Advertising hyperlinks in posts - annoying!

[Big Bad Ben]

Hi all, my first post on this part of PH - apologies for adding to the moaning! On my iPhone on safari I'm getting lots of random hyperlinks in posts - I think most, if not all, go to the classifieds section (for instance, if anyone posts anything including the word "phantom", the word is a hyperlink which links to R-R Phantoms for sale in the classifieds).

Is this a conscious decision by Haymarket, or has my iPhone become infected with some nasty?

Thanks!



Edit: tried to add a screenshot but apparently I'm too incompetent ( http://thumbsnap.com/1JRE85LU)

Edited by Big Bad Ben on Wednesday 12th August 14:48

[Big Bad Ben]

Aha! Thanks - I hadn't noticed they stopped popping up when I signed in...

Now I just need to make sure I sign in every time I visit Pistonheads (because, for some reaseon, "Remember me" doesn't seem to work - perhaps so they can keep spamming me! )

[B'stard Child]

PW said:

34 links on one page... To F40s & Veyrons...

You know this is happening, right?

No one from PH has anything to say about it at all?

Who is going to comment

The moderators - it's not their place to comment

The Techies - they probably implemented it by direction from the owners who want to sweat the asset they have purchased.

The users - for the very reason most don't browse PH unless logged in now

So I reckon any complaints on this subject are probably a waste of effort and expecting a response futile

[B'stard Child]

PW said:

B'stard Child said:

So I reckon any complaints on this subject are probably a waste of effort and expecting a response futile

Saying something might elicit some sort of response, saying nothing definitely won't.

No offence intended but do you think you are the first to raise the issue? Or maybe the second or perhaps the third

And it's pretty clear that The moderators have raised the issue with the techies

Edited by B'stard Child on Thursday 13th August 20:11

[B'stard Child]

I knew I'd seen it somewhere[a techies honest response

[B'stard Child]

PW said:

B'stard Child said:

No offence intended but do you think you are the first to raise the issue? Or maybe the second or perhaps the third

And it's pretty clear that The moderators have raised the issue with the techies

Edited by B'stard Child on Thursday 13th August 20:11

Are those links or ads? Impossible to tell these days...

Links but cleverly made point

[samliggett]

Hi all, thought I’d jump in here what you’re seeing is a tool called Skimwords which hyperlinks keywords out to e-commerce sites. PH wanted to trial this product to non-logged in users to assess revenue impact.

Skimlinks (its sister product) has been running in the background for a number of years. With this every link on the forum directs via Skimlinks which allows Haymarket to collect a small PPC (pay per click) fee from any qualifying affiliate site. The likes of eBay, Amazon etc are all in this network so it provides a small source of revenue for the traffic we are sending their way and allows PH to keep operating as a viable commercial business.

Along with external links we also have our own internal hyperlinks built in so Ferrari F40 or Insurance for example, should direct a user to the PH classifieds section or to a particular PH partner landing page. The idea is to allow for ease of movement around the site but the key difference here is we don’t get direct PPC revenue. The benefit for PH is that as most dealers and partners are now on CPL (cost per lead) or CPA (cost per acquisition) models so if that user then goes on to contact the dealer or buy a product from a partner we in turn get paid.

However in the past few days a coding gremlin which has switched Skimwords onto full force hyper mode so virtually every other word is a hyperlink (not what we intended at all!) . I’m assured a fix is being worked on by the third party and hoping to be back to normal very soon!

As mentioned above the simple way to not see this moving forward is to log into the forums and everything should look normal again!

[The Moose]

Except you now seem to get logged out every 5 mins anyway...

[B'stard Child]

The Moose said:

Except you now seem to get logged out every 5 mins anyway...

There is a thread on that too

[samliggett]

PW said:

I remember seeing skimlinks a lot, probably 10 years ago or more - they were always double underlined...

Hi PW I've been assured the volume has been turned down from "11" now so you shouldn't see any skimwords logged in and far fewer when logged out. (I understand the logging out issue is being looked at too as is clearly not ideal).

Your idea on being able to differentiate between commercial links and user generated ones has legs so long as we can do it in a subtle enough way so the thread doesn't look a mess and is still readible. Either double underlining or a different colour perhaps (may look a bit too much though?) I'll pick this up with them next week and see what can be done and report back here with options.

[The Moose]

B'stard Child said:

The Moose said:

Except you now seem to get logged out every 5 mins anyway...

There is a thread on that too

Where?!?!

[B'stard Child]

The Moose said:

B'stard Child said:

The Moose said:

Except you now seem to get logged out every 5 mins anyway...

There is a thread on that too

Where?!?!

In this section - might be on page two or three now

[B'stard Child]

for Mr Moose

Sticky

[Durzel]

Are we reaching a critical mass of anti-user attitude yet? Appreciate Haymarket want to make money from PH forum, but I'd rather pay a subscription than suffer repeated "accidental" overbearing ads like videos with audio that autoplay.

This stuff happens too often for it to be a genuine mistake in my opinion. I guess the more desperate you become for ad revenue the more further down the barrel you're prepared to scrape.

[samliggett]

Hi All,

Done some digging and apparently the the look and feel of Skimwords can be altered as per the screen grab above.
To clarify this will allow for differentiation between a UG link and an auto hyperlink/classifieds redirect. Would welcome opinion on how you'd all like these to look appears to be a reasonable amount of customisation available.

Let me know so I can trial what works best.

Thanks,

S

[LandR]

These skimword links are really annoying.

BUt at least making the underline "..." would allow people to see at a glance that it's an ad and not a link added by the poster.

Still awful though.

[Rostfritt]

I was wondering what was going on here. I keep getting logged off. I thought for a while that users were underlining words for emphasis until I realised they were dodgy looking links.

[Jon321]

Rostfritt said:

I thought for a while that users were underlining words for emphasis until I realised they were dodgy looking links.

I thought the same, until I clicked on one and it soon became clear.

[LandR]

Anyone got a way to block the script that does this using adblock.

I've tried a few custom filters but can't get it work

[beeej]

Wow! The injected links are absolutely the lamest click through generating valueless turd I've ever seen inflicted on a community.