The only network ads I had running on my news site were from Google Adsense, the seemingly reputable choice, but I found ads and trackers from all sorts of networks were infiltrating through that little window.

The only reasonable action was to just turn it all off and forgo the marginal ad revenue. We now only host ads we have sold direct.

Then the publisher should stop working with networks that do this.

That's not in our control as users, only the publisher can do that.

Even well known news websites have ios app store redirects that stop content from being viewed.

Now, if it was an open standard without a gateway, it would be a different beast. But fraud would kill it.

Ad networks seem to be immune to fraud. Large companies will pay to have their brands seen anyway; us small guys take the hit.

It's this crap that's destroying the web and making people's devices unusable. Until it stops people will continue installing ad blockers. No amount of guilt trip adblock walls will stop that.

I tried to complain, but ad_server.py didn't care.

Here's an alternative. Specialist sites sometimes sell ads directly to the advertisers without using a network. They can choose what they show, and often won't accept ads that don't relate to their users. Not really an option for a dilute gossip news blog though.

Ergo the lesson I learn is to not visit your site. How's that a net positive for content creators?

This becomes a problem for the publisher more so than the reader from my perspective. My job in the context of this relationship is fundamentally to consume your content. Your job is to figure out how to monetize your content in a way that isn't offensive and is sustainable.

I'm not saying I won't pay for quality content (I do!), but there needs to be a way to monetize that's respectful of your readers.

Do those ads include any JS? If not, you've figured out how advertising should work.

Thank you. I turned off ad blocker for your site (one is still networked to the bad guys, though...)

We're still talking internally about what we're going to do with the social stuff -- we're leaning towards kicking it out -- as well as the user insight we're granting to Google in return for using its (excellent) DFP to serve our own ads. Is that what you mean, or have we missed something?

Edit: By "use" I mean I buy ads there.

Edit 2: Damn, that's some nice looking stuff on that site.

You don't have to get rid of social buttons; for some sites, they produce significant results. Just turn them into links and locally hosted static logos rather than scripts.

I know nothing about the web advertising industry or how it works with bidding and so on and I don't think I am alone.

So if a site has ads then as far as I am concerned the buck stops with the them: I have no knowledge of the ad setup or what deal the site has and I don't care either - the site owner takes the responsibility and if I have a negative effect (hacked/malware/slow load or whatever) then I won't be back.

If you bought a car and it had a dodgy handbrake then you would blame the manufacturer of the car, not the company in Outer Mongolia that supplies it to them, or worse, the company that supplies them with their plastic... same applies here.

The suggested solution to "figure it out" and "find other advertising networks" doesn't work because almost all of them do this shit.

You can choose NOT to use them if you want to.

NOTE: I am referring to all content creators that do this: I don't mean to aim at you in particular.

And yeah, if the revenue from some other obscure network is 10% of AdSense, and a good business becomes not viable, it's not good for anyone.