Forbes International accused of placing ads on dubious subdomain

Unlike Forbes's flagship site, the www3 subdomain did not include subscription paywalls and did not permit search engine crawlers to index its articles, rendering them inaccessible through organic search. Users who attempted to access the www3 subdomain directly were automatically redirected to the main Forbes website. Approximately 70% of readers primarily accessed the site through display advertisements from other websites, many of which were clickbait advertisements from content recommendation services such as Outbrain and Taboola.

Numerous brands purchased advertising space on www3.forbes.com, likely assuming it was legitimate ad space on forbes.com. These include Microsoft, Disney, JPMorgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes Benz, Oracle, Fidelity, Marriott, Ford, United Airlines, and others, as per the report.

Additionally, Adalytics noticed several advertising agencies conducting transactions on the www3 subdomain, such as Omnicom Media Group, Publicis' Starcom, Havas, IPG's Kinesso, Dentsu's Accordant, GroupM's Mindshare, Horizon Media, Stagwell's Gale, and more.

Many advertisers not only paid for what they thought was premium ad space on Forbes's main site, but their ads, which were displayed on the www3 subdomain, were unlikely to reach their intended target audiences. Visitors to the www3 subdomain tended to be older compared to the main Forbes domain, making them less desirable audiences for many brands.

Despite some media buyers explicitly blocking the subdomain, their ads were still shown on the site.

According to the Adalytics report, 'No Trustworthy Accountability Group-certified or Media Rating Council-accredited ad verification vendors appear to have detected Forbes’s practice of misdirection or alerted media buyers to the misrepresented subdomain inventory.'