question: Why do seemingly respectable websites allow junky clickbait adverts?
comment: They don't put the ads on their site themselves. They designate a space on their site and use third party services like Google of Facebook to display ads there. They have some level of control over what kind of ads appear, that's why you wouldn't see programming ads on a cooking website, but that's mostly about specifying certain keywords or topics. So this means that the ad provider may serve them ads about shady pyramid schemes or hot singles in your area.
passages: By 2014, the ubiquity of clickbait on the web had begun to lead to a backlash against its use. Satirical newspaper "The Onion" launched a new website, ClickHole, that parodied clickbait websites such as Upworthy and BuzzFeed, and in August 2014, Facebook announced that it was taking technical measures to reduce the impact of clickbait on its social network, using, among other cues, the time spent by the user on visiting the linked page as a way of distinguishing clickbait from other types of content. Ad blockers and a general fall in advertising clicks also affected the clickbait model, as websites moved toward sponsored advertising and native advertising where the content of the article was more important than the click-rate. 
   There are various clickbait strategies, including the composition of headlines of news and online articles that build suspense and sensation, luring and teasing users to click. Some of the popular approaches in achieving these include the presentation of link and images that are interesting to the user, exploiting curiosity related to greed or prurient interest. It is not uncommon, for instance, for these contents to include lewd image or a "make money quick" scheme.
  
  Section::::Backlash.
   BULLET::::- Twice as effective at converting users who click on the ads into buyers
  
  However, other studies show that targeted advertising, at least by gender, is not effective.
   The flat-rate model is particularly common to comparison shopping engines, which typically publish rate cards. However, these rates are sometimes minimal, and advertisers can pay more for greater visibility. These sites are usually neatly compartmentalized into product or service categories, allowing a high degree of targeting by advertisers. In many cases, the entire core content of these sites is paid ads.
  
  Section::::Construction.:Bid-based PPC.
   Providers of this content included Outbrain, Taboola, and others. In the mid 2010s addition of such ad platforms to large journalism based sites was said to provide over $10 million per year extra revenue. Casey Newton (The Verge) concluded that the ad format was likely to be short lived, similar to schemes such as Groupon; though clickthrough on such ads was in the single digit percentage region (compared to 0.1% for banner ads), this figure was comparable to that early experienced by banner ads – he expected that as with banner ads, users would eventually come to learn of the low utility of such links, and eventually avoid them.
   Section::::Use.
   The term clickbait is sometimes used for any article that is unflattering to a person. In such cases, the article is not actually clickbait by any legitimate definition of the term.
  
  Section::::Background.
   Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else's content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.
  
  CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud," and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.
  
  Section::::Compensation methods.:CPC (cost per click).
   In targeted advertising privacy is a complicated issue due to the type of protected user information and the number of parties involved. The three main parties involved in online advertising are the advertiser, the publisher and the network. People tend to want to keep their previously browsed websites private, although user's 'clickstreams' are being transferred to advertisers who work with ad networks. The user's preferences and interests are visible through their clickstream and their behavioral profile is generated.
   Consumers also face malware risks, i.e. malvertising, when interacting with online advertising. Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn. For example, in August 2014 Yahoo's advertising network reportedly saw cases of infection of a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.
  
  Section::::Concerns.:Spam.
   Many find this form of advertising to be concerning and see these tactics as manipulative and a sense of discrimination. As a result of this, a number of methods have been introduced in order to avoid advertising. Internet users employing ad blockers are rapidly growing in numbers. A study conducted by PageFair found that from 2013 to 2014, there was a 41% increase of people using ad blocking software globally.
  
  Section::::See also.
  
  BULLET::::- Behavioral retargeting
  
  BULLET::::- Behavioral targeting case law:
  
  BULLET::::- In re DoubleClick
  
  BULLET::::- FTC regulation of behavioral advertising
  
  BULLET::::- Deradicalization
  
  BULLET::::- Digital traces
  
  BULLET::::- Forensic profiling
   Section::::Types.:Link units.
  
  Link units are closely targeted to the interests of your users. Because users directly interact with the ad unit, they may be more interested in the ads they eventually see.
  
  AdSense publishers are paid for clicks on the ads that are linked from link unit topics, not for clicks on the initial topics themselves. The ads on the linked page are pay-per-click Google ads similar to those shown in regular AdSense ad units. Link Units
  
  Section::::Discontinued types.
  
  Section::::Discontinued types.:Mobile content.
   One of the major difficulties in measuring the economic efficiency of targeting, however, is being able to observe what would have happened in the absence of targeting since the users targeted by advertisers are more likely to convert than the general population. Farahat and Bailey exploit a large-scale natural experiment on Yahoo! allowing them to measure the true economic impact of targeted advertising on brand searches and clicks. They find, assuming the cost per 1000 ad impressions (CPM) is $1, that:
   As problem attracted interest, tools have been developed to address the clickbait problem. Clickbait detection, for instance, has been integrated in browser applications while digital platforms where contents are shared such as Twitter have updated their respective algorithms to filter clickbait contents. Social media groups, such as Stop Clickbait, combat clickbait by giving a short summary of the clickbait article, closing the "curiosity gap". Clickbait reporting browser plug-ins have been also developed by the research community in order to report clickbait links for further advances in the field based on supervised learning algorithms.
   Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites. In 2011, certain scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer, forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's knowledge.
  
