[Closed] New ad issue on this site?

Adverts make money, there are so many here nowadays so many people viewing the site that the money isn't going to be pence...it makes sense to make sure the adverts work on a site as they can help generate revenue but also, when done well, won't detract from the experience and will increase more views and therefore revenue.

Sorry to have to be the voice of doom, but even with the traffic that Singletrack get, the money that they generate from online ads probably won't pay the salary for one tech for one year. Fact is, it is very, very difficult to make any real money from online ads. Only the sites with squillions of uniques per month (and publishers with many, many sites to effectively link together) can do so and that is all done through highly automated programmatic advertising.

Being a P doesn't guarantee you wont see adverts as you get logged out, then Cougar will post a link to the login form, then someone will mention why should they pay for P when the forum is running on a Soviet era rats nest of code, old timers will mention it's fine how it is then fall asleep in their favourite chair, mods will be dismissive, Scotsroutes will FTFM etc etc

I hear what you're saying, but actually my argument isn't about the ads per se. I just think that all those who use this forum regularly should be prepared to cough up the equivalent of a 1/4 pint of beer a week to help keep it running. Those who don't - and there's an awful lot of people who seem to conduct a big chunk of their lives on this site - should frankly be ashamed of themselves. For the record I don't disable the ads, figure that they need all the impressions they can get. I even click on them from time to time because that helps too.

Just to be clear those without a P are not freeloaders. They contribute to the content as well that gives this site its ultimate value. This gets missed in the debate. STW would be dead without the vibrant forum, 100% populated by its users.

Hmmm. It's a fair point, the value of this site is the incredible community and the wealth of knowledge and experience and support and humour. I get that. Still think that people who, for the most part, can afford 75p per week should cough up.

This forum has got me a £750 refund from Scottish Power ,18 months free phone and Internet from BT and stopped me making the worlds biggest mistake when varnishing my floor.
That's an awful lot of subscriptions.

£1.49 gets you a month of Premier access that includes being able to turn the ads off. Shortly the ads will be off by default for all subscribers although you will be able able to turn them on if you really want to.

Here are some things that £1.49 won't get you.

Half a pint in London
A spare tube
Any drink from Starbucks
A big mac
A single copy of any printed MTB mag

But it will get you a month of access to this site, with no ads, and full access to our apps and mag archive containing everything we've ever published in 15 years. You even get Premier benefits from all our Premier dealers. Hell, even if you pay £1.49, download our Premier app, go in to Blazing Saddles and get 5% off anything that costs more than £30 and you've got your cash BACK.

Content is very expensive to create and pay for but we are practically giving it away. All our online features published on this site that you can read for free cost us money to produce. We pay for all our stories, news items, reviews and columns. This is all available to you for free. There's some content we keep back for the mag or the occasional premier only web feature and for this we charge a tiny amount compared to what it costs to create.

All of the stuff you get for free is paid for by the advertising. If you pay us less than half the cost of one coffee a month then you get to turn all the ads off and access everything. If you choose not to then that's totally fine, so long as you realise that the ads you see are the price you pay.

Now, first thing tomorrow I'm going to spend a good chunk of time contacting our ad networks to track down the ad that is not being nice.

and round we go weeeeee 😆

I don't normally get involved in these 'ad' topics as its all been done before and has never affected me in a manner that I found really annoying. In fact, I had no idea what this Masarati ref was (I thought maybe an 'in' joke)? I did mention a week or so ago about strange ads not being relevant to me. This last week though has been a nightmare.
I subscribe, have done for many years and will continue to do so as the mag is sooooo good.
I guess I'm a 'p' subscriber.
Site logs me out now and again, no bother, just log in again, saved password, takes seconds.
Will keep up subscription for mag but logging onto forum is just tedious now.
Adverts/ pop ups/ redirects, hit x then redirects again?

Just now got maybe 4/5 ads/ redirects, before I got a chance to actually log back in.
I've never gambled in my life and would not even care to, so William Hill popping up and cannot get rid of the page is a bore.
I would expect this on less salubrious webpages, but on a bike forum?

Lots of love

Peeved from Reading

I've never gambled in my life and would not even care to, so William Hill popping up and cannot get rid of the page is a bore.
I would expect this on less salubrious webpages, but on a bike forum?

Mike, if I don't log in and have William Hill ads or whatever down the right of the page, and maybe bike related banner at the top, BUT I can still continue to the forum etc, then ok, no bother.
But when I now open up Singletrack page and click on the forum section get pop ups and redirected to pages, then redirected to more and have to close everything down and start again, gets tedious.
Not the same as having normal ads down the side on the BBC page.

