It made me sad when boingboing put one of those ad boxes on the site.

I work in digital media. I get why publishers do it. But, sheesh, if you're resorting these ads that insult your audience in exchange for pennies, I think you need to reexamine your approach.

It's less then pennies per view. All of those trackers also pay less than pennies per view. Basically, if you have a legit business with any ability whatsoever to make decent revenue, there's no reason to have chumboxes or paying trackers on your site.

Let's not beat around the bush: some publishers do that kind of thing because they are scumbags.

Probably some exec is standing in the middle of the war room screaming at the top of his lungs that revenue is down and so people get desperate not to lose their jobs and start sticking this crap at the bottom of the page. Some money is better than no money they think.

I don't really agree. I don't think that's fair.

It's presenting your audience with misinformation, false hope, and scams. It's incredibly scummy. Those type of ads prey on people's desperation and gullibility, and there are actually people who will fall for them and waste time and money in the process.

I nearly got tricked into closing that article after the first paragraph; the chumbox subconsciously indicated to me the end of the article and I had to consciously think "wait, this is an article about these ad grids." In fact it happened for every example they showed.

> Chumbox

Had no idea there was a name for this shit! But of course there is. It's really sad that the most rotten apples have spoiled it for everybody. I was thinking recently about trying to set up a passive income website that makes money on Adsense, but got discouraged when I remembered that Adblockers are a thing.

You're decrying the amount of crap on the internet and then saying that it impedes your ability to set up a 'passive income' site whose sole purpose is to make money through Adsense?

Yeah, Adsense ads are generally very tolerable, but they are blocked by adblockers that are adopted by people to get rid of "Chumboxes". There's a big difference.

I frankly don't mind ads as long as they don't use up more CPU/network as the content i'm already viewing (battery isn't free) -- so no video ads if i'm reading text.

Proper honest advertisements for actual products and services is something I have no issue with -- hell, I've actually managed to save money on car insurance because of a bloody online car insurance ad.

I despise stuff that autoplays video/audio, or moves around on the page, or displays creepy, pseudo-anatomical images engineered to trigger revulsion/fascination (trypophobia stuff or shit like those weird toenail images in those "heart attack" ads or whatever else).

My browser blocks JS by default because I don't enjoy seeing those kinds of shock images. Hell, goatse is less distressing for me to look at than the images in your average chumbox.

And they wonder why people believe fake news when they link to it in their ads.

The thing that finally made me switch to scorched-earth adblocking was a Taboola ad for "Top 10 Most Gruesome Tortures in History", with illustration.

It's crazy to think I probably exercise way, way more restraint on clicking that kind of junk than most, and even I can recall a time in the past year I just couldn't help myself. They're so psychologically predatory.

You must be in an NSFW ad bubble. I only see tame clickbait from the Taboola links.

> You must be in an NSFW ad bubble.

No, i get the trypophobia-triggering (DON'T GOOGLE THAT WORD) chumbox images when browsing in incognito mode, without pre-existing cookies or anything else. This has nothing to do with my ad bubble, https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum-de0b... has mentioned that the chumboxes very often carry those images.

Also i'm not the only one, there's lots of other people who attest to the fact that chumboxes specifically use those kinds of images: http://ask.metafilter.com/247987/How-can-I-avoid-seeing-rela...

Totally anecdotal, but I think I see worse stuff in incognito mode than otherwise. Perhaps the default is bad, but with tracking you can get into a less bad bubble?

That makes sense; you'll get the cheapest, crappiest ads, when the prospective revenue is lowest (i.e. no other related tracking data)

It's sad that I know immediately which ads are "trypophobia" tiggerers... now that i know what that phobia means...

I left that article more confused than when I went in. I guess that's the logical conclusion of tabloid content.