Anyone from PH towers give a s**t?

Anyone from PH towers give a s**t?

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dmsims

6,519 posts

267 months

Wednesday 25th May 2016
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Ollie

How come other sites manage not to do this idiocy ?

What are you actually doing to fix it ?

bitchstewie

51,207 posts

210 months

Wednesday 25th May 2016
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Ollie, most people are reasonable and don't necessarily mind the adverts as everyone gets that stuff costs money to run and that we don't pay to post here.

Most people would happily accept "Sorry, we cocked up" or "We know there's a problem and we're looking at it" but that just doesn't happen, it's as if people pop in, skim read the thread, post very speedy "Oh that's fixed" replies then come back a few days later and do exactly the same when it was never fixed at all.

The thread isn't about the adverts, it's about the absolutely appalling communications that you guys seem to do over and over again without seemingly ever learning.

Ironically your first reply seems to have done a pretty good job of answering the question "Anyone from PH towers give a s**t?".

miniman

24,950 posts

262 months

Wednesday 25th May 2016
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We don't display ads on site but we do allow tag injection via GTM for retargeting and so forth. Interestingly our third parties who have access to tag containers seem more than capable of sticking to the rules.

I would politely suggest that either there aren't any rules, or your agency needs sacking. The sheer volume of "cock ups" suggests to me that the slap on the wrist they get is rather weak at beat.

Ollie_M

2,268 posts

106 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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dmsims in answer to your question:

How come other sites manage not to do this idiocy ?
Not sure it's a fair use of the word idiocy, and before anyone says it, I don't mean it's not fair on the word idiocy. Whilst any such instance is one too many the issue is not rife on the site. There's no point in me repeating verbatim what I have already said but due to the way technology works and the law of averages things do creep through.

It would be very useful to understand which sites do this well from your point of view? I imagine resource and its allocation will be different on other sites and not all have forums where issues like this can be both highlighted and people's attention drawn to them.
Unseen and behind the scenes we do stop things going live on the site and do consciously spot stuff on the live site and take it down.

What are you actually doing to fix it?

Like I said, we will continue to learn and improve. The fundamentals of this are very basic; make sure that these things are noted and investigated in a timely manner, responses are insightful and not evasive and when we sort the problem we say so with some detail of what went wrong. Easily said... I am not going to pretend we will become infallible overnight and we will continue to serve adverts but we hope that we can rely on constructive feedback from our members.

227bhp

10,203 posts

128 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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I can't help but think (or at least hope) that a more reasoned and pleasant opening post would have elicited a better response than the angry, foul mouthed, abusive one which was aired. I doubt you would approach someone in real life using the same and if you did you're not the kind of person I would want to be having anything to do with either in real life or on an internet forum.

If it does take stooping to such lows to get a creditable response then PH need to take note and act accordingly.

miniman

24,950 posts

262 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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Ollie_M said:
The fundamentals of this are very basic; make sure that these things are noted and investigated in a timely manner,
The fundamentals of this are very much more basic than that. Test it before you release it to live.

Vaud

50,482 posts

155 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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miniman said:
The fundamentals of this are very much more basic than that. Test it before you release it to live.
Not sure you can test every ad permutation being pushed to your site prior to go live? You put standards in place and contract those standards.

miniman

24,950 posts

262 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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Vaud said:
miniman said:
The fundamentals of this are very much more basic than that. Test it before you release it to live.
Not sure you can test every ad permutation being pushed to your site prior to go live? You put standards in place and contract those standards.
Agreed, but the major culprits seem to be significant campaigns which ought surely to have a cursory glance...

dmsims

6,519 posts

267 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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What are doing to actually fix it should include an investigation into who is actually responsible

Did Dacia (in the latest of a long and tedious line of transgressions) decree it ?

If not them then who ?

Personally I would have been dishing out P45's long ago

Edited by dmsims on Thursday 26th May 18:57

Mr Will

13,719 posts

206 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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Ollie_M said:
dmsims in answer to your question:

How come other sites manage not to do this idiocy ?
Not sure it's a fair use of the word idiocy, and before anyone says it, I don't mean it's not fair on the word idiocy. Whilst any such instance is one too many the issue is not rife on the site. There's no point in me repeating verbatim what I have already said but due to the way technology works and the law of averages things do creep through.

It would be very useful to understand which sites do this well from your point of view? I imagine resource and its allocation will be different on other sites and not all have forums where issues like this can be both highlighted and people's attention drawn to them.
Unseen and behind the scenes we do stop things going live on the site and do consciously spot stuff on the live site and take it down.

What are you actually doing to fix it?

Like I said, we will continue to learn and improve. The fundamentals of this are very basic; make sure that these things are noted and investigated in a timely manner, responses are insightful and not evasive and when we sort the problem we say so with some detail of what went wrong. Easily said... I am not going to pretend we will become infallible overnight and we will continue to serve adverts but we hope that we can rely on constructive feedback from our members.
Okay Ollie, here's a little constructive feedback. How many times do you think these kind of issues have occurred? They started nearly a decade ago now. Each instance gets fixed and the same apologies get made but nothing is done about the root cause. Over and over again we've seen the same pattern, without any meaningful improvement in all that time. You continue to learn? Give me a break.

There doesn't need to be an overnight change but Haymarket does need a long term plan to sort out the ad-networks that it partners with (across all it's sites - these problems aren't PH specific). Breaches of the agreed standards need to be punished with more than just the withdrawal of the offending advert - otherwise what is the incentive for them to avoid the next one happening?

I suspect the truth here is one of effort vs reward. It's more profitable to just fix each one in turn, so there is no incentive for management to actually to deal with the cause. The bottom line is more important than the user experience. Do you honestly think that's good enough?

miniman

24,950 posts

262 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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Amen to that.

bigandclever

13,787 posts

238 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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dmsims said:
Personally I would have been dishing out P60's long ago
Every year, in fact. P45 might be more appropriate smile

saaby93

32,038 posts

178 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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Ollie_M said:
The issue is now being resolved by our Ad Ops team who have identified the prob. So you keep your socks on.
Impressed with the new shade of beige for Ollie's posts yes

Sam All

3,101 posts

101 months

Thursday 26th May 2016
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Scope for improvement, probably more resource required. smile

Ollie_M

2,268 posts

106 months

Friday 27th May 2016
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I just wanted to say thank for your comments, all of which have been acknowledged and taken on board. As a result, we will be introducing new processes and systems to help reduce future issues across the site but also improve the response time to action any that happen to slip through the net.

As mentioned in my previous post please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions regarding the site, and if you are ever in attendance at a Sunday Service in the future, please drop by and say hi as I'll be more than happy to have a chat over a cuppa.

Ollie
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