alt Hacker NewsNot to distract from Meta but I’m surprised Google doesn’t also get heat for this. A number of phishing sites win >30% of the auction on my company’s brand keywords and I see it on many others as well, especially in CPG and e-commerce. I’ve yet to have any luck getting Google to ban the advertisers.
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I remember getting "lend us your google account" ad ON YOUTUBE of all places
My wife got hit by this. Click an ad for to a 100% fake site with deep discounts, put in her credit card, order never went through. I checked the advertiser and it was somewhere in China. A few days later, her CC was used to buy some gift cards online. At least it was a good learning experience.
It's insane work when you just search "Coinbase" and literally the first or sponsored results are not Coinbase but scam sites. I've seen this first-hand in Google. Obviously SEO and DA isn't on their side so it has to just be like pay enough and you can push whatever you want.
I think 80% of my Youtube ads are either outright scams or AI generated ads for questionable "as seen on TV" style products.