Submission + - NBC / SNL Stealing Ad Revenue? (donyougorouninrountorero.com) 2
DontLickJesus writes: "In a time when television networks are working hard to deal with the changes presented to them, NBC has been very successful in transition, providing much of their content online. However, it would seem this media giant doesn't want to shoulder all of the cost, to the detriment of their advertisers. Saturday Night Live recently featured skits with urls to see the skit again. These sites first load an intro page, simply showing an image of the skit which the user may click on to load the video. This may seem simple enough, but why the extra step?
Upon further examination, these pages have frames loaded first with advertisements which the user never sees. Both http://donyougorouninrountorero.com/ and http://www.badnewswurtz.com/ use this technique, helping us to understand this wasn't a simple coding mistake. I've collected the responses from requesting these sites at http://pastebin.com/Vj0TL08M in case they are changed later.
I cannot personally verify NBC's ties with the companies involved. However, it is not common for sites to be coded in the manner shown (though not unheard of). In my experience the most common use of the techniques involved are when sites are attempting to steal ad revenue or circumvent user anti-tracking mechanisms."
Upon further examination, these pages have frames loaded first with advertisements which the user never sees. Both http://donyougorouninrountorero.com/ and http://www.badnewswurtz.com/ use this technique, helping us to understand this wasn't a simple coding mistake. I've collected the responses from requesting these sites at http://pastebin.com/Vj0TL08M in case they are changed later.
I cannot personally verify NBC's ties with the companies involved. However, it is not common for sites to be coded in the manner shown (though not unheard of). In my experience the most common use of the techniques involved are when sites are attempting to steal ad revenue or circumvent user anti-tracking mechanisms."
