
Ask HN: What AD networks are there that don't scam people? - speeder
Currently my businesses have most of the influx of new clients coming from ad networks...<p>The problem is that I noticed that no matter what I adjust, the flow of new clients keep dropping while my budgets keep getting hungrier and hungrier...<p>And every time I check, Google found a new way to scam me out of my money.<p>They disabled every single method you had to prevent ads from showing on mobile apps while still showing on the AdSense network on mobile web.<p>When I click on the top budget consuming apps on my list, every single one is some sort of scam, with user reviews complaining the apps are putting ads in front of toddlers, or that they can&#x27;t do some crucial thing without clicking ads, or that the apps auto-click ads and so on.<p>I am tried of playing cat and mouse with google, I keep adding apps to ban list, adjusting topics, targetting and so on, and Google keep removing whatever features I used to get rid of the scams draining my budget.<p>So what other networks are out there? Reputable stuff, where I can advertise to engineers, hackers, and so on, not to toddlers.
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adnanazadsg
Established networks dont give you enough ROI. Google and Facebook for example
have slowly become more and more expensive to the point where if you aren't
dedicated to optimizing and testing ads on their platform, you'll lose money.

The best way forward is to look at smaller networks. What new platforms are
your target audience using that isn't quite "mass-market" yet.

In my experience I found content marketing to be better - although its not
exactly plug and play yet like Adwords is. Maybe try advertising on blogs and
other publications (maybe via Outbrain or something similar).

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verdverm
Before online ads, the industry new half of every dollar spent was wasted
because the viewer was not your target audience.

I would suspect that the ratio is worse for online ads. The cat and mouse game
of ad fraud is a more difficult game for the cat.

Ads may not be the best way to find engineers. I'm trying to figure out the
same as your last paragraph.

