No Stupid Questions

I've always hated advertising, but I hated it even more once I worked in advertising.

That being said, it's unfair to advertisers. (ugh, I hate saying that, because it's a slimy business, but this is the reality) Nobody has the time to thoroughly research EVERY business that wants to buy advertising. Also, there's a fine line between scams and completely legal yet manipulative business.

Bill might be starting a legitimate small business and wants to advertise to get his first clients. There's very little information available online and no reviews because he's just starting out, but that could look like a fly by night scammer.

Joe owns a similar small business. He charges too much and he doesn't do very good work. That's not illegal, but people who use his services might feel like they got scammed.

Bob's a piece of shit. He wants to take your money and give you nothing in return. He knows what an advertiser would look for to verify his legitimacy, and he makes a fake website full of fake reviews.

In this instance, the advertiser might refuse to sell to Bill, get sued for selling to Joe and spend money and time proving that he's technically legit, and perhaps not even know that Bob's a scammer until months after he's taken the money and run.

I reported a scam ad to YouTube (it said it was a 1000 dollar giveaway to the first I don't know how many people that signed up). When I googled it the top results were all about how it was a scam. Got feedback a few days later: we don't see a problem, the ad is staying up. So they are even knowingly making the choice to show these scams to their users...

Because citizens of many countries are not pressuring their elected officials to change advertising laws such that there is accountability, but companies are most certainly constantly lobbying for relaxed regulations.

It's not often you can look to Brasil for policy guidance, so São Paulo's ban on billboards/outside advertising is pretty remarkable in a number of ways. If they can rid a city of outdoor advertising, surely the world can get a few advertising oversight laws?

The downside is that you can't just throw up your hands and say "Someone else should fix this! Why haven't they?" and walk off. It's a chore that takes time and energy from an already time and energy poor population, and I respect that there is a lot of broken shit in this world that needs fixing.

Because they have unfathomably ridiculous amounts of money that they spend on lobbying (read: bribery) so that they stay not responsible.

Because they have tons of money for lobbyists and outright buying politicians.

Because to the tech industry, stuff like "basic accountability", "selling things people actually want", and "developing without limitless free capital" are all considered hate crimes.

Trillion dollar company, multibillion dollar company, trillion dollar company

And all 3 of them will point to the 1st amendment as prohibiting the government from regulating speech outside of a few very narrow circumstances.

Don't know, i have an ad blocker and so should you.

Forget ads, Microsofts "free trial" wasn't free or a trial. You'd be charged for a product that would show up on your bank statement as free. Short answer; no one in a position of power gives a fuck.

Bro every day I open edge at work and the home page is just scammy adverts, ad revenue farming top 10 slides, or garbage about which dog are you.

I do think they should be held to account over what they show on there.

People and corporations with money are above the law.

I know someone who works as a fraud support team of a bank. An incredibly high percentage of people getting scammed come from Facebook. Either they believed an ad about investing in crypto (the bank blocks the first transaction automatically and they have to talk to the client), or they have been contacted by.... Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk, who told them they needed investors for an experiment that will be extremely lucrative.... I can't believe people fall for that one.

They are in the UK, I reported one to ASA and they made them remove it.

The websites (or at least Google & Facebook - not sure about Microsoft, it could just be low value ad space that nobody really wants?) you've described are known as "walled gardens" in advertising, meaning the DSP (demand side platform, where people who run ad campaigns manage those campaigns), SSP (supply-side platform, where websites & apps with available add space list that space) and at times the website itself are all part of the same company.

This creates a conflict of interest - essentially DSPs want to place as few ads as reasonable as they only want to advertise to people the ads will have an impact on. SSPs want to show as many ads as possible so they get paid more. This results in walled gardens, like Google & Facebook, showing ads more than they should be resulting in overcharging as a result compared to an optimally run campaign. Many reputable companies and ad agencies are aware of this and so advertise less with the walled gardens, resulting in proportionally higher scam ads, as no agency would run a campaign for them.

There's also the fact that they have no relationships to maintain. If a DSP is constantly showing scam ads in the ad spaces they buy, then they'll get blacklisted by the SSP. Same the other way around if the SSP keeps selling misrepresented ad spaces that will never be seen or will be resold every 5 seconds to the DSP, or otherwise not being a trustworthy partner to work with. As the walled gardens don't need to maintain this relationship and there's no risk of being blacklisted, they can effectively advertise whatever and put ads wherever on their website - they're generally powerful enough that people will use their product anyway, so there's no downside for them to accepting scam ads if they're paying.

Because they have money...