researcher Ben Edelman has released analysis showing that Google has continued to maintain certain advertising relationships that overcharge advertisers and violate their own policies.
The main complaint is over relationships with WhenU, a vendor of spyware, typically bundled with other downloaded products. It monitors your computer usage and pops up ads, including Google ads, it claims are relevant to you.
Edelman shows that WhenU will pop up ads for sites that the user is actually visiting, Continental Airlines in his example. Continental is getting charged for that ad even though the user has already reached the site through other means, a situation Edelman calls “conversion inflation." What's more, the ads are misleading. Edelman shows how the WhenU/Google practices violate numerous established FTC policies and Google's own rules for advertisers, including the fact that WhenU engages in nonconsensual installations.
Edelman also describes Google's relationship with InfoSpace, owing to InfoSpace's poor history with respect to improper ad placements, accounting irregularities and the general inefficiency of having InfoSpace redistribute Google ads already redistributed to it.
Most of these problems are not new. Edelman discussed them in February, 2009 and in May 2009.
The main complaint is over relationships with WhenU, a vendor of spyware, typically bundled with other downloaded products. It monitors your computer usage and pops up ads, including Google ads, it claims are relevant to you.
Edelman shows that WhenU will pop up ads for sites that the user is actually visiting, Continental Airlines in his example. Continental is getting charged for that ad even though the user has already reached the site through other means, a situation Edelman calls “conversion inflation." What's more, the ads are misleading. Edelman shows how the WhenU/Google practices violate numerous established FTC policies and Google's own rules for advertisers, including the fact that WhenU engages in nonconsensual installations.
Edelman also describes Google's relationship with InfoSpace, owing to InfoSpace's poor history with respect to improper ad placements, accounting irregularities and the general inefficiency of having InfoSpace redistribute Google ads already redistributed to it.
Most of these problems are not new. Edelman discussed them in February, 2009 and in May 2009.