BTW Mike, as you seem to be defending; I don't mind the ads down the side of the page or at the top if I haven't logged in, most of the time I never log in; but this recent week has been constant pop ups/ redirects/ intrusive behaviour that I have never encountered here before.
Just to remind you, the normal ads are ok.

Yeah I've been getting full screen ad's on the BBC sport app for a while now. Not so much defending as wondering

I would expect this on less salubrious webpages, but on a bike forum?

From an advertisers perspective there is a huge amount of sport discussed here and some simple analytics would probably show it's a decent place for that legal and well regulated company to advertise.

On logging in personally I log in, at most once a week I end up logged out but that is common with a lot of sites or if my browser does an update and resets something. Can't see why you wouldn't log in 😉

Compared to a lot of sites when I end up looking at STW not logged in it's not that bad, pop ups would be annoying but there is a nice email to report the rogue ads which I'm guessing nobody actually bothers to do.

mws - does anyone else use your machine?

nope all 4 are just for me 😉 though if it's only family members I wouldn't log it out either. If I did the bookmark would be the login page though.

logging onto forum is just tedious now.

Once more with feeling,

If you bookmark http://singletrackworld.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=forum/ it'll take you to the forum if you're logged in, and to an ad-free login page if you aren't.

Pop ups are annoying, redirects even worse, but for pity's sake please report them by email. Include a screen grab and which browser/device you are using. We can do very little when all we have to go on is a post saying the pop up is annoying.

Redirects are banned in all the ad networks we use but rogue ads do get in. They can be stopped but we do need information to track them down.

I'm getting the iPhone 7 bollocks constantly, not been here for a while but now it's pretty much unusable cos of redirects and pop ups, using a 6s on safari, not on the iPad though
Sends me here
http://www.best-iphone6s.com/new-iphone/Luckyusers/LP/gb/8394/index.php

Why not have a tiered P?

P+ = Access to everything and no ads. £15
P- = Just the no ads - £5

Or does my maths not check out?

There is 2 tiers.

£35 access to everything

£15 access to digital

Make it 3 tiers then

I'm getting this as well on an iPhone 4s latest iOS, but not on the iPad.
Never had the pop-up ads issue, but today I haven't been able to read a single thread on my phone.
I don't click on ads and it's now happening without clicking on threads.
Just tried Cougars suggestion and typed in the link, logged in and it still happened.

Pop ups are annoying, redirects even worse, but for pity's sake please report them by email. Include a screen grab and which browser/device you are using. We can do very little when all we have to go on is a post saying the pop up is annoying.

Still think that people who, for the most part, can afford 75p per week should cough up.

Make it 3 tiers then

This guy gets it.

Blimey I was only trying to be helpful by posting !

I only ever use an iPhone to acces STW because on any other device the ads have been ridiculous for years. I haven't read all the other recent ad threads because they were not effecting me, so I didn't know there was an email address for reporting. Maybe a button at the top would be worth while given the regulatory of the issue?

Pay for membership ? Would end up being a very dull place

Maybe a button at the top would be worth while given the regulatory of the issue?

....or some kind of popup to alert the reader.

Just tried Cougars suggestion and typed in the link, logged in and it still happened.

To be clear,

The link I provided will give you an ad-free login screen if you're logged out. Once logged in, Premier users will continue to be ad-free so long as they've selected this option in their subscription settings. Regular users will still be presented with advertising.

[quote=Cougar ]logging onto forum is just tedious now.
Once more with feeling,
If you bookmark> http://singletrackworld.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=forum/

Thanks Stoner

Thanks Stoner

How rude of me, I forgot to thank Stoner for that link.

Cheers, mate. Really helps out.

Why not have a tiered P?

P+ = Access to everything and no ads. £15
P- = Just the no ads - £5

Good grief!
It's currently £0.04/day

If I blew the froth of my coffee and let you smell it, it would be more expensive.

If I blew the froth of my coffee and let you smell it,

Keep talking you filthy beast.....

[img] [/img]

If I blew the froth of my coffee and let you smell it, it would be more expensive.

This guy gets it.

They do have a £1.49 a month option. If you can't afford that or don't want to pay it, well that's fine
but down pile on the staff and expect them to jump through hoops.

Stuff happens

Well at least it's a super hero now 🙂

Is this a new email ??

[img] [/img]

I've sent an email, however appear to be getting redirected to a different site every time I click anything !

Is that safari or Chrome?

That's Safari.

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

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

Next he'll be singing opera....

I've been getting that cyclops thing recently. If you click on it it takes you to the App Store. I've sent an email too.

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)