Invue ad in a popunder window

[Ralph Slate]

Now I've seen it all. I was on a site which was running popunders. One of the popunders was for an advertiser: http://got2goshop.com. That popunder window actually had a FastClick Invue ad in it, as well as 4 468x60 banner ads (DoubleClick, FastClick, and 2 by AdDynamix). For all I know it had a popunder spawn from it as well.

This company must have balls the size of grapefruits.

Ralph

[firstmark]

Isn't this stupid and not bold? Obvious violation of ad network publisher agreements is not so bright.

[Silv]

I think I would have reported it to the networks... I hate to stick my nose into places it doesn't belong... but stuff like that hurts every other publisher, as well as the ad industry itself.

I wonder if things would have gotten as bad as they did if ther ehad never been any abuse by publishers...

[Ralph Slate]

The reason I called it ballsy is that not only are they probably violating the FastClick TOS, but they are flaunting it by doing it in purchased advertising (popunder windows).

It's one thing to cheat on your own site (still wrong, don't get me wrong). But these guys are cheating and paying people to show how they are cheating.

Ballsy.

I am 100% against cheaters, there was a time where you could find 50%+ of network sites cheating (multiple banners per page, timed rotation, invisible IFRAME ads, etc.). Now since most networks are doling out impressions based on CTR, it is impossible for a noninterested party to find a site cheating when they're inflating their CTR. I'm sure that many sites are doing just that.

I'm sure it's easy to set your site up so that 2 out of every 100 visitors get some kind of invisible window that opens the advertiser's ad, counting it as a click. Since CPM networks don't really care about click cheating (after all, they're not paying for clicks, so why audit them), the networks probably never try to search for this. It directly impacts all the other sites in the network because paid ads get funneled to cheating sites with higher CTR, and away from legitimate sites which have a natural (non-inflated) CTR.

Ralph