Achumbox is a form ofonline advertising that uses a grid of thumbnails and captions to drive traffic to other sites and webpages. This form of advertising is often associated with low qualityclickbait links and articles.[1] The term derives from the fishing practice of "chumming", the use of fish meat as a lure for fish.
A chumbox is a form of advertising associated with outlandishclickbait headlines and low-quality links.[2] In John Mahoney's 2015 article inThe Awl which popularized the term, he includes a "taxonomy" of themes regularly featured in chumboxes' images and titles:[1][3][4]
Chumbox ads typically promise easy solutions to complex medical or financial problems, use sensationalist language like "one weird trick" and "Prepare to be shocked!" or allege that the government or powerful industries "don't want you to know" about their products.[5] For example, a chumbox ad for afolk remedy may claim it was invented by a stay-at-home mom using household spices, it completely curesdiabetes in 30 days, andBig Pharma is trying to cover up its existence.[5] To further the appearance that their products are created by normal people and industry outsiders, ads may intentionally use poor graphic design and appear unprofessional.
Publishers often include chumboxes on news websites because the companies behind them provide a very reliable source of revenue.[3] They often have the label "Around the Web" on top of them, and are designed to appear like news articles and "related stories" to seem more trustworthy to readers, though sometimes, they may also include legitimate links to other news articles on the same host site.[1][6] Content analyst Ranjan Roy surveyed what types of sites chumbox linksredirect to, includingYahoo search result pages, deceptiveaffiliate marketers, advertisement-heavy slideshows on celebrity tabloid sites,subdomains of authoritative-sounding websites such asInvesting.com orBloomberg News, and occasionally, legitimate products by advertisers.[7] Chumboxes may sell products that require buyers to watch long, unskippable video advertisements first, which may be done to weed out skeptics and less gullible buyers.[5]
WhenReply All co-host Alex Goldman visited the offices ofTaboola, one of the leading chumbox providers, their CEO and founder Adam Singolda told him that he had never heard the wordchumbox and instead called their advertisements "recommendations".[4]
While earlier uses exist, the termchumbox—fromchum, or fish bait—was popularized by a 2015 article inThe Awl written by John Mahoney.[1][3] In the early 2010s, theweb advertising companiesOutbrain andTaboola emerged as the leading providers and chumbox advertisements became ubiquitous on news websites, including on outlets such asCNN,Fox News andMSNBC.[6][8] By 2016, chumboxes were present on 41 of the top 50 news websites.[4]
By mid-to-late 2016, some websites were rethinking the use of chumboxes due to the negative effect such low-quality links and content had on their brands, despite the additional income from such links.[9] An analysis of images used in advertising of the kind found that 26 percent used sexually suggestive or "interruptive" images; often the ads had no relation to the article content, and on occasions were inappropriate or offensive, such as one titled "Meet the Women Making Rape Jokes That Are Actually Funny," placed under an article about teenage rape.[9]
ChangeAdvertising.org's "Clickbait Report" analysed 50 high-rank news sites and found that over 80 percent were using such ads, the majority from Taboola or Outbrain. Many were found to be confusing or misleading in their purpose.[9][10]
Microsoft has been criticized for inserting chumboxes inside versions ofWindows andMicrosoft Edge, showing "tabloid news" content in search or on the desktop.[11]