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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

From the article: "Others pretend to be “Download” or “Play” buttons, as if clicking them would provide access to the video content or stream the user had wanted. "

These are actively being served through Google Adsense, right now.

Here's a few example, live sites, where I see "Download" buttons in an ad, in a context that would be confusing.

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

http://downloads.tomsguide.com/PaintNET,0301-4883.html

http://filehippo.com/download_paint.net/

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I see fake download buttons, full screen ads, ads opening new windows/tabs, and ads opening Google play automatically from Adsense on a regular basis. I gave up reporting them years ago.

I only see them when using chrome on Android these days. I generally use Firefox with an ad blocker on both windows and Android to combat it. I disable on some sites to support them, donate where I can, subscribe to YouTube red/Google music, etc to be sure I support content.

> ads opening Google play automatically from Adsense

Are you sure they are ads, and not the site redirecting you based on your useragent? I've had some sites that have apps do that, but I've never had an add automatically direct me to the Play store before.

It debuted when Google added the ability to do direct link ads to Google Play. And it's been on larger sites that use Google AdSense to fill excess inventory.

Yes. I ran into this problem with one of my websites. Turns out, a lot of websites in NL were having the same problem. I guess it's coming through one of the thousands of other advertising networks that are using the Adsense auction.

It's still happening now and then, so Google is fixing the problem in the wrong place.

It's really weird that Google isn't dealing with them. Maybe they're geotargeting everywhere-but-Mountain-View or something? Malware ads on AdSense are neither uncommon nor subtle, but Google's acting like they're not there.

It's really weird that Google isn't dealing with them

It's never "weird" for a company to choose not to attack its own revenue base.

Except Google knows that low-quality ads are driving people to ad-blockers

Exactly. Adsense had this problem in the Netherlands and it turned a lot of my visitors to ad blockers, even though advertising on my website was meant to be subtle.

> These are actively being served through Google Adsense, right now.

There should be a button to report them. Please report them.

Sure. But it's just funny that Google's approach is to mark these sites with big red warnings when Google itself is the source of the actual problem.

Yep. But spam detection and flagging is a hard problem. Google tries to detect and flag malicious creatives and stop them from serving, but it's not perfect. (I've touched that subsystem in a past life).

If their system finds a site displaying a misleading ad, and it's a google ad...

Why is the action to flag and penalize the site? Why would the action not be "google stops showing that ad"?

When it's detected on the ad serving side, the action is "google doesn't show that ad". This is not something that a user will generally notice.

Consider the likely interaction: (a) Spammer tries to figure out a twist on the ad that makes it through the inappropriate ad filters. They keep at this until they get an image or wording that works. (b) Slightly different system goes and tries to find malicious sites. It detects a site where the spammer managed (a) successfully, because it uses some different methods of identifying the bad stuff.

I don't find this kind of result surprising at all, particularly given how big Google is. If the site safety team is different from the don't-show-evil-ads team, it's almost an inevitable result, at least, in some point in the evolution of the system(s) and processes involved. It does point out some improvements that are needed.

I still don't get it. It's like the city randomly testing drinking fountains for lead, then issuing penalties to businesses, when the city municipal supply is the issue. Sure, shut down the water, but don't penalize victims.

That same scraper that's flagging the site can see the adsense block, see that image url for the offending image is "googlesyndication.com/some/image", etc. As far as I can tell, enough info to map directly back to the entity paying for the ad to show.

The ads are the actual problem. It's entirely possible this is a stopgap solution while they flag the client for manual auditing (or whatever)—manual auditing doesn't scale, so I suspect this is going to be more successful at preventing abuse in the short term.

The problem is that Google has built most of it's products and business around the concept that they can automate away manual intervention. I think they are quickly starting to discover how faulty that concept is.

Some of the "AI" startups that mix automated intelligence with human fallback have probably got it much more right: Sometimes, you need people.

Regardless, I think the warning is better than no warning. Again, we don't know the process behind the scenes.

If Google believes any of their ads on the page are questionable, Google should simply not display those ads.

Is there? I see two buttons, one that opens a page describing Google Ads, and one that lets me hide it. After hiding an ad, it asks me what was wrong, and gives me the option of Repetitive, Irrelevant, or Inappropriate. None of those seem to fit with reporting abuse.

There's no reporting option for 'abusive/fraudulent'. And reporting ads doesn't result in a reduction in the number of fake download adverts that I see. Blocking all ads does. I choose the latter.

Sure! Would you mind fixing my revenue generator for free while you're at it?

How do you report them? I see an ad with a fake download button right now. http://i.imgur.com/qJs2CO7.png

Edit: I found the feedback form: https://support.google.com/adwords/troubleshooter/4578507

Yeah google either is not doing a good job here, or they should state whether they have a relaxed stance on that.

Where do you see the button the www.getpaint.net? This is all I see and it looks legit [1]

[1] http://imgur.com/S8iV9cX

I think you are blocking ads. I am too and that's what I see. From a device not blocking ads this is what I see:

http://imgur.com/yZDK7og

Yep definitely blocking ads. That is insanity without. 8|

A new trick is to use so many trackers that it won't fit on the screen when listing them all:

http://i.imgur.com/AauOwVB.png

(This is from a site which detects adblockers, and begs you to turn it off, because it's killing their business model)

I swear imgur redirected me to an album page earlier.

But now https://i.imgur.com/AauOwVB.png it works. Strange.

Ads like the paint.net ad runs afoul of

> Mimicking site content, news articles, or text ads

> Google doesn't allow ads that mimic publisher content or layout, or news articles and features. Ads may also not contain screenshots of Google AdWords text ads or otherwise simulate an AdWords text ad in any way.

https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/176108?hl=en

It showed me an album page on Android too. And a Google ad for a free to play Flappy Bird clone (called Flappy Bird).

Clicking on the ad I was greeted with a landing page, with tiny gray jpeg letters telling me that this free game service costs only 5 Euro a week (automatic renewal). The company behind it, Mobster Ltd. leads me to a dead end on Cyprus and a whole lot of internet complaints.

So please do not click that link or Google may be forced to block imgur. Sorry.

It's also tricky because ad bids come and go, Google does personalization, etc. But, I see what you see pretty reliably if I use an incognito window (no personalization).

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