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I’ve used the report add button but there isn’t actually a category for “this is a scam”… perhaps STW might feel some moral compass to play its part in telling its service providers to do a better job of filtering this crap.
unless of course we believe that Martin Lewis is “giving money away” or the BBC are backing it?
Have a look on his Facebook Group or website. He is HUGELY frustrated by these ads and refers to them as a game of Whack-A-Mole
This.
More detail for those who may not be aware:
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/fake-martin-lewis-ads/
Everyone help poly whack-a-mole these ads! 😀
Have a look on his Facebook Group or website. He is HUGELY frustrated by these ads and refers to them as a game of Whack-A-Mole
I know - but they are still appearing here hours after I reported them on the add and after posting this thread. I know @Mark will say “we aren’t to blame for the advertisers” but STW are happily taking Google’s money and profiting from this stuff.
I think from past comments from the editorial team, reluctantly taking googles money to keep the lights on might be a more accurate description of the situation.
And what are Mark's options? Turn off ads altogether?
He can report them to Google and Google will say "ok, tyvm, we take this very seriously blah blah" and continue to show them.
Ads get reported through the Google Ad Manger portal - it's then a matter of waiting to see what Google does about it. They don't commit to a timescale on these things. In the meantime I 'could' turn off all the ads so that these targeted ones from Google don't show to the users they are targeted at - but I'm not going to do that as that would be a really bad thing for me to do.
I think the spam text messages I’ve been getting lately, threatening me with a fine and losing my licence because of (alleged) unpaid parking tickets are far more unpleasant than whatever spurious adverts Google throws up - I don’t know what the adverts are, I’ve never seen them, but I doubt they’re threatening legal action
I got an advertisement served up by Google of our President Michael D O'Higgns backing a money\investment scam. I complained to Google and this is their reply:
We decided not to take this ad down. We found that the ad doesn’t go against Google’s policies, which prohibit certain content and practices that we believe to be harmful to users and the overall online ecosystem.
We decided not to take this ad down. We found that the ad doesn’t go against Google’s policies, which prohibit certain content and practices that we believe to be harmful to users and the overall online ecosystem.
I think this is something frustrating about both Google and Meta - is they only hold advertisers to their own standards, not to the standards everyone else demands or expects.
I suspect we need some sort of legislation (or the application of any existing legislation) to makes advertising media liable for the losses of bad faith advertisers. At present it suits Meta and Google to undertake as little scrutiny as possible of their advertisers and the content so it keeps them as distant as possible from the consequences