I guess that the “half a text box” I can see with the letters “Le” (I think) in it is one of a pair that says “Leave or Stay”?

Assuming this isn’t a second referendum then it’s probably a Cookies choice.

since I can’t select a box I can’t see, the “Ads run this site” banner has to sit there for the duration of my iPad STW experience.

I’d post a screen shot but, you know, posting pics on STW and all that…..

I win a great deal of amazon prizes at the moment but that is not limited to this site

Bloody annoying.

Even if you are logged in and have a P the chuffing banner won’t sod off unless you “accept”

And I don’t accept, I chose to go through the 60 odd and opted out of all of the trackers, yet now I have to accept that I’m being tracked before I can log out… to log back in again…

And only then does it go away.

What a crazy POS.

Happens on all devices, all current IOS.

And I went and bought a P thinking all this sort of trash had been fixed…

Click accept, refresh your browser and is gone for about a month.

That’s not the case Drac, it’s reappeared everytime I’ve visited the forum from the homepage for the last three days on all the devices I’ve used it on (2 phones with Android, 1 windows 10 laptop with Chrome).

Not that it reappearing every month would be acceptable mind . I’m always baffled by how the site runs so perfectly on Drac’s devices!

Why make it reoccur after a month?

There is no logic in that.

If you have bought a P to get rid of this stuff, then you shouldn’t have to go through the pain of about 20mins trying to log back in again.

Point of note..

If I click accept, does that mean all those trackers are “live” and tracking my click?

I’d like an answer, not a snotty answer either.

If it’s reappearing every time you might have cookies disabled in your browser. So they can’t track your browsing but also can’t track whether you’ve opted out or not.

Cookies are allowed in my browsers, and it still happens.

My issue is that the Accept button isn’t visible. It’s somewhere off the right hand side of the iPad screen.

The banner is too big for my screen.

My issue is that the RHS banner ads are for single muslim single Asians and the lay matures especially with rather graphic image associated with it

To the point I can no longer view the site on my work network….

If others have this issue then it will stop paying for the site rather quickly .

Hi all,

We have noticed that our consent management platform (CMP) has been causing a few issues recently so we have temporarily turned it off until we have fixed it. The Advertising CMP will continue to show as normal. We understand having two CMPs is not idea and is very bad for user experience. We have plans to combine the two CMPs but requires us to work with our advertising provider to do that so will try and get the done as soon as we can.

Cheers Tom!

Good man.

Good Man !

Solutions based approach, me likeeeee. !!

Cleared casche and cookies .

Still getting adverts for Arab dating and suchlike.

So if I’m reading this right, even if you have the ‘P’, then all the trackers are still enabled by default?

For the ad consent popup, any tracking is only associated with any ads that are dislayed. If there are no ads shown to you (if you are a logged in premier user) then there is no tracking code from the ads in your browser so you can’t be tracked. We’ve been very careful here to make sure that ads for premier users are just not there on the page at all and not just hidden.

As for the website consent (Cookie consent) we have a number of cookies that are not optional. For obvious reasons we need to plant a cookie on your device to tell us that you are a premier user for example. Without these functional cookies the site won’t function so you don’t get to opt out of these. Your effective opt out option here is to just not use the site.

We have a google analytics cookie that is mandatory for business reasons. We need to know how many people are using the site at any particular time so we can report to advertisers on how amazingly awesome our site is. We also need to know what pages are being looked at and which ones aren’t so we can plan development and editorial policy. But we use Google analytics with the IP anon funtion activated so that no complete IP addresses are sent to Google.

However, we also use a Facebook pixel which allows us to correlate users on the site with users on Facebook. This allows us to create anonymous audience groups that allow us to traget posts on facebook to those audiences.

For example, we can create an audience group of people who have read a particular review on our website site eg a review of a Trek bike say. Then we can use that ‘audience’ on our Facebook page to target any posts we publish on our page about other Trek bikes. So, if you have read a Trek review here on the site you are more likely to see a post about other Trek reviews we’ve published in your Facebook timeline But only IF you have followed our page on Facebook.

This makes our posts on Facebook more relevent to you as what you see is based on your browsing history over here. This is really useful to us and we think to you too.

However, it does mean that Facebook also gets that data and so we have made it an optional cookie that you can choose to block while you use our site.

I know this is all really complicated but nothing insidious is going on on our front. All we need to know and want to know is how visitors to our website use it. We need to use cookies to track that. Where those cookies are linked to third parties – in this case Google and Facebook, we either make sure that the data is anonimised before it is passed to them or where we don’t have that option that they are an optional cookie that you can choose not to have.

