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Junk websites filled with AI-generated text are pulling in money from programmatic ads
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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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It's been a while since I've interacted with google ads, but if memory serves, by default, the dashboards don't (or can't) break down sales per site, it's mostly impressions per category of ad deployment. "Clickthrough rate among banner ads on news websites" etc. It wouldn't surprise me if the same makers of these spam websites also run bots that click the ads and prop up those metrics that 99% of advertisers don't drill down through beyond surface level. Advertisers probably see clickthrough is good on a deployment and just assumes sales come from those.