No he's talking about Taboola or Outbrain. Taboola shows up everywhere now. It's those little images at the bottom of pages like on VentureBeat that have nothing the fuck to do with anything and are just noisy bullshit that make the internet worse. There's usually some kind of cleavage or weird picture to get you to notice and click. It's bullshit and no self-respecting sites would never add such a thing.
As demonstrated by the fact that many data driven sites use Taboola/Outbrain (including one I used to work for), users either don't care about them or care about them so little that it is offset by the increased revenue. In fact, as demonstrated by the fact that Taboola/Outbrain get paid when users click, users appear to actually like some of their content.
If users don't mind and actually click through, is it really fair to describe it as "bullshit"?
The problem with spam email is that it operates with a push model - i.e., spam email is forced upon you and you have to do work to avoid it.
In contrast, if you want to avoid Taboola/Outbrain, all you need to do is stop asking content sites that use them to send you data (i.e., don't browse Taboola/Outbrain sites).
Well I definitely don't go to those sites directly. It's usually via links from sites like Hacker News. Adblock blocks Taboola, but I don't use Adblock. I'm not asking you to solve a personal problem for me. I'm saying Taboola is shit. It offers very little value, and there are just enough of us around to click on things of little value to keep reducing the quality of crap on the internet. There's nothing to be done about than to bitch.
Yeah, those sorts of services have been around for several years. I was approached by one a long time ago, but it just seemed too spammy for me. They aren't as bad as the ads that underline keywords in content, but I wouldn't use them.
