[Closed] New ad issue on this site?

When the ads give you strife,
And it's affecting your life,
That's Safari.

There is no problem with the site, there is no problem with the site...
Keep repeating it and it will come true.

Arrghh, new blooming L'Oreal advert covers the screen and when you click on X it doesn't close it but redirects. That's not right. 👿

Oh, and after being logged out again, can I just ask this, which really really really [b]REALLY[/b] pisses me off..

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[b]WHY[/b] is the login element of the page the very last thing to load?

If that was made the first part to load, I'd guess you'd appease a lot of folk that pay for the site.

First time I've ever been hit with what seems like an ad related issue:

Laptop with Firefox 45.0.1 on Win7.

With Ad** off (my default setting for STW) the site loads 224 scripts (according to the count in NoScript, and I allow them all) but since this morning I have no ability to scroll.

As far as I can tell the page has finished loading (took 5 minutes for the rotating tab icon to clear) so I don't think there is a failed popup anywhere (in fact I have never had popups on STW).

I have now turned Ad* on and the site is working fine.

I can't scroll up past your post.

[quote=knottinbotswana said]First time I've ever been hit with what seems like an ad related issue:
Laptop with Firefox 45.0.1 on Win7.
With Ad** off (my default setting for STW) the site loads 224 scripts (according to the count in NoScript, and I allow them all) but since this morning I have no ability to scroll.
As far as I can tell the page has finished loading (took 5 minutes for the rotating tab icon to clear) so I don't think there is a failed popup anywhere (in fact I have never had popups on STW).
I have now turned Ad* on and the site is working fine.

Same here, Chrome on Win7.

WHY is the login element of the page the very last thing to load?

Double bubble

I'm sure the site guys are working on it, but that I-phone ad redirect is doing my tits in now and making the site unusable from any of my mobile devices. I mean, at points I've had to stop procrastinating on STW and actually had to go and do something productive. The inhumanity of it all!

Princess flounce over

I got a load of takeaway ads this morning. So I popped over to Greggs for a bacon butty.

Sorry about the redirect. The issue is we are really struggling to replicate it. I've refreshed the three devices I have here hundreds of times and so have others in the office. Not that we don't think it's a problem but the networks need a direct link to be able to track anything down.

I'm thinking it may also be geo targetting so if it's happening to you still, please email me direct and include..

screen grab (if possible) showing the whole screen/page
Your browser
Device
and broad location (Nearest city will be enough)

For what it's worth the site is now scrolling again without any prophylaxis.

NoScript has reported 89 and 122 active scripts at various points during this evening...

FFS!

One window open with just one tab.

1. Logged in, posts worthless comment.

2. Admires own reflection (i.e 30 seconds without touching laptop).

3. Clicks 'bike forum'

4. Logged out!

5. Realises nobody cares.

6. Admires own refection again.

I care

[img] [/img]

Tinder style sex ad redirect with topless women is great, is take a screenshot but I'd get banned for posting it 😆

Just had same sex redirect too plus many others.

Emailed STW. Getting beyond a joke

I went and got a 'P'.

[img] [/img]

I regularly get issues at work using IE9 and the ads will not close but re-direct. Not knowing how all this works I thought it was the ads being sneaky to generate more hits rather than anything STW related, and thought this accounted for why Audia and Maserati believed they were getting so many hits from STW!

Using IE9, in Edinburgh and I dont have any screen grabs but last week when I was there it was the car banners at the top that were redirecting.

is there any resolution to the ad redirect thing? i get it constantly now from my mobile (i-phone 6) to the point were it's unusable on the site - mainly congrats you've won an i-phone 7, but with a healthy dose of porn and sky bet thrown in for good measure - i not sure what my onoine usage is saying abot me if these are my traget ads! is there any fox from my end i can do?

Is the email addy tech@? Getting constant redirects on iOS Safari. Most times goes to King.com, but others as well. Tried to screen cap one of the initial redirects, but couldn't get it. Hopefully what I did get helps.

[img] [/img]
[img] [/img]

Yup tech@

Cheers

Heh. Tried to come back on the thread to say thanks for the confirmation and got redirected again. At least I got a screencap of the guilty party. Will forward it on.

