Substance wrote: post #12

>When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. Dear marketing departments, I do not want relevant ads. I don't like unknown third parties influencing my decisions. If I must see ads, I'd rather see ads for tampons and sports cars and business real estate, because I'm not going to buy those things, so you're not manipulating me. Please stop p…

You think all ads are irrelevant to you? Do you not use goods and services to raise your quality of life? Don't tell me "I just google for something if I want to consume it," because truly innovative products and services are outside the realm of general imagination, that's what makes them innovative. And all the great products and services you learned about from word of mouth? Guess how your friends heard about them…

>You think all ads are irrelevant to you? Do you not use goods and services to raise your quality of life?

There is no connection between these two statements, and the former is not the assertion I made.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#66

Post by lazaroclapp »

Retric wrote: post #61
lazaroclapp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not quite as straightforward, though. One advantage of our ad supported internet is that quality of access to ad-supported services varies very little with one's wealth. A teenager in Mexico (or India, or... you get the idea) with a low end smartphone, coffee shop wi-fi and no credit card gets the exact same Google, Youtube and Facebook services than a Silicon Valley VC with a Mac Book Pro and a huge bank acc…

As to Mexico, language barriers are still a thing. However, the real cost is the content that's not created. If an author is paid by the book then they tend to be of reasonable length. When paid by the page, you get content that never really ends. Compare MMO's with single player games and generally MMO's last much longer, but are less fun while your playing. Advertising driven content is similarly insidious. You don…

Most of the platforms that I mentioned are not language specific. It is trivial to use Google, Youtube or FB in Spanish, and the internet has ample content in Spanish, even in U.S. owned services (how could there not be, with 470 million speakers?).

Also, sure, some content works better when each copy is paid. But my point is that a lot of the software platforms themselves: a) seem to be doing quite well on ad revenue, b) wouldn't necessarily be better for most people if they charged fees instead. Again, this applies to software services (search engines, email servers, social networks), more so than produced content itself (books, movies, games). As far as I know, the only real contender for traditional sales in the content space is crowdfunding[1].

News (investigative journalism in particular) is an interesting third case, where it is not clear whether ad supported or subscription are viable at all long term.

[1] Anecdotally, some of my favorite games and comics are crowdfunded, one of my favorite "tv" shows, but none of my favorite movies or books. Even though crowdfunding a book should not be expensive at all.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#67

Post by seangrant »

discreditable wrote: post #60
Klathmon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just call it "malvertising" when it's just not what you wanted... I just went and downloaded the app from that add and compared the checksum against the APK on my phone of the same version (version 42.0.2, downloaded from Google Play) They both match. (Both SHA256 checksums are D0B5A524ABFD5AD9D73DFF4DA398423CB7B337797FBA0C039F3A44CAE259B4B0, if you want to verify it from me as well) So that site is providi…

> You can't just call it "malvertising" when it's just not what you wanted... It's an advertisement which seeks to get users to download software from an unofficial source. The site does not provide links to the official sources. The advertiser has paid money to get users to go to their site instead of the official source. The advertiser seeks to misdirect users into visiting their site (which is loaded with ads) ins…

By that logic, every mirror site with advertisements is malicious. Don't be ridiculous.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#68

Post by Someone1234 »

tomtang0514 wrote: post #62
wmeredith wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he does, we have the same malware. I am running Chrome 47 with Adblock on Mac OSX and I can reproduce 100% of the time. I can even reproduce it in an incognito window.

Then you guy are probably targeted by geo location

Nope. I tried it from a different geographical location (west coast of the US) and got exactly the same thing.

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#69

Post by TeMPOraL »

seangrant wrote: post #67
discreditable wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't just call it "malvertising" when it's just not what you wanted... It's an advertisement which seeks to get users to download software from an unofficial source. The site does not provide links to the official sources. The advertiser has paid money to get users to go to their site instead of the official source. The advertiser seeks to misdirect users into visiting their site (which is loaded with ads) ins…

By that logic, every mirror site with advertisements is malicious. Don't be ridiculous.

Are they official mirrors? Linked from the official site? If not, I'm not trusting them. Incentives are not aligned properly. Also notice, that the more ads are on such a site, the less trustworthy it is. Do you think CNET / download.com are good places to get your software from?

Re: How we fought bad ads in 2015

#70

Post by Tyr42 »

microtonal wrote: post #3

When ads are good, they connect you to products or services you’re interested in and make it easier to get stuff you want. They don't make anything easier. If I want something, I will get it, otherwise it's just annoying. It's great that they are working to make ads safer (which is obviously in their interest as well), but they have already lost me (and I guess many others). Even AdSense ads are obnoxious these days…

For example, I turn adblock off for Penny Arcade, since they actually vet the games before they run ads for them. I've found a few games that were actually pretty fun from there.
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