But advertising is seperate to that. Which is why there are two pop up consent boxes you need to get past before you come to the site.

The Site cookie consent is renewed annually, as that’s simply good practice. The Ad one is currently set to monthly renew. The reason is that more ad vendors come and go in the advertising system all the time and so to deal with new changes you need to consent again each month.

No one here is looking at individual behaviours. We are only interested in trends in website useage. If you opt out of targeted advertising you will still get ads. They just won;t be based on your interests directly. However, the ads you will then see may still feel targeted but this is because they are being targetd to the demographic of the website ie. British mountain bikers.

The ads we sell directly to brands are not targeted at the individual level at all. These are just gifs or jpg ads and they have no ability to gather any info at all. We choose to dispay them on certain pages.

This is all really complicated. Dealing with it is something we are doing as best we can balancing our own requirements as a business against those of the user. We are trying to find the right balance and it’s hard. We’ve seen a 50% drop in advertising revenue since GDPR came in and that’s hurting us as a business to a new level we’ve never experienced before in our 17 years of existance.

I’m trying to rapidly move the company from that relies on advertising revenue for 60% of our entire turnover to one that relies on subscriptions and reader derived revenue so that we can simply survive the current publishing apocalypse that GDPR has caused. My goal for th erest of the year is simply now to end it with the same number of employees as we started. It’s going to be a tough rest of the year.

Subs (and zero ad tracking) is available for just £1.99/month.

£20/year = £1.66/month (5.5p/day)

£1.66 doesn’t even get you an innertube. or a coffee.

I feel obliged at this point to keep banging away at that message.

I feel obliged at this point to keep banging away at that message.

And very clearly you did it to,thank you

Yes Mark and greaty appreciated it is too.

Clarity and rationale is all I ask for.

Now it’s understood I’ll back off and close my gob.

In case anyone thinks the issue mentioned in post #1 is fixed . . .  it isn’t

When using my iPad I still have a banner across the bottom third of the screen regarding adverts with no “accept” button visible.

I’ll be happy to accept/agree, but you need to give me a button to click. This idea of “trying through sheer will power” is not working.

<p>Mark – just a tip, the current consent banners are crap. This is the only website that I have ever had issue with both pre and post GDPR for that sort of thing. Something in the coding is either hanging when I OK it or getting bocked from sending and just stays forever saying ‘Sending….’. If you could change these to something standard or that just works it would probably help you.</p><p></p><p>Also, never had to do monthly consent elsewhere. Not sure it’s really necessary.</p>

They are standard implementations.

We are working on improving them from how they are supplied to us. The ad cmp is IAB approved and comes via our programmatic ad provider, StreamAMP. Exact same one used on road.cc and hundreds of other media sites. All cmp’s suck.

The ad company must have a bizzare engine… often the ads are directly related to what is in the discussion so cars in the Tesla thread but oddly in some threads I get a mix of Russian brides and gay cruises on the same page.

I would need to be a very confused person to be interested in both… also it is my “clean” device which gets connected to work networks so I have neither been cruising for brides or cruises…

Yup. That’s as expected.

The ‘theory’ is that the vast ad network industry will now be faced with a huge amount of inventory to be delivered to users who choose not to be tracked or targeted by opting out. They will instead target the website that the user is visiting, in this case a mountain bike site. And so opted out users should see more generic mountain bike ads.

such is the theory..

But of course the reality is that insted they just flood the ad ecosystem with cheap shitty ads hoping for enough ‘hits’ to get a return for the client.

Personally? I’d choose targeted ads all the way based on my browsing history.

Hopefully the whole shitty programmatic ecosystem will adapt itself and the so called vendors will start targeting site demographics insted of carpet bombing the world with dating ads.

We have dating sites as a category blocked BTW. But that only works when the ad vendors put their dating ads i that category. If they ‘forget’ then they get through and I have to grab the url and email it to our contact at StreamAMP who then manually blocks that url. It’s tedious.

Now if everyone would just subscribe I can turn the bloody things off!

£1.66 doesn’t even get you an innertube

I run tubeless.

Now if everyone would just subscribe I can turn the bloody things off!

