I run an online media streaming site for public safety communications, and we've noticed that Adsense advertisers often use these exact social engineering techniques to display download/play links that end up having customers install crappy spyware infested "media players" and other software.
I'm semi-serious here, but if you noticed that you are serving ads that are harming your users, why would you continue to use ad-sense? Why not switch to a different ad network and let Google know why you switched?
> might as well use the terrible option with the highest ROI, right?
No, thanks. Does The Deck serve spammy, malicious ads? I know they're tightly targeted at the techy/designy crowd, but they're also a great example of high ROI ads that aren't terrible.
Valid point. But I still reject the notion of "that sucks but might as well get mine". Sounds like there's a lot of space for ad networks that don't suck. Or monetization models that don't rely on spammy, useless ads.
Nobody suggested there's one solution for everybody. I was just responding to the comment that advertising is the only monetization strategy and that's ridiculous.
> If all your options are terrible, you might as well use the terrible option with the largest ROI, right?
One of the options is "stop running ads". Why is a "site for public safety communications" running ads at all?
Public safety announcement: block all ads to make your browsing much safer. Use Adblock Plus (with so-called "acceptable ads" turned off) or uBlock Origin.
He's not running a public safety institution, he runs a site that has live audio streams from police / emergency scanners.
(incidentally, Lindsay, I've used http://www.radioreference.com to learn a great deal about Software Defined Radio, and I occasionally listen to various Illinois streams on http://www.broadcastify.com - thanks for running these sites!)
> He's not running a public safety institution, he runs a site that has live audio streams from police / emergency scanners.
Thanks for the clarification; that makes more sense.
I'd still echo the comments from elsewhere in the thread about not doing business with a vendor with shady practices just because other vendors do no better.
I run an online media streaming site for public safety communications, and we've noticed that Adsense advertisers often use these exact social engineering techniques to display download/play links that end up having customers install crappy spyware infested "media players" and other software.
My jaw dropped when I saw this blog post.