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Isn’t the real issue here a technical one with MoPub’s ad platform? How is it possible that a banner ad can open hidden off-screen views, and play video ads us

Isn’t the real issue here a technical one with MoPub’s ad platform? How is it possible that a banner ad can open hidden off-screen views, and play video ads using a different (fraudulent) publisher ID? Can’t banners be sandboxed in order to prevent such activity, or at least detect it?

perlgeek 8y ago
Or phrased another way, why does a banner need to be anything more than an image, possibly an animated image? Everything else screams of abuse and unnecessary tracking.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Simple: Because video ads are more effective, thus providing more sales for whatever's being advertised and more advertising income. Ad companies are trying to find the limit of annoyance vs effectiveness, and despite most people finding video ads and the like annoying, they're proven to be more effective than static ones.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    They reason they're annoying is because they distract from the content, which is the reason they're effective, they steal focus. The ad companies aren't trying to find the limit of annoyance vsc effectiveness, they're trying to maximise their profit. They don't care about annoyance, in fact annoyance can actually be positive for brand advertising.
- jefftk 8y ago
  > why does a banner need to be anything more than an image? Because of exactly situations like this! Say you're an advertiser and you make an image banner. You make a deal with an ad network to show your ad on some pages. Some site makes a deal with the same ad network to show ads on its pages. Your ad is on the publisher page, users are seeing it, everything is good. Now a scummy publisher signs up with this ad network, and sets the ads to display underneath something else. If the ads are just simple images and nothing more, there isn't a way for the advertiser or the ad network to tell that they're being scammed. (Disclosure: I work at Google on making ads declarative so they don't get to do this sort of thing. Speaking for myself and not the company.)
HenryBemis 8y ago
I think I have written than more than a dozen times already :) NoRoot Firewall for android devices. You make a Global Filter (aka firewall rule) that writes: asterisk.XYZ.com:asterisk and you are done with that specific tracker/advertiser. Sometimes they don't use URLs but IPs, in which case I take the extra 30 seconds to check who does the IP belong to on www.ipaddress.com and if it is a CDN, I allow it (only for the app), if it is MoPub, Adjust, etc. they get a royal block on 123.123.asterisk.asterisk:asterisk to get done with it. NoRoot firewall also has a "Access Log" tab which shows which connections have gone through and which are rejected, so you can fine tune further. Edit: replaced asterisks with the word "asterisk"
jefftk 8y ago
In general, ads get to run arbitrary javascript. This is terrible, because once you open the door to a programming language people can pull in anything. Automated and manual review can help, but it's hard to stop technically. I'm currently working on making ads declarative [1] so they don't get to do this anymore. [1] Specifically, AMP Inabox, which is AMP ads on non-AMP pages: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/ads/amphtml_ads https://www.ampproject.org/docs/ads/amphtml_ads

perlgeek 8y ago

Or phrased another way, why does a banner need to be anything more than an image, possibly an animated image? Everything else screams of abuse and unnecessary tracking.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Simple: Because video ads are more effective, thus providing more sales for whatever's being advertised and more advertising income. Ad companies are trying to find the limit of annoyance vs effectiveness, and despite most people finding video ads and the like annoying, they're proven to be more effective than static ones.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  They reason they're annoying is because they distract from the content, which is the reason they're effective, they steal focus. The ad companies aren't trying to find the limit of annoyance vsc effectiveness, they're trying to maximise their profit. They don't care about annoyance, in fact annoyance can actually be positive for brand advertising.
jefftk 8y ago
> why does a banner need to be anything more than an image? Because of exactly situations like this! Say you're an advertiser and you make an image banner. You make a deal with an ad network to show your ad on some pages. Some site makes a deal with the same ad network to show ads on its pages. Your ad is on the publisher page, users are seeing it, everything is good. Now a scummy publisher signs up with this ad network, and sets the ads to display underneath something else. If the ads are just simple images and nothing more, there isn't a way for the advertiser or the ad network to tell that they're being scammed. (Disclosure: I work at Google on making ads declarative so they don't get to do this sort of thing. Speaking for myself and not the company.)

HenryBemis 8y ago

I think I have written than more than a dozen times already :) NoRoot Firewall for android devices. You make a Global Filter (aka firewall rule) that writes: asterisk.XYZ.com:asterisk and you are done with that specific tracker/advertiser. Sometimes they don't use URLs but IPs, in which case I take the extra 30 seconds to check who does the IP belong to on www.ipaddress.com and if it is a CDN, I allow it (only for the app), if it is MoPub, Adjust, etc. they get a royal block on 123.123.asterisk.asterisk:asterisk to get done with it. NoRoot firewall also has a "Access Log" tab which shows which connections have gone through and which are rejected, so you can fine tune further. Edit: replaced asterisks with the word "asterisk"

jefftk 8y ago

In general, ads get to run arbitrary javascript. This is terrible, because once you open the door to a programming language people can pull in anything. Automated and manual review can help, but it's hard to stop technically. I'm currently working on making ads declarative [1] so they don't get to do this anymore. [1] Specifically, AMP Inabox, which is AMP ads on non-AMP pages: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/ads/amphtml_ads https://www.ampproject.org/docs/ads/amphtml_ads