Bad Ads: Problematic Content in Online Advertising
A research project of the Security and Privacy Lab at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington
Online ads are an integral part of the modern web. Though most ads are used to promote legitimate products and services, some ads engage in misleading, deceptive, and in some cases illegal practices — impacting users financially, wasting their time and attention, and spreading scams, misinformation, and malware. Our research and other reports suggest that problematic online advertising remains prevalent on the web, posing a threat to the security and safety for internet users.
The University of Washington Security and Privacy Lab has been systematically investigating problematic ads on the web. Our work has identified multiple areas of concern, such as the high volume of misleading "native" advertising on online news websites, internet users' dissatisfication with clickbait techniques, and dark patterns in political, health, and software ads.
Projects
Polls, Clickbait, and Commemorative $2 Bills: Problematic Online Political Advertising Around the 2020 U.S. Elections
What was the extent of online political advertising on news websites
during the 2020 U.S. Elections, and what kinds of potentially misleading
and harmful political ads appeared? We conducted a measurement study
of online ads from September 2020 to January 2021, finding
widespread use of problematic techniques, such as bait and switch
ads disguised as opinion polls, political clickbait ads that link to
content farms, and the targeting of political ads at partisan websites.
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What Makes a "Bad" Ad? User Perceptions of Problematic Online Advertising
"Bad" online ads hurt user experience on the web. People frequently
complain about seeing ads that are misleading, gross, or unpleasant.
So why exactly do people dislike online ads? We conducted large
scale surveys with to understand the subjective reasons why people
dislike ads (e.g. distasteful, clickbait, untrustworthy), and
identify genres of ad content that cause people to feel this way.
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Bad News: Clickbait and Deceptive Ads on News and Misinformation Websites
In recent years, "clickbait" ads have become
increasingly common on online news and media websites,
particularly in the form of "native advertising", which imitates the
look and feel of the actual content on the website.
What kinds of deceptive or harmful content is in these ads?
How frequently do these ads appear? How do they compare to traditional
ads? We conducted a measurement study of ads on mainstream and
misinformation news websites, finding that native ads are extremely
common on all news websites, and harbor the majority of problematic ad
content.
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Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under awards CNS-1565252, CNS-1651230, and CNS-2041894, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the UW Center for an Informed Public, and the UW Tech Policy Lab, which receives support from: the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
