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ffs getting click jacked from a test ad position deployed in a standalone page in a local development environment.
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People underestimate just how impossible it is for publishers to use ad networks & avoid serving malicious ads. So little control.
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Even when the ads aren't aggressively black-hat they are so terribly built that they break experiences regardless.
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The really scary thing is the future is all video preroll which is even worse and less controlled then the terrible state of Display Ads.
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You get your preroll via a VAST tag. That VAST tag can load other VAST tags and other scripts pretty much unlimitedly.
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IAB has standardized this terrible methodology. It lets ads
document.write
into pages, blanking them, and load all the worst tracking code -
And there is 0 control available for publishers or video players. It just follows the VAST tag all the way down until it finds the video.
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I've seen video pre-roll living as far down as three whole XML documents deep. That's three HTTP requests before you even get to the ad.
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And every one of those docs can themselves specify HTTP requests for tracking purposes. Some of those can pull down their own awful code.
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I've seen plain png image display ads that pull down the entire Foundation library. MBs of code b/c some dev can't figure out float:left.
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If you're a publisher who, like most, can't spare a person to sit & refresh your page all day looking for awful ads, how do you deal w/that?
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Worth noting, IAB is supposed to be a group controlling and regulating this stuff with buy in from all sides. It does not. At all.
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They reversed stance on autoplay videos rather than stand up to ad tech/advertising agencies. They promote viewability which is a BS metric
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And the IABs solution is ALWAYS to screw with the reader rather than work towards fixing the industry adage.com/article/special-report-advertising-week-2015/iab-escalates-publicity-engineering-war-ad-blockers/300645/
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Native ads supposed to be way out of endless cycle because it frees pubs from ad tech they can't control. Except ad tech creeps in there too
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Most observers (& many pubs jumping on bandwagon) don't understand Native ads a technical imperative. A sword for gordian knot of ad tech.
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But of course, it can be the same trade-off. Quality of reader experience vs profitability. And then some implement the ad tech on it anyway
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In the end most publishers don't have the technical expertise to explain why all the ad tech is terrible to their advertisers.
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And many of the ones that do, they don't understand that their firewall is the *Sales* department and they don't explain this stuff to them.
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Years from now we'll see that journalists' fear and loathing of their own sales & business departments probably doomed the entire industry.
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Depressing b/c for all the tears about publishers' dependence on social platforms, pubs sold their independence to the ad servers long ago.
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In the grand scale of maliciousness, being dependent on Facebook may be a far better tradeoff than being dependent on DFP & their ilk.
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At least Facebook gives a crap about the user experience. It is pretty clear from their code and actions the ad tech industry can't say same