The quality of ads tends to be the sort of thing that can have a pretty massive impact on the kind of experience that users would be able to obtain on the internet. A recent report released by Microsoft Bing has revealed that fraudulent and low quality ads are on the rise on the Microsoft Advertising platform. Over 300,000 accounts that had previously been able to put up ads ended up being suspended in 2020, and well over a billion and a half ads had also been removed.
This seems to support Google’s findings that the ad fraud is on the rise. With the coronavirus pandemic making it so that each and every person needs to stay at home for their own safety, scammers have begun using ads to try and trick said users. Spending more time online might make you more amenable to these kinds of tricks which is why people are being scammed a lot more often as well, and the fact that these scam artists are not just trying more often but also being more successful is even more concerning since it will greatly compromise the integrity of the internet into the future.
There was also a demand for new kinds of products including testing kits for the virus, and many scammers tried to use this to their advantage by advertising such products even though they didn’t have any in stock. They would then charge customers money for them and disappear after they had earned enough, leaving the customers with no way to get a refund and no testing kit either. This has also applied to masks and the like, and with people so desperate to figure out a way to keep themselves safe it is understandable that they might not be all that discerning with regards to the kinds of ads that they would end up clicking on.
Photo: Rvolkan via Getty Images
Read next: Google Zero-Click Searches Rose To 65 Percent In 2020, The Search Giant Denies All Claims
This seems to support Google’s findings that the ad fraud is on the rise. With the coronavirus pandemic making it so that each and every person needs to stay at home for their own safety, scammers have begun using ads to try and trick said users. Spending more time online might make you more amenable to these kinds of tricks which is why people are being scammed a lot more often as well, and the fact that these scam artists are not just trying more often but also being more successful is even more concerning since it will greatly compromise the integrity of the internet into the future.
There was also a demand for new kinds of products including testing kits for the virus, and many scammers tried to use this to their advantage by advertising such products even though they didn’t have any in stock. They would then charge customers money for them and disappear after they had earned enough, leaving the customers with no way to get a refund and no testing kit either. This has also applied to masks and the like, and with people so desperate to figure out a way to keep themselves safe it is understandable that they might not be all that discerning with regards to the kinds of ads that they would end up clicking on.
Photo: Rvolkan via Getty Images
Read next: Google Zero-Click Searches Rose To 65 Percent In 2020, The Search Giant Denies All Claims
