• Advertising Age, Tuesday, March 10, 2009 11:45 AM

Thanks in large part to the recession, which is forcing Web publishers to sell remnant inventory to ad networks at basement prices, there's a proliferation of crappy ads on the Web. Exhibit A is the now ubiquitous "belly fat" ads placed by numerous direct response marketers across the Web. Ad Age's Michael Learmonth notes that these ads typically link to sites with names like "Becky's Weight Loss" or "Helen's Weight Loss," which often use the same creative of a before and after photo of a woman's belly, touting some secret to getting rid of that gut.

According to The Rubicon Project, 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. Indeed, the reason we're seeing so many belly fat ads is because people actually click on them. According to Learmonth, they can sometimes bring in more revenue than a display ad sold on a CPM. "It signifies a shortage of alternatives and a hunger for revenue," said Andy Atherton, chief operating officer of Brand.net. "This isn't a new issue, but in this climate it's harder to say no to any ad if there is money attached to it."

Meanwhile, publishers who want to block the unappealing ads are running into difficulty, as the ad networks that serve them are having trouble filtering them out since the same creative gets placed by numerous corporations using different tags, URLs and toll-free numbers. And even when the ad nets have unsold inventory themselves, Learmonth notes they'll often tap another ad net to fill it, giving the belly fat ads new life.

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