Nesrie
2714
This is not true. If they don’t monitor who and what kind of ads they play on their website, that has nothing to do with the actual content they offer. As I mentioned before, I have turned off my adblocker on sites I’ve visited only to put them back up again due to pop-ups or aggressive and unacceptable ads. There is nothing nonsensical about that.
Hell there was one non-gaming site I used to visit, that the problem became so bad they changed companies after repeated complaints about malware coming through their ads.
Until ad networks stop delivering viruses/“active content” they’ll stay blocked. RPS has been localhost routed for years so not affected by their latest escapade, but good luck to them.
@Teiman, I’ve never got a virus or anything bad from ads.
I use adblocker because I dislike ads intensely.
They are distracting and annoying.
I’ve been that way a long time.
Even as a kid with a TV, I’d use the ad break as an actual break, and go get a snack or use the toilet or something.
Very occasionally I’d sit down for a good ad.
Examples are how in England, around about Christmas time, all the major retailers outdo themselves making interesting adverts, and they’re usually good.
I can already tell this is something people should read and I’m only part way into it…
including any trophies earned or any games purchased
That’s an interesting equivalence… But, yes, Internet security is, sadly, an oxymoron for human reasons which are very hard to fix.
This is as good a place as any to remind folks that we don’t run ads precisely for the reasons mentioned in this thread. So if you use the site and appreciate it, please support it on Patreon, even if it’s just a dollar a month.
-Tom
I’m just posting this article from Polygon because it kind of amuses me:
I thought I was the only person who had played Assassin’s Creed from the beginning and just lost interest with the new direction they were taking with Odyssey and Origins. Looks like there must be at least 3 or 4 of us! But still, kind of silly to expect them to cater to us when it seems like the new games are pretty successful. I’ll just say we grew apart, Ubisoft, and that’s ok.
It’s not that simple, unfortunately - I’m in charge of three websites and the company that owns us has it’s own ads division, so they do a lot of the footwork a third party provider would, but I still sometimes get reports from mobile users in the US where full take-over ads actively block people from using the site.
It’s really, REALLY hard to track down where these things come from - believe us we try. It doesn’t seem that frequent an occurrence, thankfully, but it only takes one for someone to decide to use an ad-blocker.
Now, I can’t change ads provider because it’s in house, but I know those guys and I know they’re doing everything they can to stop these aggressive types showing up, a long with in-appropriate stuff. All I can do is ask anyone who’s ad blocked us to give us the benefit of the doubt that we’ll try and keep the bad ads to a minimum.
Those full browser takeover ads on mobile are just maddening. Whoever thought those would do anything other than make people actively hate their products was nuts.
mok
2723
Think it is like email spam - it must work on someone as it continues to be a thing year after year.
I am not sure that efficiency is the required trait for an human enterprise to go on and on and never stop. Lazyness to shut it down seems as likely.
Nesrie
2725
Well, just because it’s hard doesn’t move the fault. The consumer, the customer, has no control over this, like at all, so asking us to remove an ad-blocker while saying well we’re trying is simply not good enough. These invasive ads have to go. And it’s not as if they make it easy to even report these freaking ads.
It’s simply not reasonable to ask customers to trust companies or their ad vendors because… we have, we did, and thus the ad blocker.
I’m not trying to move fault, merely trying to promote understanding.
To be blunt, as far as my sites are concerned at least, you get to access it for free, and we try and keep our monetisation strategy reasonable and user-friendly. Assuming readers like the content we put out, I’d like to think they could put up with the odd dodgy ad for the sake of helping us keep going.
We have no more control than the reader does, in many respects, because ultimately it’s not us making the ads. Whether you go direct to the client, use a service or act as a service yourself, ultimately the ad product comes from elsewhere and the people shilling these ads can use a lot of creative methods to get them through the filers. Again, not trying to shift the blame, but it’s easy to paint a picture of wilful ignorance when it’s the opposite.
That said I’m a big advocate of voting with your wallet, as it were, so if you don’t like what we do then by all means, block away. That kind of trust is earned, after all.
That said, if we ended up going out of business due to too many ad blockers, the excuse “oh I sometimes got naff ads” isn’t going to be good enough, either.
Nesrie
2727
I’m sorry to hear that. Customers have a right to hard line their activities. The group that should have been given the boot though, were the ad creators, and the ad platform,or whatever they call it, should have taken that hard stance, not the site or the visitors. If your ad gets reported as invasive, you’re done, 6 month maybe a year ban. Instead, we’re here. Some of these sites, I undid adblocking just months ago, at their request, and as soon as I did, a loud, very loud pop up video right in my face. They’re blocked again.
Yeah, I get it, don’t worry, and it sucks that sites that ask for your support then bombard you with bad ads anyway.
I guess I’m just trying to get across that it’s not always as simple as there being a big “Block Naff Ads” button that we all leave un-pressed because we like money. We do it press it, often.
Nesrie
2729
That’s fair. I typically blame the sites choice of vendor, not the specific ad. I have been under the impression the sites don’t really know which ads are running on their sites. I used to report the bad ones too but it became kind of useless. Short of telling them what is being advertised and maybe the service, like Ad Choices, I didn’t really know what to tell them. And even when they did that, some of the sites would tell me it’s malware and to fix my computer… except it only ever showed up on their site, and my computer isn’t infected. It became… frustrated.
wilykat
2731
I worked on Google Ads Risk for three years helping find stuff like this. It’s harder than you think. I’m sure our team was a hell of a lot bigger than the sketchy ad providers out there, but some things still got through - I was part of the group that convinced Google to ban Flash ads, for example, because it was just too easy to get things through.
Nesrie
2732
Where did I ever say it’s not hard?
What I am saying is the ask is not reasonable for visitors to the site. The risk is not acceptable. We know that because of the use of and the complaints about ad blockers.
I have three problems today with AdChoice. They constantly show the wrong price for NewEgg. There is one that has an autoplay with audio feature turned super loud, of course, and i think one of them might pop-up. Who do i report that to. Let’s assume I am willing to keep my ad-blocker off, who do i tell about these things and how the heck to I give them enough information so they can work it?
