These ads, which typically link to sites with names such as Becky's Weight Loss or Helen's Weight Loss, often use the same exact creative -- a before-and-after photo of a woman's belly -- and tout some secret to getting rid of a gut. Users, of course, have to click on the ad to find out more.
Online advertising start-up Rubicon Project estimates that different versions of the "belly fat" ads are now being served by half the ad networks in the U.S., sometimes accounting for as much as 30% of an ad network's total revenue.
It's all part of a larger shift toward direct-response advertising as brand dollars become harder to come by. The belly-fat ads may be unappealing and jarring on some of the higher-end sites that are running them, such as MSNBC.com, but they work, and can bring more revenue than a display ad sold on a cost-per-thousand-viewers basis.
And they won't die:
But here's the bigger problem: The process of blocking belly-fat ads for publishers that don't want them is proving particularly difficult for ad networks. The creative gets placed by numerous corporations using different tags, URLs and toll-free numbers, making them hard to track and stop automatically.
And when ad networks have unsold inventory, they'll often tap another ad network to fill it, giving belly-fat ads another side door onto websites that might not want them.
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135115
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