[img] [/img]

seems to be in fits and starts, was uncontrollable earlier today, couldn't even access the main forum page without a redirect

First thing I'd like to say is 😯
Next thing is 'What the blue blazes just happened!!!!!! '
I got a lady showing me her CAT!!! Spilt my blooming tea over my carpet 🙁
I doubt it was a pedigree cat, but I'd rather not see anyone's cat.

I'm a good chap, don't roam the net for pictures or videos of lady's cats and I really
Don't want someone else's cat on my phone.

Not enough bleach in the world to get my screen clean 🙁

Wasn't logged in, but by heck I am never logging out again 🙁

Definitely awake now (and traumatised 🙁 )

fwiw it is likely there is an element of geotagging as I get nothing other than regular ads when logged out. Belgium/Windows10/IE/Chrome/Edge and no ad blocking.

The site is now so slow it is completely unusable when logged out on my phone. Just fine logged in though

Am I also seeing more 'P's appearing all the time?

Am I also seeing more 'P's appearing all the time?

Are you suggesting it's a strategy employed by STW to get more revenue ?

I've reported loads to tech this week, quite frankly it appears to make no difference, and I Mark has been trying his best

seeing more 'P's appearing all the time

I've reported loads to tech this week, quite frankly it appears to make no difference, and I Mark has been trying his best

That's disheartening. Was going to forward some stuff over today, but it looks like they're constantly playing catchup.

Edit...goddamit.

*shakes fist at adtrack.king.com and rewrites post*

On my phone it regularly redirects to some advert, then to the app store for a game or something - without me even clicking on anything. It's doing it a lot now - getting to the point of being unusable on the phone.

Could be worse...some users are getting porn.

I was getting frequent pop-ups for masseratti the other day.

I generally accept the ridiculous number of banner ads on STW now are just part of paying for the site, I'm not keen on paying for the [i]'P'[/i] as I'm quite tightfisted, certainly not the sort who would consider a masseratti...

I don't mind being advertised to, I would prefer it if they used cookies that at least target them properly, but pop-ups are a bit much and will drive traffic and potential click though revenue away... Sort it out FFS STW, you're the only one's who'll be losing revenue...

I've deactivated one network from the MPU position (That's the technical term for the square-ish ad at the top of the RH column) so I've been able to rule out them. Next I'll be deactivating that network from all the other zones. That process will repeat for the other 2 networks through all the zones until I stop getting reports.

It's a huge frustration that we can't replicate it the problem on our devices as I'd be able to go straight to the problem. It's also likely that the networks aren't aware of it. All of them have t&cs that preclude these types of ads. It's a rogue/hacked advertiser somewhere in the system.

We've also dropped a zone on the front pages of the site completely (permanently, a month ago) in order to reduce the ad load on the page. What we are trying to do is raise the value of the remaining positions to compensate for the loss.

We are trying to fix this and your reports do help. Keep them coming to me directly by email if possible as that alerts me much more quickly than forum posts. I'll keep you updated here though when I have news.

Networks are great and evil at the same time but when bike industry marketers throw more and more of their marketing spend into producing their latest 'sick edit' video that they then try and get us to share to you guys as an editorial piece on the front page or on our Facebook page there's fewer safe and simple bike brand ads to put on the site.. and so we have to use the networks to fill more of the available inventory... and crap like this happens.

It's a crappy downward spiral that convinces me the end of display advertising as we know it is on the way. I'm sure that makes you all happy to imagine an online life with none of these ads all over the place and it does me too.. so long as the alternative revenue streams stack up and make it all economic.

I'm hoping that as more alternative revenue streams come online I'll be able to deactivate more ad zones on the site. Our ideal alternative is subscriptions of course. More of those will make it much easier to become even more selective about the ads we allow on the site.

The Skimlinks system that we implemented in February is showing really good promise for example. It's a bit variable in revenue generation as it relies on you lot creating links to retailers websites and that seems to come in fairly unpredictable waves, but with more time and more data it will average out to something we can plan with. I'm hoping then I'll be able to drop at least one of these networks completely.

