We are tired of seeing those ads. They appear on any web page just below an article or in other positions. Are these ads useful for anything? Do the pages that add them make money? Is there an article that is based on scientific evidence? We will try to answer all these questions in this article on invasive advertising.
Ads in diariomarin.com
I carried out a project for the website diariomarin.com and in our presentation video we talked about how we were going to use a form of advertising called Google Adsense. We implemented this system in August 2023 and decided that there were going to be few and placed in places that would not disturb the reader. There were many parts of the website structure that we excluded from those ads because for us the most important thing is the content.
Apple has touch devices as its business model: Microsoft has the programs that are built around its operating system. Amazon’s model is selling products online. In the case of Google, which began as a search engine, its model has been online advertising. Over the years it has been acquiring other companies that followed that business model and has surrounded itself, as if it were an onion, with layers that have to do with that model. From the first moment we considered that if we put advertising on this page it would be Google advertising without other means of invasive advertising.
You’re the 1,000,000th visitor, or almost
A few years ago it was amazing how many websites had ads telling you that you were the 1,000,000th visitor, exactly the 1,000,000th visitor, and for that alone they gave you a prize. You didn’t know what prize it was, just the text blinked and your eyes stopped on that ad that encouraged you to click on it. Obviously you weren’t the 1,000,000th visitor, you were possibly the billionth visitor. Far from this outpouring of generosity (totally false, since you never won any prize) it was a network of websites that took you to pages full of advertising and surveys and your prize was… waste your time.

Fake news and clic baits
It is surprising how many websites that have thousands of visits add this type of pages that lead to a nest of fake ads, with sensationalist news, without scientific evidence or pure gossip. Many pages have a file in the root directory of the website that is ads.txt. In that file they cite the sources of advertising they have. For example, one of the most visited pages in Spain has this header in that file:
# P****** google.com, pub-5898552818181536, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 # P****** Nodus Caixabank richaudience.com, z2ilGMnsoO, DIRECT # Smartclip google.com, pub-1719633316796094, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 google.com, pub-5405744859927315, RESELLER spotxchange.com, 149668, RESELLER, 7842df1d2fe2db34 spotx.tv, 149668, RESELLER, 7842df1d2fe2db34 Advertising.com, 12171, RESELLER tremorhub.com, 51vtw, RESELLER, 1a4e959a1b50034a telaria.com, 51vtw, RESELLER, 1a4e959a1b50034a rubiconproject.com, 19910, RESELLER, 0bfd66d529a55807
This document relates to advertising and commercial agreements between web publishers and advertising platforms, such as Google, OpenX, Rubicon Project, among others. Its main function is to ensure transparency in the sale of advertising space, listing authorized resellers and preventing fraud in the purchase of ads. An example is seen below:

The paradise of duplicate content in invasive ads
Like respiratory viruses in winter, these pages endlessly replicate content that is useless, except to fill your computer with cookies and information without any use. They are ad pages and as such they show you ads. The website that allows you to add these links and invasive advertising has no control over what is displayed, unless it reviews it individually. In this way, all the advertisements with fake news and information of dubious legality are at ease, as if they were gunmen in the Wild West.