Why you can't boycott the Mail: Google makes a mint from 'fake news' Publishers hiding their identity from advertisers accounted for 60 per cent of Google's news network ad revenue in a study conducted by a non-partisan ethics watchdog. The Campaign for Accountability examined over 1,000 "hyper-partisan" news sites frequently associated with "fake news", including Breitbart and the Mail Online …
> the CfA notes that this includes false positives. The "Trump Excel" website promotes an ebook on mastering the Microsoft spreadsheet
It makes you wonder how all the contract bridge websites are faring. Are they suffering massive boycotts or raking in millions of mistaken clicks?
More like auto-play video ads are despised. I'm actually sympathetic to your post - I recognize that websites need to make money and I have resisted using an Adblocker for a very long time. But when I open a tab and it immediately starts emitting sound from my speakers or playing distracting animations alongside the article I'm trying to read, it's an automatic tab close most of the time. So I'm at the point where yes, even though I am fine with ads in general, I'm setting up an ad blocker.
NO AUTO-PLAY ADS!
It's bizarre, but since autoplay became an issue, I've noticed more and more sites doing it.. I honestly don't understand the mindset of a marketeer. They're almost boardering on being sadists, thinking the more shit they inflict on customers, the more theyll be noticed.
I was fine with the web before it was covered in advertising and I'd be fine if every site that depended on advertising died or went behind a paywall.
That's what really annoys me about this 'it's stealing!' squealing. No it isn't and no we don't care if your business model of ad-supported cat pictures isn't viable without the ads. Get a workable business model instead.
"makes no provision for advertisers to remove content from sites"
I'm not overly familiar with all of Google's products but I'm fairly sure that you can configure content that you don't want your Ad to be associated with. Benson & Hedges unlikely to advertise on a health site or Toys R Us on a porn site for example.
Hyper-partisan, right-wing websites like Breitbart, Drudge Report and The Daily Mail, which commonly post highly dubious and conspiracy-minded content, were the top revenue-generating publishers in the sample
*sigh* I'd take anything that CfA 'study' says about Breitbart and DM with a pinch of salt. They may not be popular outlets for those left-inclined (I actually used to be quite left-wing, believe it or not) but they are by no means fake news. Their inability to sort the real wheat from chaff is kind of ironic.
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