I'll give you all another update when I have more to report.

Appreciated. FWIW I've not seen any rogues (when I am logged out, often 😀 )

pop-ups are a bit much and will drive traffic and potential click though revenue away

The data is clear.. they really don't. There is a definite net gain for us. But they are annoying but when we use them it's because the advertiser is paying an amount that we really can't ignore. They could be restricting our growth of course as I imagine that we may lose some page impressions but we have increased users to the site by 6% yoy.

I'm not saying this to be clever and smug. I'm not. I dislike them as much as you. But they are a necessity when they come in at the price the Maserati campaign did and that money will help us develop alternative revenue streams that hopefully will mean we don't need to use them in the future.

The agency behind the Maserati campaign (which ended on the 31st March) contacted me on Friday to ask if we can reactivate it as they have unsold inventory still to deliver on the global campaign. I'm not reactivating it, despite the loss of the revenue.

I'm not saying there won;t be other pop up campaigns in the future, but I wanted to explain the reasons behind them. We are a publishing company that employs 12 people and pays a lot of freelancers in addition. Profit margins in publishing have always been amazingly tight and right now as new technology is transforming the entire landscape it's a hell of a job to maintain revenue streams while we adapt and develop in the new world of publishing.

The logging out issue is on our tech agenda btw.

I'm not saying there won;t be other poo up campaigns in the future

I accidentally visited one of those sites once. Never again.

Oooh.. in before the edit there Drac.. I thought I'd got it in time 🙂

The logging out issue is on our tech agenda btw.

If it helps you any Mark, we did what we could to narrow it down a little while back and the discussion is here:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/why-wont-my-phone-stay-logged-in-stw

Nothing concrete but perhaps there's a few leads there that might help as a starting point.

Oooh.. in before the edit there Drac.. I thought I'd got it in time

Unlucky.

Since changing the default browser in Safari from Google to DuckDuckGo the irritating pop-ups vanished, at least on my pad. I don't often use the phone, but I'm using it now, and when I hit post on the air mattress thread I got hijacked and diverted to some 'dear bt user you've won a prize' site, which meant I had to hit the back button to get back to STW,
which still showed my post in the send box, so I hit send, only to find the post was there already.
I've nor swapped the Safari browser on the phone to DuckDuckGo, that does seem to get rid of the really irritating stuff, while leaving legit adverts in place, which I have no issues with.
It might be worth others doing the same, swapping from Google to Bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo, and seeing if things improve.

Since changing the default browser

Default search engine, you mean?

Curious. I'm utterly bemused as to why that would make a difference; why does browsing to a specific URL touch the search engines at all? What on Earth is Safari doing?

I am actually starting to like the redirects. Although, we are going to have to change the meaning of the initials to SexyTrackWorld....

[img] [/img]

...this was one of the tamer pics 8)

That aside, there was an interesting article on Pajamba and PetaPixel recently which backs up what I have noticed that these are getting everywhere.

http://www.pajiba.com/think_pieces/about-those-insidious-mobile-ads-that-hijack-your-phone-and-redirect-you-to-the-app-store.php

http://petapixel.com/2016/02/07/readers-reporting-auto-redirecting-ads-on-mobile/

I got one of those ad's yesterday too, but with actual bewbies on show. Was on my work laptop too. Luckily I was working from home & not in the office...

I am actually starting to like the redirects. Although, we are going to have to change the meaning of the initials to SexyTrackWorld....

They're advertising a dating site where you can pull a monkey?

(not a euphemism.)

They're advertising a dating site where you can pull a monkey?

I believe it's a gorilla, unless it actually says Dong on it's shirt, rather than Kong.

There are better ways to earn £100... 😛

I'm fully subscribed to this site and I haven't had a single porn pop-up. Sort it out!!

