3 ms·

I'm curious why these ads are even allowed to get through the network in the first place. Is there just NO content reviewing taking place? That's seems negligen

I'm curious why these ads are even allowed to get through the network in the first place. Is there just NO content reviewing taking place? That's seems negligent on Google's part. There is no reason for an ad like that to exist on any webpage, period. It should have been blocked at the source. Where is the 3-strikes policy in the ad space? Google is so eager to punish its Youtube streamers for running questionably offensive content, and yet it continues to let advertising scum like this run rampant across its ecosystem.

ben_jones 9y ago
I wonder if they ran an A/B test on customer spending depending on the time it takes from "uploading" an ad to the network and the ad showing positive metrics. My guess is the result of such a finding would impact the duration and thoroughness of the review process. And my guess is youtubers make up such a small slice of revenue that the threat of lawsuits outweighs the convenience of the customer.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I highly doubt it has to do with the time it takes to have someone review the submission. Google does not like hiring people to do things it thinks algorithms can do adequately, because people cost a lot more than servers.
  - jfim 9y ago
    At least on adwords, you get a "quality score" for ads, which is essentially a clickthrough rate, which lowers your cost per impression. In this case, I assume those ads get a high clickthrough rate due to being terribly misleading, which leads the algorithm to believe these ads are the most appropriate for this ad slot (they are if the only metric you care about is money going into Google's pockets).
  - threeseed 9y ago
    What is amazing is that this is the easiest type of content check to automate.
pyrale 9y ago
> Google is so eager to punish its Youtube streamers for running questionably offensive content, and yet it continues to let advertising scum like this run rampant across its ecosystem. Youtube streamers are not cients, they are content creators. Just like newspaper sites, the average email user, or, in this case, paint.net. Google can afford to treat content creators poorly, but they won't slight real clients : people actually paying them money. No matter how scummy these are.
spyder 9y ago
And one of the download button ads that I just checked (EasyPDFCombine) is "getting trough" 3 separate Google "reviews" if I understand correctly how this scheme works: 1. The misleading download button Google ad. 2. After clicking the ad they ask the user to install their extension from the Google Chrome Web Store [1]. 3. After installation, the extension replaces new tab page with their own which includes a "custom" search engine "Enhanced by Google" [2]. 4. PROFIT!!!? They make money when the user clicks a Google ad in their search results on that new tab page. I'm not sure how it's worth it for Google because with the extension installed they are sharing part of their search results revenue with the owner of the extension compared to the users directly using the Google search when there is no extension to "hijack" it. From the users perspective: Sure, it's not a ransomware level malware but it's still a PUP and the users are annoyed that they were "tricked" into installing it and their new tab page has been changed, as it can be seen in almost all of the reviews for their chrome extension, and almost all the first page google result for "EasyPDFCombine" is about how to remove this "virus". It's the same decade old trick from the same company: Mindspark aka MyWebSearch aka Ask Toolbar and many more names. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/easypdfcombine/kpocjpoifmommoiiiamepombpeoaehfh?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/easypdfcombine/kpo... [2] http://hp.myway.com/portal/ttab02/index.html http://hp.myway.com/portal/ttab02/index.html
photon-torpedo 9y ago
I found this kind of misleading download buttons to be very common for free (no-cost) Windows software, and I also can't understand why Google is unwilling to put a stop to it. I'm pretty sure that this class of advertisement can be quite reliably identified with machine learning techniques, of which Google is so fond.

ben_jones 9y ago

I wonder if they ran an A/B test on customer spending depending on the time it takes from "uploading" an ad to the network and the ad showing positive metrics. My guess is the result of such a finding would impact the duration and thoroughness of the review process. And my guess is youtubers make up such a small slice of revenue that the threat of lawsuits outweighs the convenience of the customer.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I highly doubt it has to do with the time it takes to have someone review the submission. Google does not like hiring people to do things it thinks algorithms can do adequately, because people cost a lot more than servers.
- jfim 9y ago
  At least on adwords, you get a "quality score" for ads, which is essentially a clickthrough rate, which lowers your cost per impression. In this case, I assume those ads get a high clickthrough rate due to being terribly misleading, which leads the algorithm to believe these ads are the most appropriate for this ad slot (they are if the only metric you care about is money going into Google's pockets).
- threeseed 9y ago
  What is amazing is that this is the easiest type of content check to automate.

pyrale 9y ago

> Google is so eager to punish its Youtube streamers for running questionably offensive content, and yet it continues to let advertising scum like this run rampant across its ecosystem. Youtube streamers are not cients, they are content creators. Just like newspaper sites, the average email user, or, in this case, paint.net. Google can afford to treat content creators poorly, but they won't slight real clients : people actually paying them money. No matter how scummy these are.

spyder 9y ago

And one of the download button ads that I just checked (EasyPDFCombine) is "getting trough" 3 separate Google "reviews" if I understand correctly how this scheme works: 1. The misleading download button Google ad. 2. After clicking the ad they ask the user to install their extension from the Google Chrome Web Store [1]. 3. After installation, the extension replaces new tab page with their own which includes a "custom" search engine "Enhanced by Google" [2]. 4. PROFIT!!!? They make money when the user clicks a Google ad in their search results on that new tab page. I'm not sure how it's worth it for Google because with the extension installed they are sharing part of their search results revenue with the owner of the extension compared to the users directly using the Google search when there is no extension to "hijack" it. From the users perspective: Sure, it's not a ransomware level malware but it's still a PUP and the users are annoyed that they were "tricked" into installing it and their new tab page has been changed, as it can be seen in almost all of the reviews for their chrome extension, and almost all the first page google result for "EasyPDFCombine" is about how to remove this "virus". It's the same decade old trick from the same company: Mindspark aka MyWebSearch aka Ask Toolbar and many more names. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/easypdfcombine/kpocjpoifmommoiiiamepombpeoaehfh?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/easypdfcombine/kpo... [2] http://hp.myway.com/portal/ttab02/index.html http://hp.myway.com/portal/ttab02/index.html

photon-torpedo 9y ago

I found this kind of misleading download buttons to be very common for free (no-cost) Windows software, and I also can't understand why Google is unwilling to put a stop to it. I'm pretty sure that this class of advertisement can be quite reliably identified with machine learning techniques, of which Google is so fond.