  As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers. To combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are developing ways to count online impressions credibly.
  
  Section::::Concerns.:Technological variations.
  
  Section::::Concerns.:Technological variations.:Heterogeneous clients.
   The Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) carried out a survey of its members in 2006 where 81% of respondents expected successful advertising models to cut prices or fund the consumption of entertainment content on mobile phones.
   They see advertisements for products and services that are likely to interest them.
  
  Although consumers often state that advertisements are irritating, in many situations they find the advertisement useful if they are relevant.
  
  Section::::Metrics.
  
  Various types of measurable action may be used in charging for performance-based advertising:
  
  BULLET::::- Many Internet sites charge for advertising on a "CPM" (cost per thousand) or cost per impression basis. That is, the advertiser pays only when a consumer sees their advertisement. Some would argue that this is not performance-based advertising since there is no measurement of the user response.
   BULLET::::- Other malicious intent: As with vandalism, there are many motives for wishing to cause harm to either an advertiser or a publisher, even by people who have nothing to gain financially. Motives include political and personal vendettas. These cases are often the hardest to deal with, since it is difficult to track down the culprit, and if found, there is little legal action that can be taken against them.
   Section::::Online lead generation.:Online advertising.
  
  There are three main pricing models in the online advertising market that marketers can use to buy advertising and generate leads:
  
  BULLET::::- Cost per thousand (e.g. CPM Group, Advertising.com), also known as cost per mille (CPM), uses pricing models that charge advertisers for impressions — i.e. the number of times people view an advertisement. Display advertising is commonly sold on a CPM pricing model. The problem with CPM advertising is that advertisers are charged even if the target audience does not click on (or even view) the advertisement.
   The Viewable Impression approach enables online advertising effectiveness to be analyzed based on stopping power, branding ability and level of engagement – the three key elements that drive purchase consideration and, ultimately, sales. Having no reliable way of measuring actual viewership, web publishers are vulnerable to payment methods that are based on performance-based advertising such as cost per click and cost per transaction. Since the publisher has no control or input on the demand and ad creative quality of the advertised product, web publishers lose control of their yield, giving away significant inventory to ads that are not clicked.
   An example of advertising in England is the Ginsters (English food company) advertisement of a beef pasty accompanied by the hashtag #FeedTheMan, in which there is a man that tells a joke in front of his girlfriend’s bosses; but he is talking about Ginsters, thus she has nothing to worry about, because it’s a type of food that makes everyone agree.
   Long before the internet, there was the unscrupulous marketing practice known as bait-and-switch, using similar dishonest methods to hook customers. Like bait-and-switch, clickbait is a form of fraud. ("Click fraud", however, is a separate form of online misrepresentation which uses a more extreme disconnect between what is being presented in the frontside of the link versus what is on the click-through side of the link, also encompassing malicious code.) The term 'clickbait' does not encompass all cases where the user arrives at a destination that is not anticipated from the link that is clicked. When the manipulation is done for the purpose of humor, as with rickrolling, and there is no element of exploitation, then that deception does not qualify as clickbait. The term can also be misused when viewers complain about a thumbnail or title that is extremely enticing, as with a sexually provocative image. But if the image or title accurately reflects the content delivered upon click-through, then this is an example of simple enticement. Without the element of deception, it does not qualify as clickbait. The borderline cases happen when a content creator inserts a very short segment in order to serve as justification for a provocative thumbnail, when the vast majority of the content has nothing to do with this short segment or thumbnail. Here, a strong case for clickbait can be made, as the overriding characteristic is deception for the purpose of exploiting the user.
   As a rule, the contextual advertising system (Google AdWords, Yandex.Direct, etc.) uses an auction approach as the advertising payment system.
  
  Section::::History.
   Pay-per-click providers, including Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, have made substantial efforts to combat click fraud. Automated filters remove most click fraud attempts at the source. Deanna Yick, a spokeswoman for Mountain View, California-based Google, said that “we design our systems to catch bot-related attacks.” “Because a significant amount of malicious traffic is automated, advertisers are protected from these kinds of attacks.” she added. In an effort to circumvent these filtering systems, click fraudsters have begun to use these click farms to mimic actual visitors.
  
  Section::::Implications.
   BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith states that his publication doesn't do clickbait, using a strict definition of clickbait as a headline that is dishonest about the content of the article. Smith notes that Buzzfeed headlines such as "A 5-Year-Old Girl Raised Enough Money To Take Her Father Who Has Terminal Cancer To Disney World" deliver exactly what the headline promises. The fact that the headline is written to be eye-catching is irrelevant in Smith's view since the headline accurately describes the article.
  
presuppositions: Websites put clickbait adverts on themselves. Respectable websites allow junky clickbait advertisements by putting those ads on their site.
corrections: Sites don't put ads on their site themselves, but through third party services such as Google or Facebook. Respectable websites don't control which clickbait advertisements appear on their site.
raw_presuppositions: Websites put clickbait adverts on themselves. Respectable websites allow junky clickbait advertisements by putting those ads on their site.
raw_corrections: Sites don't put ads on their site themselves, but through third party services such as Google or Facebook. Respectable websites don't control which clickbait advertisements appear on their site.