New ads?

[palindrome]

Did a change get made for more ads? Seems to be thing up 70% of my screen now.

 

[beck4537]

Same here. Can't click on the new posts button when viewing on mobile.

 

[kmp1284]

Did a change get made for more ads? Seems to be thing up 70% of my screen now.

Yes. It finally prompted me to get an ad blocker.

 

[BronsonShore]

Pop-ups, too! Can't wait to get so sick of the ads that I never visit this site again.

 

[DZH22]

They're very intrusive, randomly popping up between threads and between posts.

 

[Blackbird]

Yeah. Makes it really hard to read and navigate. On my phone at least; maybe it looks better on desktop.

 

[Scott]

Need to raise a few more loonies to pay the bills

 

[Gunner02]

What is up with Project Ad Barrage...wowza.

 

[George_Apley]

I always use an adblocker so I haven't noticed this. @SkyriseCities

 

[HelloBostonHi]

On mobile they're out of control, if we're struggling to stay afloat I'd rather open a donation system than deal with the level of ads on here today.

 

[Bananarama]

Who's the owner or person who implemented these?
Do they want more revenue to keep this site up? I'd pitch in for a voluntary donation link or whatever every once in awhile over more intrusive ads.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I always use an adblocker so I haven't noticed this. @SkyriseCities

Same. Site runs great with uBlock on default settings, on desktop and phone. I clicked off the master switch on it just to see what the fuss was about in this thread, and nearly got whiplash at all the crapola sprayed all over the homepage and how long it took to load. I see *none* of that otherwise...ever, in any scenario. And would never have known it was there without intentionally going out of my way to see what the unfiltered experience looked like.


How does anyone with a say in the matter over their personal device's configuration ever stand browsing without an adblocker these days? The whole fucking Net is damn near unusable without one.

 

[BronsonShore]

This is what an unusable website looks like:

 

[George_Apley]

Who's the owner or person who implemented these?
Do they want more revenue to keep this site up? I'd pitch in for a voluntary donation link or whatever every once in awhile over more intrusive ads.

Presumably the site owner. I tagged him upthread. You can also use the "contact us" button or DM skyrisecities.

 

[ErnieAdams]

This is incredibly grim, an absolute site killer and a near perfect representation of the worst case scenario that many of us envisioned when the site changed hands. I don't want to ad block; I actually want to support the few sites that I do visit; this is untenable @SkyriseCities.

 

[shawn]

I tried to view AB on my iPad in Safari a few minutes ago and couldn't close out of a full-screen pop-up that hijacked the homepage.

Now I'm on my PC in Firefox with ABP and Ghostery enabled and everything is fine.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

This is incredibly grim, an absolute site killer and a near perfect representation of the worst case scenario that many of us envisioned when the site changed hands. I don't want to ad block; I actually want to support the few sites that I do visit; this is untenable @SkyriseCities.

Why is this grim? You adblock, you get zero ads...*ever*. Not only zero ads ever, but zero trace ever of where the ads would be placed on the board had they ever existed in the first place (i.e. zero functionality breakage to go along with cosmically faster load times). And full control to not only whitelist the sites you *do* want to support with ad revenue, but also choose via the element selector on the context menu to block some intrusive ones (like the button-focus stealers) while leaving others alone on the same site.

I don't even understand why this is a moral crisis. The web is almost literally unusable without blocking for all the bandwidth the ads suck and all the shit-smearing and functionality breakage it causes. Unless you are on a device with...

• zero admin permissions to install an adblocker, like a work machine (aB not exactly a five-alarm urgent use of company resources)
• some hyper locked-down device like an off-OS smartphone that doesn't even give you a choice to use browser with available blocker

...you're almost literally tying one hand behind your back trying to browse without one. Not to mention greatly self-compromising your own device's security by leaving the barn door wide open for all the third-party tracking cookie cooties the ad servers implant. Ad defacement has caused that much breakage to basic online usability. The examples here are pretty intrusive, yes, but given what passes for adspam standards these days it's nearly impossible that this is the worst you're seeing on a daily basis from sites you probably rely on way more than this one. Why would anyone choose to torture themselves like that on a principle?

Look...you don't have to dignify Edward with ad revenue either if you think he's breaking some sacred trust. I just can't see the point in getting hot-and-bothered over this when...save for the very narrow Admin-lockdown scenarios outlined ^above^...you *do* have a choice. And quite frankly, given the security implications behind tracking cookies, choosing to go blocker-free out of "principle" makes about as much sense as leaving the anti-virus app turned off.

 

[shawn]

To be fair to AB, it looks like they're only running AdSense through Google Tag Manager. If you're logged in to your Gmail account on your phone, you give Google more behavioral and contextual data every time you do a basic search than AB ever passes to Google via your visiting this site.

If you visit CNN today, you'll get hit by about 35 different advertising, interaction, and site analytics pings. The Globe is hitting me with 19, although most are of the publisher / supply side platform variety, which bother me less.

 

[theSil]

Or you like to visit the site on mobile and have never had to install an adblocker on your phone because it wasn’t necessary to (like the vast majority of mobile web users).

Currently, any newcomer to the site that visits without an adblocker isn’t coming back. I don’t want to miss out on new voices because they happen to not have an adblocker installed.

(As an aside I just installed Blokada for Chrome iOS and it seems to work well. Will have to see if it breaks any other sites tho...)

 

[shawn]

Oh, to be clear: that this has happened is annoying AF, has ruined the UX on mobile, and as you said will just make the site's bounce and drop rates skyrocket. This in turn will lower the overall site Quality Score and consequently move it down the Google Display Network ladder of publisher tiers (which is already not a premium network to begin with: note the advertisers you're seeing, not exactly Dior or Apple). Meaning AB won't receive as much on a CPM basis from Google for its ad space. It's honestly self-defeating for publishers to even experiment with large banner sizes on mobile. You just make your site less monetizable in the eyes of the big demand-side players like Google and Amazon.

I'll I was saying in my previous post is that in terms of personal data getting mined by advertisers, AB is a flyweight compared to other sites we all visit every day without a second thought.