Over time we have seen a large variety of bad publishers applying to join ad networks – one of the most frequent tactics is to use a site template that looks functional and deep upon basic inspection, but is actually just a simple template. A year ago, there were several e-commerce sites like this, but the fraudsters probably realized that these are unlikely to make a lot of sense since ecommerce sites usually do not want advertising on them to distract from making purchases.

Thus a common type is the free games for download type of site. Here is an example of a recent site applying to an ad network.

http://www.gameairport.com/ – “free flash games”, click on one of the first games.

You will see a page with lots of empty spaces where ads are supposed to go, e.g. “300*250 Advertisement” and this will proceed further down as you are led around to lots of pages with more ad links on them. Others include:

http://www.debugscript.com

Games are not the only category for questionable sites. Travel works well too — like http://www.Siteaffiliation.com

Click down into a flight search and you’ll find a broken link. But the first two layers look like a real travel site. It’s unclear what each of these sites does or will do but there is a large number of them proliferating out there, and you are certainly seeing them get into some ad networks. If they are just SEO/arb plays that is one thing – but anyone accepting “template” sites like these into their ad network should be on the lookout to see if anything odd happens… and let us know.

games, templates, travel, websites Hide