I received the following email earlier today from a regular reader of Faking News:
Sir/Madam,
I am a regular reader of Faking News and respect it as more interesting, genuine, knowledgeable and responsible news site than others.Lately I have seen some obscene and unwarranted ads on your site which degrades its respect and reputation.
(Copy of the latest such ad is attached for your ready reference.)
These type of ads brings you in the category of same business minded newspapers which have no social responsibility and their sole motto is to earn money.
I, therefore, suggest you not to post such kind of ads on your site. Hope you will maintain your respect and reputation and will keep your site distinguished.
Thanks and regards.
My first impression was – maybe someone too sensitive was offended by some Google ad promoting dating websites (yes, Faking News doesn’t use first party ads. Small players like us have to rely on ad-networks, and among all ad-networks, I rely on Google).
(note: This post contains a NSFW (not safe for work) picture, so proceed at your own discretion.)
For those who don’t know how Google Ads work, the publishers (i.e. sites like Faking News) don’t choose what ad would be displayed on a page. Google uses an algorithm to choose and display the ad based on keywords (content on the website) and cookies (your local search history, etc.). Publishers can opt out of a category of advertisement or block particular advertisers, but can’t control advertisements for each and every page.
However, after I opened the attachment in the mail, the ad concerned was more than any flirtatious Google ad: Continue reading