Come on, pack it in now, enough's enough!
Come on, pack it in now, enough's enough!
Author
Discussion

Balmoral

Original Poster:

42,561 posts

277 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
I get banners across the top, focused on the USA. What's with the "Help stop wildfires"? I don't live in a dry fire risk part of the States.

I get a panel on the right, taking 20% of my screen away, with adverts again focused on the USA and offer prices in dollars.

I get the fake toolbar banner across the bottom, and every time I click the god damned annoying thing off, it's there again on the next page.

And how many times do I have to take, or click to close the PH survey? which loads in a new tab every few minutes ad infinitum.

PH is not an enjoyable place to navigate at the moment and I'm spending far less time here.

Shaw Tarse

31,887 posts

232 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
Can't say I've noticed this (using iPad ) though it does seem that this type of thing is more common at a weekend?
Usually the techie chaps like to know which forums it happens in & ideally screen grabs.

Rouleur

7,415 posts

218 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
Just use an ad blocker, it makes the site far nicer.

Deva Link

26,934 posts

274 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
Yep - Adblock Plus and Firefox (maybe it works with other browsers?). PH doesn't have adverts as far as I'm concerned.

Switch

3,455 posts

204 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
Balmoral said:
I get banners across the top, focused on the USA. What's with the "Help stop wildfires"? I don't live in a dry fire risk part of the States.

I get a panel on the right, taking 20% of my screen away, with adverts again focused on the USA and offer prices in dollars.

I get the fake toolbar banner across the bottom, and every time I click the god damned annoying thing off, it's there again on the next page.

And how many times do I have to take, or click to close the PH survey? which loads in a new tab every few minutes ad infinitum.

PH is not an enjoyable place to navigate at the moment and I'm spending far less time here.
Could you post me a screen shot please chap?

We have a strict no-popup policy. However we don't directly control the adverts outside of the UK and use a partner network to do it outside of the UK, however if ads are getting through if we know what they are we can make a request.

Pints

18,451 posts

223 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
Any ads are likely to be driven by your browsing history. Visited any US sites recently?

JonnyFive

29,897 posts

218 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
Yep. Ad-Blocker.

jimxms

1,635 posts

189 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
Annoying as they are, they generate revenue for the good folks of PH. It may not be a massive amount, but I'm guessing it helps them otherwise they wouldn't bother. No website owner wants crappy ads on their lovely site, but its often a necessary evil

Switch

3,455 posts

204 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
On a normal topic page we have 3 adverts.

One 474x60 banner top right
One 300x260 MPU on the 4th post (right hand side)
And a stack of 3 Google test ads at the bottom of the page.

Anything else (Fake banner, 20% of your screen etc) isn't us.

The top two of the ads listed are driven by things you've looked at recently (for instance I get lots of Moss-Europe ads because I go there a lot...)

Switch

3,455 posts

204 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
jimxms said:
Annoying as they are, they generate revenue for the good folks of PH. It may not be a massive amount, but I'm guessing it helps them otherwise they wouldn't bother. No website owner wants crappy ads on their lovely site, but its often a necessary evil
This is correct, the small amount of money we get per view obviously ads up and helps pay the (not inconsiderable) cost of running this site.

WE don't approve any noisy adverts, any popups, any banners, any nsfw adverts.
However sometimes some slip through via partner networks and if you flag them up to us we'll get them removed as soon as we can.

Deva Link

26,934 posts

274 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
Switch said:
This is correct, the small amount of money we get per view obviously ads up and helps pay the (not inconsiderable) cost of running this site.
If we paid a bit more could we have some professional moderators?

Turn7

25,683 posts

250 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
Deva Link said:
Yep - Adblock Plus and Firefox (maybe it works with other browsers?). PH doesn't have adverts as far as I'm concerned.
+1

Switch

3,455 posts

204 months

Saturday 24th November 2012
quotequote all
For what it's worth, Fake toolbars sound more like malware/virus than a rouge advert we've served up.

Rouleur

7,415 posts

218 months

Sunday 25th November 2012
quotequote all
Deva Link said:
If we paid a bit more could we have some professional moderators?
hehe

We can but dream

Podie

46,649 posts

304 months

Sunday 25th November 2012
quotequote all
I don't use an ad blocker, and can't say I've had any of these issues BG

MattDell

3,302 posts

184 months

Sunday 25th November 2012
quotequote all
Switch said:
For what it's worth, Fake toolbars sound more like malware/virus than a rouge advert we've served up.
Yeah, rouge doesn't really suit our colour palette.

DAVEVO9

3,469 posts

296 months

Sunday 25th November 2012
quotequote all
Deva Link said:
Yep - Adblock Plus and Firefox (maybe it works with other browsers?). PH doesn't have adverts as far as I'm concerned.
This..

I never see any ads of any kind, ever, on PH

Balmoral

Original Poster:

42,561 posts

277 months

Sunday 9th December 2012
quotequote all
My belated apologies for my rant, it seems I had some pretty clever non PH adverts and pop ups, even inserting Pistonheads into its copy in the case of the Pistonheads survey. Kaspersky and CCleaner didn't seem to be catching them either. Upgrading my ad blocker has cured the problems.

surveyor

18,689 posts

213 months

Sunday 9th December 2012
quotequote all
Switch said:
jimxms said:
Annoying as they are, they generate revenue for the good folks of PH. It may not be a massive amount, but I'm guessing it helps them otherwise they wouldn't bother. No website owner wants crappy ads on their lovely site, but its often a necessary evil
This is correct, the small amount of money we get per view obviously ads up and helps pay the (not inconsiderable) cost of running this site.

WE don't approve any noisy adverts, any popups, any banners, any nsfw adverts.
However sometimes some slip through via partner networks and if you flag them up to us we'll get them removed as soon as we can.
But they get through and are really annoying. PH is the sole reason that I have an add blocker on my PC. Was not installed lightly, but caused by one noisy add too many. IMHO you need far more control of your add content.

jimxms

1,635 posts

189 months

Sunday 9th December 2012
quotequote all
surveyor said:
But they get through and are really annoying. PH is the sole reason that I have an add blocker on my PC. Was not installed lightly, but caused by one noisy add too many. IMHO you need far more control of your add content.
The only real way for PH to keep on top of their ad content is to manually sign up advertisers. The ad networks will always pump out non-relevent ads, ads that contain viruses or ads for sanitary products.

I imagine the main reason why they go for the latter is because keeping on top of advertisers yourself is a major ballache.