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90 Percent of Affiliate Ads on YouTube and Pinterest Aren't Disclosed, Says Study (theverge.com)
A new research paper [PDF] from Princeton University has found that 90 percent of affiliate posts on YouTube and Pinterest aren't disclosed to users. From a report: Affiliate links are customized URLs that content publishers can include in their posts. They're essentially ads, and publishers receive money from companies when users click on them. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires that content makers identify when they're being paid to post something, but despite that, influencers continue to skirt around disclosures. The FTC has previously sent out letters to influencers reminding them of the requirement to communicate paid relationships with brands to their followers. The paper from Princeton analyzed over 500,000 YouTube videos and 2.1 million unique pins on Pinterest. Of those, 0.67 percent, or 3,472 videos on YouTube, and 0.85 percent, or 18,237 pins, contained affiliate links.
Never heard of it before.
When I was younger I never would have imagined what a clusterfuck advertising would become. Between privacy concerns and lying and malware distribution and just plain making it frustrating to do even the simplest little thing online, I feel like we're losing (maybe have already lost) everything that was good about the internet. I can't help thinking that the most straightforward fix would be if nobody ever clicked on any ad, EVER. And never bought anything from an ad they see online. I know I do not.
Really?
Before or after:
- Punch the monkey and win the prize! Flash ads WITH SOUND.
- Pop ups with stroke lights and dicks
- Pop UNDERS
- Closing a pop up opens ANOTHER pop up.
Honestly, who cares and why is this a big deal? If a site helped me find something I was looking for, why shouldn't they get a little kickback from the seller.
I'm going to say there are a lot, but the 90% rating in Princeton's study is probably much higher than reality. I know a bunch of people who are struggling with their own funds from their primary mode of income (myself included) in attempting to seem legitimate. Trying different ways to drum up popularity in our own brand/identity, to seem legitimate, and to some day reap the benefits.
In my opinion, there are more people trying to fake it til they make it, since that's what a lot of leaders in the field have done.
When I was young ads were on billboards, TV, and in newspapers or magazines. There was no internet like we know it today and cell phone looked like this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Yeah, no kidding ... internet ads have been shady for as long as you've been able to explain to your mother WTF the internet is. Those of us who have been around long enough to remember every example you gave know too well that it's been a shithole since the first companies started putting up ads. You missed the ones that just kept opening popups until your machine crashed. And don't forget the modern problems of ads being a vector for malware because the ad companies don't care what is being served up as long as they're getting paid.
And, if people look in the links Slashdot posts to stories carefully, it's not uncommon to see affiliate names, or sources of campaigns, or Slashdot explicitly in the URL I've checked URLs and sanitised them for years, and it's quite common to see such things. I copy them, strip out the shit, and then paste them into the browser.
Slashdot really needs to have a policy against such things, because quire often the click-bait is also going to drive revenue to the person who posted it.
And then there's URL shorteners .. no, sorry, I'm not clicking a link designed for the idiots who use Twitter so some third party can track my click and do who knows what with it. Any link like that is never going to get clicked by me, because I have no idea what it is, where it's going, and who is in the middle. And those companies aren't making those services if there isn't something in it for them, and I sure as shit didn't agree to their terms of service.
It's precisely because ad companies are such assholes that I whitelist Javascript, disable Flash entirely, and block third party and ad companies entirely. No way in hell I'd trust the average ad company farther than I could throw the people who work there. And, believe me, I'd love the opportunity to load some ad people into a trebuchet and launch them at a wall.
Acting surprised by this is a sign you don't know nearly enough about the history of ads on the internet, because we've been seeing examples of this crap for 20 years or so.
If you 'never imagined' how bad ads would be, you've had your head up your ass for a very long time.
Tax the companies for these ads.
I would say before, you young whipper-snapper.
Back before those days. Advertisement on the information super highway was considered a godsend where we were allowed to access services that were once either had to pay to access, or was too small to be fully useful. Because the cost of operating a full website was too expensive for most hobbyist.
A single 468x60 pixel banner per page load, for an advertisement roughly related to the content of the site, that took 10 seconds to load off of a modem. was well worth the wait (and perhaps a click if you liked the product) if it helped kept your favorite site running and growing.
However as speeds improved, and website moved from a hobby by a college student to a business model. More ads were needed. And advertisers didn't want to pay for per-view but by click. So advertisers made their adds more flashy, and web designers made ads more intrusive. They didn't care if you accidentally clicked on the Ad, because it was one of 100 pop-ups. (also Ad-ware was installed on systems without people realizing what they were doing, to have ads appear not even related to the site they are viewing)
Because they went way too far. Pop-up blockers (a precursor to ad-blockers) started to get popular. Then blocking cookies, and then Ad-Blockers. Had them realize they went too far. So while most web sites today are non-bombarding us with ads where we can go to a popular site without ad-blockers or popup blockers and be able to see the content. The ads are now more insidious. Behind are big data engine tracking our IP Address and any other identifier available, and give us advertisements targets directly to us. And the web sites don't make their money showing the ads, they make it selling the data collected to the advertisers.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
should be automatically stripped down to:
Back then the advertising was obvious and obnoxious but it was on a website with content.
Now the site you use is a sophisticated, often gamified means of collecting your most intimate details so they can sell that information to advertisers (or other agents interested in demographic information...) Ad networks pay for a slot on every site you visit so they can gather even more creepy information about you while also shoving their highly targeted ads in yo face.
Monkey Punching I could ignore, having to reciprocate social expectations like joining TwitterBook or FaceTagram and being datamined up the wazoo is a lot more difficult to avoid.
crazy dynamite monkey