9 ms·
Other than the volume, one of the issues I have with these types of ads is that you're rarely able to report them as scams. Reddit have a similar issue. You can
by mrweasel 1y ago
Other than the volume, one of the issues I have with these types of ads is that you're rarely able to report them as scams. Reddit have a similar issue. You can report an ad, but you have to pick "Other", there's no: "This ad is clearly a scam". That's by design obviously, because by removing the scams, most of the ad networks are left with very little inventory. Certainly not enough to fund all the ad supported service currently in operation through out the web.
When I forget to sign in to YouTube, I see the same pattern, shitty ads that are clearly only allowed because otherwise YouTube wouldn't have sufficient ad inventory to meet their internal KPIs.
- lupusreal 1y agoThe ad industry likes to say that their industry is clean and the people who buy ads for scams are the problem, but the truth is the entire industry is complicit with the scamming, and stuff like this shows it. If the ad industry were merely hapless victims of the scammers, rather than willful participants in the scamming, they'd be eager to receive reports of scams.
- mrweasel 1y agoThat's a really good point. If the problem is the scammers, and they buy ads, then why won't they let us report it?
- rchaud 1y agoBecause they don't want to drive off business.
- jrmg 1y agoFor me, almost every YouTube ad is a scam. Medical supplements or plans that make claims that clearly aren’t real, financial scams (crypto or get-rich-quick schemes), or product scams (this new device that ‘they’ don’t want you to know about can heat/cool your house in minutes for pennies!). I’m pretty sure none of this is legal, and Google obviously doesn’t care. FWIW I have ad personalization off - perhaps it’s a bit better for those who don’t?
- svieira 1y agoQuite a bit - I get ads for septic tanks because I have looked at them several times and tank companies continue to advertise for me because I might buy. I get ads for robot mowers because, again, I looked at them. I still see "the bottom of the barrel" ads occasionally, but it's very rare. Ad blitzes on the other hand ... (no, I don't want to build an app just-by-thinking-about-it) ...
- ryandrake 1y agoAt one point a few months ago, YouTube seems to have gotten the idea that I have some kind of bowel problem, and I'd constantly get ads about my "stuck poop." WTF? I'm watching a woodworking tutorial, I don't want to fucking hear about poop! Total bottom of the barrel.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kbelder 1y agoSeveral months ago, my wife bought several bottles of pureed pumpkin babyfood, because small amounts added to catfood can treat some feline stomach issues. Now, we're getting diaper commercials all over youtube. I assume we're flagged in some database as likely having a new child, but you can't ever know for sure.
- fragmede 1y agohttps://myadcenter.google.com/personalizationoff https://myadcenter.google.com/personalizationoff You can look up your Google ad profile and see if "pregnant" is one of your account's attributes. Facebook has a similar page somewhere.
- jrmg 1y agoFWIW, those seem to be a current ‘trend’. I’m getting them with personalization switched off.
- 1y ago
- DelightOne 1y agoI bet they tried an llm scam detector. It was too good so they didn't put it into production.
- genewitch 1y agoi can write that in like 2 minutes in any language you want. `pseudo main( return True )` There's a difference between "Need a tree cut down? I am licensed and bonded and cut down trees; call ###" and the sort of things that we all consider "ads". If someone can't see a difference, then that someone probably receives money from advertising.
- mort96 1y agoI feel like there are almost two completely incompatible stories being sold by ad tech people. One is that "you shouldn't use an ad blocker, reputable websites have ads from Google and other reputable companies and they wouldn't be scams or malware". The other is that any time there's a story about malware and scams on reputable websites, they say: "there are so many ads being submitted, Google is doing their best but you can't expect them to successfully weed out every single bad ad". The reality is, of course, that Google and its ilk doesn't give a single rat's ass about people falling from scams or getting infected by malware. Scams and malware pays better than "ethical" ads (to the degree that such a thing exists). It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior.
