Incomplete advertisements, such as those for miracle nutritional pills and suspicious software, appear infrequently on valid and reputable Internet sites. It turns out that most internet sites don’t really know who can run classified classified ads for their viewers. Task to a complex network of ad tech corporations that are tasked with figuring out which classified classified ads are served to each specific person.
The ecoformula of online advertising relies largely on “programmatic advertising,” a formula for attracting classified ads from millions of advertisers on millions of websites. The formula uses computers to automate advertisers’ bids in available ad space, occasionally with faster transactions. of what would be manually imaginable.
Programmatic advertising is a difficult tool that allows advertisers to target and succeed on other people on a wide diversity of websites. scams or malware to millions of other people. This means that online advertising companies have a wonderful duty to prevent destructive classified ads from succeeding on users, but failing.
The fashion online advertising market is destined to solve a problem: matching the top volume of ads with the large number of advertising areas. Websites should keep their ad area complete and priced, and advertisers should target their classified ads to applicable sites. and users
Instead of all online pages and advertisers coming together to run classified ads together, advertisers are running on demand-side platforms, tech corporations that allow advertisers to buy classified ads. Websites work with supply-side platforms, tech corporations that pay sites to put classified classified ads on their page. These corporations handle the main points to which Internet sites and users deserve to be matched to express ads.
Most of the time, ad tech companies ranked classified ads to run in a real-time auction. Whenever a user purchases a website and the website has space for an ad, the website’s bid-side platform will solicit bids for classified classified ads from demand-side platforms through an auction formula called ad exchange. The demand-side platform is the one that advertises in its inventory the most productive goals of the user in question, based on the data it has collected about the user’s interests and their internet history. through the user’s browsing tracking and then sends an offer. The winner of this auction can place their ad in front of the user. All this happens in an instant.
The major players in this market come with Google, which runs a supply-side platform, a demand-side platform, and an exchange. These 3 parts form an advertising network. Several small businesses such as Criteo, Pubmatic, Rubicon and AppNexus also operate in the online advertising market.
This formula allows an advertiser to show classified classified ads to millions of potential users, across millions of Arrays without wanting to know the main points of how this happens. And it allows you to request classified classified ads from countless potential advertisers without wanting to touch or make a deal with any of them.
Malicious advertisers, like any other advertiser, can take advantage of scale and succeed in programmatic advertising to send scams and malware links to millions of potential users on any website.
There are controls against incorrect classified ads on several levels. Ad networks, supply-side platforms, and demand-side platforms all have content policies that restrict destructive classified ads. For example, Google Ads has an extensive content policy that prohibits illegal and harmful products. , misplaced, and offensive content, as well as a long list of deceptive techniques, including phishing, clickbait, false advertising, and fake images.
However, other ad networks have less strict policies. For example, MGID, a local ad network that my colleagues and I reviewed to examine and found that it ran many lower-quality ads, has a much shorter content policy that prohibits illegal or offensive content. and malicious ads, and a single sentence about “misleading, inaccurate or misleading”. Native advertising is designed to mimic the appearance of the online page on which it appears and is guilty of abstract ads on the back of news articles. ad network, content. ad, does not have a content policy on its online page.
Websites can block fast advertisers and ad categories. For example, you would possibly block a specific advertiser who has run fraudulent classified ads on your page, or fast ad networks that have run low-quality classified ads.
However, those policies are as smart as their implementation. Ad networks typically use a combination of manual content moderators and automated equipment to make sure each ad crusade complies with their policies. Its effectiveness is unclear, however, a report by advertising quality company Confident suggests that between 0. 14% and 1. 29% of classified ads served through supply-side platforms in the third quarter of 2020 were of poor quality.
Malicious advertisers adapt countermeasures and locate tactics to evade automatic or manual auditing of their classified ads, or exploit gray spaces of content policies. For example, in a study my colleagues and I conducted on misleading political classified ads in the US election, we found many examples of fake political ballots, which claimed to be public opinion ballots but asked for an email address to vote with. Voting the ballot places the user on political mailing lists. they may not have violated Google’s content policies related to political content, knowledge gathering, or misrepresentation, or simply not been included in the review process.
Finally, some examples of “bad” ads are deliberately designed to be deceptive and misleading, either through the online page and the ad network. Native classified classified ads are a wonderful example of this. They are effective, as local advertising corporations claim higher click-through rates and profits for sites. Studies have shown that this is likely due to the fact that users have a hard time differentiating between local classified classified ads and online page content.
You may have noticed local classified classified ads in a lot of news and MediaArray adding major sites like CNN, USA Today, and Vox. If you scroll to the back of a news article, there may be a segment called “sponsored content” or “on the web,” which contains what look like news articles. However, all of this content is subject to a fee. My colleagues and I conducted an examination of local advertising in news and incorrect information and found that those local classified classified ads disproportionately contained potentially misleading and misleading content, such as classified classified classified ads from unregulated fitness supplements, deceptively written advertorials, investment arguments, and content from content farms.
This highlights an unfortunate situation. Even reputable news and media internet sites struggle to generate profits and turn to running deceptive and misleading classified ads on their sites to make more profit, despite the dangers this poses to their users and the charge to their reputation Rappler. com.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Eric Zeng, PhD candidate in computer science and engineering, University of Washington
Disclosure: Eric Zeng does work, consults, owns shares, or obtains investments from any company or organization that would profit from this article, and has disclosed any applicable partnerships beyond his educational appointment.