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I don't think fraud is a driving cause here. The real cause is downgrade protection. When your browser loads an HTTPS page, it will refuse to load (or at least
by phasmantistes 10y ago
I don't think fraud is a driving cause here.
The real cause is downgrade protection. When your browser loads an HTTPS page, it will refuse to load (or at least warn when loading) any other resources over HTTP: js, css, iframes, etc.
This is to ensure that the icon you see in your URL bar is actually accurate: if a page loads over HTTPS, but consists entirely of a single HTTP iframe, that nice green lock is totally meaningless.
So when the OP switched their site to HTTPS-only, they lost the ability to ever display any from HTTP-only bidders. So the set of people bidding on their ad slots went down, the price went down, and their revenue went down.
- dredmorbius 10y agoThat is an excellent and counterintuitive but logically sound market-response explanation for the behavior. I'm trying to think of how Google can attempt remedying this, with the more obvious options being to either increase the non-HTTPS search penalty, or perhaps to buy up some of the ad stock itself.
- omarchowdhury 10y agoThis is the cause.