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*This article is from the 13th issue of Banyuetan in 2024

The mid-year shopping festival has started a promotion war, and major e-commerce platforms are competing for consumers. However, the reason why consumers open e-commerce apps may not be to buy things, but to encounter forced jumps to other app advertising pages. Banyuetan reporters found that although relevant departments have been regulating it for many years, jump ads have been repeatedly banned and have been renewed and upgraded.

Open every app and you may be redirected to an e-commerce site

"All roads lead to e-commerce", "Five minutes of browsing Weibo, jump to Taobao ten times", "The end of the Internet is shaking to jump to the shopping platform"...On online social platforms, netizens complain about jump ads quite commonly. "The number of jumps every day is too frequent. The next step of opening each app may be to jump to e-commerce." Netizen Xiaolu told the reporter of Banyuetan that the opening screen ads cover the entire screen, but the close button is as small as a mosquito, and it will be accidentally touched if you are not careful.

"Some jump ads also link to membership recharge, App download and other interfaces." Netizen Xiao Luan said that every once in a while, he would find that several new apps inexplicably appeared on the mobile phones of his elderly family members, all of which were automatically downloaded by jump ads.

The "2023 Fourth Quarter Consumer Rights Protection Public Opinion Hotspots" released by the China Consumers Association in January this year showed that the proliferation of "shake" jump ads has annoyed consumers, and netizens can only "be extremely careful, for fear of hand shaking." A survey data from the Jiangsu Provincial Consumer Protection Committee showed that 90% of voters disliked the "shake" jump ads and believed that this function violated their rights.

As early as 2014, relevant state departments launched a special campaign to "rectify online pop-up windows". In 2021, multiple state departments issued a number of regulations on jump ads. In 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Further Improving the Service Capabilities of Mobile Internet Applications", which put forward many requirements, including the governance and regulation of "random jump" behavior.

"Jump ads disrupt consumers' normal lives. The right to a peaceful life, as an important part of the right to privacy, is protected by the Civil Code." Yao Zhiwei, a professor at the School of Law of Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, said that if the content of the advertisement involves false information and fraud, it may also violate relevant provisions of the Advertising Law.

Psoriasis spreads, with new tricks

Despite various restrictions, the problem of jump ads has not been completely solved, but has become a difficult-to-eradicate "psoriasis", spreading to more and more types of apps in new forms. On the Black Cat complaint platform, there are more than 2,000 complaints about "jump ads", involving apps including music, maps, videos, and learning.

Jump renovation, "shake" becomes "twist". Previously, under the guidance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and the Telecommunication Terminal Industry Association jointly with a number of key industry companies formulated and issued relevant standards for implementation, stipulating that the device acceleration of the "shake" action should be set to no less than 15 meters per square second, the rotation angle should be no less than 35 degrees, and the operation time should be no less than 3 seconds, so as to increase the difficulty of jumping to ads. However, this did not stump the relevant companies. Some apps look for loopholes in the system and "change the face" of the jump posture, changing "shake" to "twist", "slide", "lean forward" and other actions. In this way, users are "walking on thin ice" while holding their mobile phones, and if they are not careful, ads will jump due to "wrong posture".

"Hide and seek" in the information flow, there are "fakes" in the comment area. To avoid the trap of opening the screen, users still need to sharpen their "eagle eyes". When browsing a social platform, a reporter from Banyuetan found that jump ads were interspersed among normal community interactive content, sending seemingly normal graphic and text content. These contents are marked with the word "advertisement" that is not easy to find. If the user accidentally clicks on it, the page will jump. In addition, jump ads are also "hide and seek" with users in the comment area of ​​some social apps. In the comment area of ​​a post on a forum, several comments with the top likes are mixed with "fakes". These comments that look like ordinary users are actually jump ads. Once netizens touch them by mistake, they will jump to the e-commerce app.

Advertisements are hidden in the video, and you dare not click to pause it. A video app user told the reporter of Banyuetan that he is a paid member, but he cannot really "avoid advertisements". When watching a video, once the netizen presses the pause button, interstitial ads will appear. These ads fill the entire screen, and the video being watched shrinks into a small window. "Am I watching a drama or an ad?" The user said that these ads are too "sensitive" to his fingers, and he can't avoid the jump ending no matter how he operates.

Faced with the bottom-line jump ads, many netizens are also exploring "self-help" strategies, including setting permissions for the phone's gyroscope and accelerometer, downloading third-party interception apps, etc., but it is difficult to completely block them. "It still jumps when it should, I turned off the relevant permissions, and the video can't be watched horizontally." An interviewee told the reporter of Banyuetan.

How to cure the “stubborn disease” of traffic-generating advertising?

Experts point out that this kind of jump advertisement "trick" that is intended to induce users to click can attract a large number of users to accidentally click on it, and companies can use this to obtain advertising revenue. Many companies also regard the high revenue brought by jump advertisements as the "foundation of their existence." This abnormal profit model is the root cause of the repeated prohibition of jump advertisements.

"Advertising is the main means of monetizing Internet traffic. Some apps have a small user base, a single profit model, and do not care about brand reputation, so they turn a blind eye to jump ads." Yao Zhiwei believes that platform advertising and supervision are like a game of "cat and mouse". Profits drive platforms to continuously develop new forms of "jump" and "pop-up" ads to maximize user click-through rates while avoiding supervision.

Bottomless redirection may seem to bring immediate benefits to the company, but in fact it damages the business ecosystem and is a lose-lose outcome.

"Some e-commerce industry data show that the conversion rate brought by acquiring customers through jump redirects is not high, and users are deeply disturbed by this, which leads to a decline in the company's reputation." Dong Yizi, a lawyer at Shanghai Zhengce Law Firm, said that companies should re-examine their current profit model from a long-term perspective, ensure user experience and rights, and avoid overdrawing corporate value.

Jump ads often "just make people feel a little annoyed" and do not cause much damage to consumers, resulting in small compensation amounts in past judgments, and the cost and return of prosecution are not proportional, making it difficult to regulate through individual consumer lawsuits. Yao Zhiwei suggested strengthening joint supervision by multiple departments, increasing penalties for publishers of illegal advertisements, unblocking law enforcement channels, and maintaining a healthy and orderly Internet environment.

Original title: "Can Jump Ads Really Be "Eliminated"? "

Banyuetan reporter: Yang Shuxin and Xiong Jiayi / Participating reporter: Su Yiwei

Editor: Xu Ning

Editor: Zhang Ziqing / Proofreader: Qin Daixin