[duskwuff]

One specific type of advertisement comes up repeatedly in this article: link syndicators, like Taboola and the like. They're responsible for a lot of the most deceptive and lowest quality advertising content on legitimate sites.

These advertisers often claim to be recommending "related articles" or syndicating content from "around the web", but this is simply not the case. Their "sponsored content" is almost always very low quality fake news articles that would have a hard time buying advertising through any other outlet -- many of them are for outright scams, like make-money-at-home schemes, win-a-free-product schemes, or dubious dietary supplements.

The Internet as a whole, and especially news sites, need to stop working with these advertisers. Their advertisements masquerading as content are bringing disrepute to the sites running them, as well as to advertising in general.

[ChuckMcM]

I agree with you, but the problem is economics. Simple A/B testing, with one of these link syndicators adds 35 to 45 cents RPM as opposed to pages without link syndicators.

So you are in the back office and you are looking at the choice of "leaving" thousands of dollars a day on the table (for high traffic sites) or providing a better user experience for the fraction of people who care, but aren't willing to pay a subscription / paywall fee.

You pick the syndicators and assume that if your "readers" really care enough they will install an AdBlocker. For a publisher it can be the difference between being viable and not being viable.