Despite almost a decade of articles about fake news sites, farticles, flogs and much more — fake news ads are still being shown on Native Advertising left and right. Almost daily when browsing my local news sites, I get the ads making claims that they have news about some product that will change your life. If you click on the ads it goes to a “news lite” type site that is often copying a real news site.
Yahoo already has a horrible reputation in the advertising community as being perhaps one of the most fraudulent networks. According to CNBC Executives at several media companies and media advisory firms with direct dealings with Yahoo’s ad business said the company’s programmatic video ad platform generates mostly fraudulent ad traffic, and otherwise does not work as promised.
My friend Rob Leathern, who works at Facebook product development told me this once, “The online ad industry’s incentives are totally screwed up, and it leads to the kinds of deceptive dreck that profilerates everywhere today. I have helped the Federal Trade Commission in the past before, and I am happy to assist them in understanding the new reality of online consumer deception. I hope they’ll reach out, but in the meantime, here’s a few things that I believe the industry owes consumers.”
