• The Wall Street Journal, Friday, December 9, 2011 12:28 PM

The Wall Street Journal investigates what it calls “a new generation of controversial ad software,” which is apparently affecting the Web’s biggest platforms, including Facebook, Google, and Yahoo. “Inserting a layer of ads on Web sites or covering up other paying ads,” WSJ writes: “The software comes in the form of applications that allow people to customize their Facebook profiles with, say, special borders of snowflakes or colorful designs or turbo-charge Web searches.”

What’s the harm in that? By downloading such software, “Computer users open up a door to ads that the big Internet companies complain are rogue.” App like PageRage and BuzzDock, once downloaded by users, lead to a slew of ads on Facebook and search-engine results pages. “On Facebook, for instance, big splashy ads appear along the border and in the middle of the pages, pushing content -- and the advertising actually sold by Facebook -- further down the page.

“The applications can similarly interfere with search results, placing new sets of ads above the ones bought, say, by Google advertisers.” According to WSJ, the vast majority of user complaints that Facebook receives about advertising are because these ads.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »