Let’s make one thing abundantly clear — malware, tech support scams, fake anti-virus alerts, and fake software updates totally suck. That is why at JuicyAds we don’t allow our advertisers to promote them on our network, and this has always been our stance on the matter. Even when malware distributors have come to us and offered obscene amounts of money to distribute ransomware and other tech scams into our network, we have refused while others have accepted. There is no doubt that “malvertising” is highly lucrative, but as a matter of principle we do not support it, and it’s a never-ending battle to keep the “Sexy Advertising Network” from becoming less sexy from these bad advertisers.
Google has taken a stance similar to ours. Even though I have routinely seen fake download buttons and the like on Google’s advertising network, they announced a new policy in November 2015 of penalties to publishers who engage in deceptive or misleading advertising that may cause harm. This basically pushes Google further into a position of handling Internet and website security. We support this ideology, but there may be more going on here than meets the eye.
We believe (and hope) that the only publishers, advertisers and networks that are going to be slapped by Google are those who are frequently (and intentionally) running dirty ads. That’s bad news for the bad guys and good news for the good guys.
The googleblog.com website described these ads as; “social engineering attacks — deceptive tactics that try to trick you into doing something dangerous, like installing unwanted software or revealing your personal information (for example, passwords, phone numbers, or credit cards) … social engineering in a deceptive download button, or an image ad that falsely claims your system is out of date.”
The presumption is that these penalties would only be activated if the landing page is dangerous or malicious. So that means your website is probably safe, unless you are one of the many who are promoting tech support or fake updates, the specific examples used by Google to demonstrate what would result in a penalty. These types of ads have disrupted the entire advertising ecosystem with high bids from the profits of their malicious activity. This means that it even hurts legitimate advertisers who sell a real product or service, who do not have huge “malvertising” margins in order to compete. It’s much easier to make money when you’ve locked someone’s computer browser or threaten to wipe their hard drive if they don’t send bitcoins. Clean and reputable networks sometimes lose publishers who switch to dirty networks that offer high payouts and higher profits. Sometimes the publishers are well aware the ads are dirty (and they don’t care) or they switch and unwittingly expose their visitors to these threats that are often hard to detect.
Google indicates that only websites who “consistently” deliver these malicious or deceptive ads will be affected. If Google’s intent is to actually clean up the Internet, that’s something worth supporting.
However, publishers now have the potential to be penalized by Google, and may be required to remove advertising from their websites that engage in “deceptive” advertising in order to stay friendly with Google. Otherwise, they may lose traffic from the Google search engine. Effectively, Google is now “policing” advertising on the majority of websites on the Internet. This is a very large step into a very subjective area, and may be a dangerous path for Google, a company who operates its own advertising network and whose revenue is primarily advertising based.
At what point does Google indirectly declare war on every other advertising network on the planet, by using their search engine as leverage?
What if the penalties are expended and the result of their Internet-wide sweeping and fight with “deceptive ads” is the limitation of competing ad networks, by indirectly trying to control what those other ad networks display? Google already makes decisions that affect the direction that many publishers go with their website operations. When does telling a publisher what ads they can display (or providing a warning) step over the line, when Google is an advertisement company itself? Mistakes in any automated process are likely to hurt innocent advertisers, publishers, and networks, but it’s far too early to say what will happen. On the surface, with affiliates split testing and frequently sending different traffic to different landers, I don’t know how this new policy could be accurately enforced.
Think of it this way. At what point does a player button ad become deceptive, if it links to a website primarily dedicated to video content? What if an ad is a big download button but it links to a download for some software and it has the software name in small text on the banner? Is that deceptive? What about webcam or dating ads that mimic alert windows? These are common and they forward to webcam and dating ads that are not malicious and are directly related to the ad content. Would that result in a penalty by Google? Google is likely looking for something specific, but they are leaving publishers in the dark by not being clear about what that is. That is a double-edged sword. By not telling publishers what they are looking for, they are leaving those people in the dark. At the same time, they are limiting the knowledge the bad guys have in order to bypass Google detection with new techniques.
As an advertising network, for us to re-review hundreds of thousands of images without any idea of what is “allowed” or “disallowed” is a game that can’t be won. That’s why the second criteria Google has provided is so important — that they are targeting ads leading to something dangerous. This is the important distinction, and the reason why reputable advertising networks scan their ads and act very quickly anytime something malicious is detected.
We believe (and hope) that the only publishers, advertisers and networks that are going to be slapped by Google are those who are frequently (and intentionally) running dirty ads. That’s bad news for the bad guys and good news for the good guys. That would be something positive for the Internet, and even make ad blocking less relevant.
Juicy Jay is the CEO and founder of JuicyAds, the Sexy Advertising Network. You can follow Jay on Twitter @juicyads, visit JuicyAds.com, or like on Facebook.com/juicyads.
