Forbes asked readers to turn off adblockers then immediately served them malware
Being that I make money from serving ads, I come at this a bit differently. In a lot of markets, it&#x27;s one of the most passive ways to make money, but to be sure, the creepiness factor has been advertisers&#x27; hubris-induced-downfall.<p>In any case, I haven&#x27;t seen anyone here mention the ad networks themselves. Every once and a while we would get a complaint about a bad ad - it wouldn&#x27;t dismiss, etc. Over time, we whittled down our network list to ad networks that strictly test and vet the ads they serve, no matter how much time that takes.<p>The networks blaming a &quot;rogue advertiser&quot; means they&#x27;re not even passing ads on their network through automated malware detection software, and so they have responsibility here.<p>Creepiness factor aside, the explosion of networks is a problem, because so very few are actually providing more than a basic service. We really should be holding networks responsible for their ads.<p>We did, and we haven&#x27;t had a complaint for a very long time.<p>Edit: this doesn&#x27;t absolve Forbes, especially if they did nothing to correct the problem.<p>Edit 2: by &quot;we should hold the networks responsible&quot; I mean &quot;we the publishers&quot; - and as that &quot;we&quot; we still have a responsibility to our users&#x2F;consumers. See Edit 1.