Clickbait

Clickbait content can often consist of flashy ads with headlines which are often eye-catching and outrageous – all with the goal of getting you to think "that can't be true!" And clicking out of curiosity. 

Clickbait headlines and articles drive traffic to webpages, which in turn generates revenue (money) for the sites. Often times clickbait articles are poorly or sloppily made, with very little attention spent on the actual content. They typically either claim to solve annoying problems (for example height-increasing pills) or they claim something shocking about a person of interest or celebrity.​

Clickbait headlines use wording like "YOU won't believe this.." With the aim to make you click. They may say that they are giving out free goods for example holidays, only to lead to a disappointing raffle. Luckily, clickbait can be avoided by simply using common sense – don't click on headlines that seem outlandish, and on especially sketchy pages which may be riddled with many clickbait ads, use an ad-blocker such as AdBlock Plus where possible.​

The current biggest advertisers who are responsible for the wave of clickbait are Taboola and Outbrain.​