- tbrownaw 1y ago> One is that "you shouldn't use an ad blocker, reputable websites have ads from Google and other reputable companies and they wouldn't be scams or malware". But I don't care* about that, I care that they're visually obnoxious and sometimes slow. * Well, usually. Way back when, there used to be occasional news about browser sandbox escapes.
- mort96 1y agoI agree, I would be using an ad blocker even if all the ads were "only" annoying attempts at manipulating my behavior rather than scams and malware. But pointing out that ads can damage your computer or scam you out of money or information is a stronger pro-ad-blocking argument.
- hnlmorg 1y ago> It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior. there is in the UK. And likely in most other jurisdictions too. But it's about penalizing the advertisers rather than the platform. Which clearly neither works at scale nor across borders. This definitely feels like a better use case for an "online safety act" -- but instead we got censorship laws....
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
- Forgeties79 1y agoIt also doesn’t help that so many creators - even legitimate ones - now use injected ads that they don’t verify at all. I remember listening to an episode of Better Offline a buddy sent me and anyone who knows about Ed knows that basically half his crusade is against bad AI implementation/“slop”/etc. He’s broadly against the current LLM rush. First ad when I fired up the podcast episode was yet aother injected ad for yet another AI agent company as generic as the rest. Literally the organizations he’s railing against and calling wasteful. It was clearly because he handed off the advertising to one of these injection services. Sidebar: these ads tend to perform terribly. Actual ad reads by the host(s) are the only thing that lead to meaningful conversions in podcasts.
- rchaud 1y agoIf they post the episode on Youtube, download an audio stream of that file instead. No ads injected there.
- genewitch 1y agowhere are the ads injected? I use a couple of podcast "apps" and neither inject ads, all ads in podcasts are explicitly put into the audio file by the people making the podcast, even pre-roll and post-roll ads.
- Forgeties79 1y agoThat’s a (good) choice by the shows you listen to. There are plenty of ad injection services for podcasting, pretty sure Acast (popular hosting service) has it built in for instance. Search “DAI podcast” or “dynamic ad insertion podcast.” The biggest giveaway is when the ads are dropped in the middle of someone talking. Pretty much any hits that are manually added are led into by the hosts if it’s mid-show.
- fknorangesite 1y ago> all ads in podcasts are explicitly put into the audio file by the people making the podcast Yes, but those are dynamic too: if you go back and download old episodes, for example, you'll get the current run of ads.
- secondcoming 1y agoWebsites get to control what ads are displayed. If a website integrates with Taboola they're explixitly opting in to these crap ads.
- hnlmorg 1y agoWhat's YouTube's excuse?
- secondcoming 1y agoThey allow them, and people who have ad personalisation disabled are probably seeing more of them
- hnlmorg 1y agoYes, but YT obviously doesn't use Taboola and it's still infested with scam ads.
- conradfr 1y agoIt doesn't work for adsense as they basically get a new account every day so you can't effectively block scams.
- asdfwaafsfw 1y agorandom question for you - do you still have your Dave Bull Great Wave and would you sell it?
- Intermernet 1y agoJust remember, advertising is responsible for the rage economy. It's responsible for platforming misinformation. It's responsible for screen-addiction in children. It's responsible for online scams. Just think of all of the proposed laws and regulations around the world that are trying to counter each of these problems and remember that the root cause, and enabler of all of them is advertising. It's truly an amplifier of enshittification, and one of the worst conduits of bad social behaviour ever invented. If you're in the ad / ad-tech industry, please seriously consider the effect you're having on the world. I'm happy to pay for media, news, social networks etc. I don't purchase things based on anything other than personal recommendations and research. I have no use for advertising, and I have no desire or need for ad-supported platforms. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. People say advertising works, and that justifies it. The thing is, advertising only works on enough people to justify it. Everyone else hates it with a passion, or studiously avoids it. I'm not sure if we're a majority or a minority, it doesn't matter, but we suffer advertising and wish it were gone. Advertising needs to change. It would be nice if it just went away, but realistically that's not going to happen. It needs to be recognised as harmful and regulated as a harmful product.
