How To Stop Bad Ads From Showing On Your Website
How To Stop Bad Ads From Showing On Your Website
Tired of seeing bad ads appearing on your website? All publishers hate seeing spammy ads or malicious downloads appearing on their web properties. This subjects visitors to material that the publisher almost always would rather them never see. Unfortunately, bad actors are always finding ways to game the system.
Below, I’ll explain exactly why these types of ads show on publisher sites. I’ll discuss why even the most popular sites in the world still deal with these problems, and what you can do to safeguard against their impact on your visitors.
Where do bad ads come from?
How do I stop these spammy ads on my website?
This is NOT, and never will be a solvable problem. That’s a bold statement, but it was one that was recently made at _Pubtelligence_ — a publishers-only event hosted at Google in August 2017. Panelists from Ezoic and Google both harped on just how difficult it is to stop these bad actors…
> “It \[spammy ads\] has been going on since ads first appeared online and is essentially an arms race between bad actors and the networks. It’s important to understand this as a publisher because even if your able to eliminate these ads at the moment, they WILL pop-up again; regardless of what networks, exchanges, or partners you leverage. We work with thousands of partners and exchanges, not a single one can claim that they don’t have this problem.” – **Dwayne Lafleur, CEO, Ezoic**
The fundamental question publishers have to ask themselves is whether they are responsive enough to deal with this themselves or do they need to enlist help in identifying exactly when these ads start showing? Often, partners or specialized technology providers will have much more data, resources, and know how; allowing them to identify and respond faster than the actual publisher.
> “This isn’t a problem with a great solution. Responsiveness is what’s important for all the parties involved” – **Amy Shih, Online Partnerships, Google**
One of the biggest issues with these types of issues is that publishers find out about these types of issues too late; often by browsing the site themselves or by having a reader notify them personally. This is not a trustworthy way in many cases to know when these types of ads are showing and when they aren’t.
Leveraging technology that can identify when this is happening is one way to prevent this (no-cost [platforms like Ezoic](https://svc.ezoic.com/join.php) can help with this). Another is by diversifying demand providers so that one bad actor cannot fully corrupt your entire site in cases that one ad partner is struggling particularly badly with these types of bad ads.
What can be done to avoid bad ads?
There is no methodology or partner that can prevent these types of ads from showing across the board; however, working with quality header bidders and ad exchanges is a good place to start. Having little diversity in where your ads come from is dangerous for multiple reasons. What’s more, we continually discuss why [competition and testing](/?page_id=1153) are ultimately in the best interest of the publisher.
Have this problem now? What you should do…
