Stop what you’re doing and shed a tear for our biggest and dearest Web giants. According to a report Friday (12/9) on wsj.com, a new generation of controversial advertising software is wreaking havoc on the ad businesses of companies such as Facebook Inc., Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. by inserting an uninvited layer of ads on websites or covering up other paying ads.
The software comes, for example, in the form of applications that allow people to customize their Facebook profileswith, say, special borders of snowflakes or colorful designs or that lets them turbo-charge Web searches, according to the report. But in downloading the software, computer users open a door to ads that the big Internet companies complain are rogue.
Once people download the apps, with names like PageRage and BuzzDock, extra ads can appear on Facebook and search-engine results pages, the wsj.com report continued. On Facebook, for instance, big splashy ads appear along the border and in the middle of the pages, pushing content—and the advertising actually sold by Facebook— further down the page. The applications can similarly interfere with search results, placing new sets of ads above the ones bought, say, by Google advertisers.
Facebook and Google don’t see any of the revenue from these rogue ads, which often are for big-name companies including Gap, American Express and AT&T. The vast majority of user complaints that Facebook receives about advertising are because of these ads, according to people familiar with the matter. The ad revenues go to the firms behind the software applications rather than the Web platforms themselves where people view the pages.
Tags: Facebook, Google, internet business, online advertising