- genewitch 1y agoExplicit (seriously, explicit) Bill Hicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY We've known that advertising is "filling the world with bile and garbage" for decades.
- ghurtado 1y ago> The ad industry likes to say that their industry is clean First I've ever heard this, and I have been working in marketing all my life. What exactly do you mean by this? Where have you heard it?
- chrisjj 1y ago> The ad industry likes to say that their industry is clean and the people who buy ads for scams are the problem Hmm. How are these people not part of the industry exactly?
- tcfhgj 1y agoalmost every ad is a scam, telling lies directly or indirectly maximizing what is within the legal bounds.
- D13Fd 1y agoCome on. There is a massive difference between an ad that optimistically emphasizes the best aspects of a real product or service and an ad for a fake product or service that will take your money and leave you with essentially nothing.
- 63stack 1y agoYes there is a massive difference, you are correct. Also, most of the ads do not fall into that category.
- potato3732842 1y agoI remember back in the good old days (so like 2008) you'd visit the some bigco website looking for specs on some item and then later you'd see their products in your banner ads. Times were so simple back then.
- tetris11 1y agoI think the poster is lamenting the general quality of all advertised products in general. If it's a brand of good quality (Miele, Henry, DeLonghi) it probably does not need to be advertised, as word of mouth and price point is generally enough.
- fifteen1506 1y agoMaybe. Stealing ad space from a competitor may be in itself valuable. Another metric comes to my mind: if a newcomer has money to spend on ads, then it's a stable firm. I'm sure there are more.
- dylan604 1y ago
- dathinab 1y ago> Certainly not enough to fund all the ad supported service currently in operation through out the web. I'm not fully sure about this, an ad network which does that very reliably can probably charge the ad provisioning companies extra due to it being on more high quality sides/locations and pay out extra little due to having "high quality low disturbing" ads. But with the Google being a quasi monopoly for ad networks on any open platform and most people either blocking all adds or no adds there is just little room for alternatives. I do use uBlock Origin for some custom filters, but I which instead of "on" / "of" there where "on but more like privacy badger" / "on full" / "off" with the first being the default so that users can create an insensitive for better ad handling.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- duxup 1y agoThe YouTube situation is weird. YouTube is competent platform, and has some good content on it. Meanwhile when I watch YouTube I get a stream of: "5G blocking beanies", highly questionable medical products, gross out ads about poo and etc ... It really degrades my view of YouTube / Google.
- ToDougie 1y agoDo you have watch history off? I have never experienced anything like this, but I pay for Premium.
- duxup 1y agoYes, I have watch history turned off. I suspect that gets me a different selection of ads.
- hnuser123456 1y agoMaybe it's a dark pattern to punish you for turning off personalization.
- duxup 1y agoIt seems plausible that if they can’t tie it to the user they have a batch of “garbage ads” that just run, cheap stuff that the worst kind of folks pay for.
- stackskipton 1y agoThey do select cheap ads if they don't have any personalization data. Companies who pay for targeted ads don't want to pay for impressions on users that don't meet their criteria.
- duxup 1y agoThe poo ads will continue until I comply I guess.
- cm2012 1y agoThis is the other side of ad tracking. Good ad tracking means much more relevant ads. The only advertisers that can afford to run on untargeted ad inventory are lowest common denominator products like teeth whitening and weight loss.
- flowerthoughts 1y agoI've been receiving email spam from Derilla, a pillow company, for many years. Once the manifest V3 abomination went into effect in Chrome, I also have to endure it on the frontpage of YouTube. Who buys pillows because of email spam and YouTube ads? I don't get it. It's probably not a scam, but a very obnoxious company nonetheless.
- account42 1y agoWell those ads got you to spread the company name here. Some people are going to buy those pillows based on those ads. Others are going to think the ads are stupid but will remember the brand and are now more likely to choose it if they see it in a store. Ads persist because overall they work.
- micromacrofoot 1y agothere's not much difference between an ad that's a scam and an ad that's not, so many networks don't bother policing it much
- account42 1y agoAll ads are scams.