On Ad Banners Redirecting Users to The App Store

Over the past few days, 9to5mac, Daring Fireball, and others brought attention to the fact that despite Apple’s promises, web banner ads, by terrible companies like Zynga, are still redirecting users to the App Store.

9to5mac lays the blame for this at Apple’s feet. John Gruber and Jason Snell lay it at website operators feet.

I blame everyone involved. If you’re a website operator, you are unequivocally responsible for the ads you choose to display. If you’re Zynga, you are responsible for the way you advertise your products. But ultimately, I believe the buck stops with Apple.

Ad networks are terrible¹, but they never claimed to be otherwise – they exist to spam users with hidious crap, and of course all they care about is getting eyeballs on their customers’ products. Website operators who run aggressive ad banners obviously don’t care about their readers, as much as they might protest – if they cared, they wouldn’t run Zynga ads in the first place. Zynga sure as hell doesn’t care. Apple is the only one who “has our back in this fight. They are the only player who’s job is to provide us with a great experience.

There is an easy fix to this problem, and it doesn’t involve any coding at all. All Apple needs to do is ban Zynga and their ilk from the App Store until these ads stop. That’s it – ban them, remove all their apps from sale. Then sit back and watch how fast Zynga and the ad networks scramble to make these redirects go away.