It turns out that most websites dont actually decide who gets to show ads to their viewers.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
Websites work with supply-side platforms, tech companies that pay sites to put ads on their page.
These companies handle the details of figuring out which websites and users should be matched with specific ads.
Most of the time, ad tech companies decide which ads to show through a real-time bidding auction.
The winner of this auction gets to place their ad in front of the user.
When you see an ad on a web page, behind the scenes an ad network has just automatically conducted an auction to decide which advertiser won the right to present their ad to you.
This all happens in an instant.
Big players in this marketplace include Google, which runs a supply-side platform, demand-side platform and an exchange.
These three components make up an ad internet.
There are some checks against bad ads at multiple levels.
Ad networks, supply-side platforms and demand-side platforms typically have content policies restricting harmful ads.
However, other ad networks have less stringent policies.
Another native ad data pipe, content.ad, has no content policy on their website at all.
Websites can block specific advertisers and categories of ads.
However, these policies are only as good as the enforcement.
Voting in the poll signed the user up for political email lists.
Native ads are a prime example.
However, all of these are paid content.
This highlights an unfortunate situation.
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