I only get traumatized when i am logged out. Not doing that again.
I'm off cats for life 😯

My ISP 'bad thing' filter has been very active over the last few days 😳

And before anyone makes any suggestions, this was on my work laptop and work phone so it is not my browser history causing issues

We've finally got a hit on a device here at the office today, which has given us some useful information. It also appears to be a wider issue than just our site as reports are popping up around the web. It's definitely a rogue ad linked to adware but it appears to be spreading more widely. I've deactivated one network completely that sat at the bottom of the pile but I think I can rule that one out now. I shall move on to the next one but I'm a bit worried this is building up to be a spreading issue across the wider ad network arena.

Bon courage!

I just got the prawn ad

I want the pron ad.

You can't handle the ad.

I don't want to handle it 😯

(Still using salad tongues to pick up my phone 🙁 )

salad tongues

😯

I had porn pop up last night whilst sat next to my wife. Not good after she caught me looking at it a few weeks ago and promised not to do it again.

:-/

Since changing the default browser
[b]Default search engine, you mean?[/b]

Curious. I'm utterly bemused as to why that would make a difference; why does browsing to a specific URL touch the search engines at all? What on Earth is Safari doing?

I had porn pop up last night whilst sat next to my wife. Not good after she caught me looking at it a few weeks ago and promised not to do it again.

Targeted advertising? (-: You really need to report that one.

Damned if I know why it seems to work, but it does.

Bizarre. Could someone else with an iDevice try this please, see if they can replicate the behaviour?

Gets a bit difficult to search for previous threads about advert problems when you're getting taken off the forum to yet another crap advert.
I did notice on the many links it was going through that one was ad.king not sure if this helps.

minor gripe in comparison, but

Connected to static.criteo.net

Criteo is one of our trusted networks and they are normally extremely reliable. However, they hit a bit of trouble yesterday and their ad did indeed cause some page loading delays. It's fixed now but from time to time that does happen.

The nasty pop-up issue is spreading widely now. We do have the ability to close of a network when we catch it happening but there are literally thousands of networks pumping ads into the global system and it's a bit like whack-a-mole. The industry at large behind the scenes are chasing these issues down. It's in their best interests to do it as the ad blocking issue that this type of issue exacerbates pretty much threatens to put them all out of business.

I've made a bunch of delivery changes with our setup (We use 3 principal providers of network ads that we've come to trust) and I'll keep whacking the moles as I find them. Ultimately it's the networks that will solve the problem and it will stop... Until the next hacker comes along and injects shitty code through the next hole in the system.

Keep reporting issues to me please. I'll do my utmost to fix them.

For reference, I mostly see Singletrack on my IPhone 6s.
Had loads of pop ups a week or so ago in this forum, which I reported on this thread.
I've now seen the the exact same pop ups on a guitar tab forum and another music related forum in the last couple of days.
Is it something to do with IPhone rather than the actual website?

Hope this helps in some way.

Is it something to do with IPhone rather than the actual website?

It's to do with ad networks, and ****s inserting malicious code into adverts on the network. Lots of sites will use the same networks, so a problem can be seen on several sites.

Here's a good overview of the issue:

It’s not the publishers’ faults. It’s not the Apple or Google Play or Android stores’ fault (entirely, anyway) either, and it’s not even the ad networks’ faults. Those ads originate with insidious little pissants who sneak bad code into large ad networks, and they’re very difficult to detect and root out.
In short, this is how it works: We the publishers enter into a relationship with an ad network. In addition to their own ads, those ad networks run ads from other third-party ad networks. When an advertiser inputs an ad, the ad network checks to ensure there are no spam or malware or phone hijacking ads. However, once the ad has passed inspection, some of these shady mother****ers come in and add the hijacking code into the ad. They’re hard to detect because there are scores of third-party ad networks within each ad network with hundreds of ads being delivered all over the Internet.

In other words, they sneak these ads into legitimate respectable ad networks (even Google’s own ad network), against the policies not only of the ad networks, but against the policies of the Apple/Android/Google App stores, and even the clients disapprove of these ads (King, the maker of Candy Crush — where I’m redirected more than any other place — is also trying everything they can do to prevent the ads).

-> http://www.pajiba.com/think_pieces/about-those-insidious-mobile-ads-that-hijack-your-phone-and-redirect-you-to-the-app-store.php <

and round