Meh. I’m still huffing from the article where you said the forum was profitable, run by about three people and all you really wanted to do was get flown nice places for free to ride bikes.

all you really wanted to do was get flown nice places for free to ride bikes

Well it’s better to say the truth. Who on here would not want that?

 the RHS banner ads are for single muslim single Asians and the lay matures

The Royal Horticultural Society have certainly changed their focus. I guess this is what you call “mission creep”

Well it’s better to say the truth. Who on here would not want that?

indeed, but being made to feel like a special snowflake instead of a cash cow by those who want our money might be a more useful marketing approach. But hey, WTF do I know?

I’d post a screen shot but, you know, posting pics on STW and all that…

Is easy if you don’t use an iPad?

What’s the saying? Keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result?

I’ll try asking again.

Mark.

How many subsriptions will it take to turn off the spammy, low end advertising?

The fact that that threads about advertising reappear on a regular basis does show that a number of regular users are pissed off enough to post about it. What happens to all of the casual visitors who are not prepared to stick around, wade through consent pop ups, be hijacked by rouge full page ads for completely unrelated products? Do they disappear never to return.

The repeated answer is to is to complain loudly that the ads are necessary to keep the site and business afloat regardless of the damage being done to the STW brand by the crap advertising.

A lot more than the 6000+ we currently have.

I’ve said this before. About 10k would be nice. That would simply replace the lost ad revenue from programatic ads.

It’s really simple. I turn the programmatic ads off and we last about a week before I lay off about 8 people. I don’t want to give you the impression that I don’t care but ultimately someone has to pay for what we do and if it’s not directly paid for by users then there will have to be other revenue streams in play. Currently we run about 65% advertising to 35% reader generated revenues. I’ve been trying to reverse that ratio for more than a decade. Now, it’s easy enough to do if I just shut down the advertising revenue stream until it reaches 35% of total but to do that right now will cost the jobs of over half of the people who work here. So, I’m going to keep on trying to make our subscriptions more attractive so we can pursuade more of you to sign up, because that is in my control. Making the world’s advertising market work to everyone’s satisfaction is not something I can control and turning them off is not something I’m prepared to do because it will cost the jobs of people I care about.

£1.99/month or £20/year or £39 including 6 print issues of the mag posted. All those options make the ads dissapear. Ultimately the ad problem will be solved by the exchange of value. If what we do is not worth £1.99 to you for a month then that is totally fine, the ads you see will provide some of the exchange of value needed to keep us in business.

I’ve said this before too, but the value of a visit by an individual who does not subscribe, who views an average of 4 pages/day for say 3 days a week is somewhere in the region of £1.20/year to us or about £0.003 per day. A subscriber is worth about 20x that, and that’s how we can afford to shut off the ads for subscribers.

About 30% of the ads are removed if you just register and that’s free.

But ultimately, I’m beyond spending my time making the site work to the satisfaction of people that don’t contribute their own cash to what we do, but not out of any sense of lack of respect for those that choose not to pay but simply because I owe a lot more to those who do and so that’s where I’m spending most of my time and where I’m directing most of the energy of the people who work here.

indeed, but being made to feel like a special snowflake instead of a cash cow by those who want our money might be a more useful marketing approach.

I have been been coming to the site since the old red site when I was at uni so 2001ish and I think the mag was quarterly (but could have been bi monthly). The internet was properly crap then and almost everything now is better but seems to cost a bomb.

none of us are special snowflakes and companies treating me as such reminds me of car salesmen.

the ads are mostly alright here and at least there is some honesty about them. It’s overall less intrusive than my Facebook or Twitter feeds.

Bit of a curve ball question for you Mark, and one I appreciate will be difficult to answer for many reasons.

If a full digital and print subscriber was say happy to pay the £39 and not really bother about the printed mag – would it be a help or a hinderance to other revenue streams the mag itself generates? (Not to mention staff it keeps busy)

I am an old git so like reading printed magazines on the loo, but I will admit it is getting less and less of a draw as the way the site is presented allows me to read them on the ipad without having a magazine to dispose of a few weeks later.

I’d happily pay the £39  and not get a magazine if it helped keep the company going and made life a little better for you and your team.

In fact, as mtb and all things bikes is my main passion in life, I’d gladly pay a fair bit more and not worry about the printed mag.

Clearly my £50 a year will make no difference at all, but if enough of us felt the same (and commited to it, which is another problem), could it be made to work in your favour all in?

I don’t think it’s the price per say for many.

its the piss poor implementation of everything, the manner in which things have gone about, etc that have seen many walk/cancel.

Certainly is for me and several I know.

its been blatantly obvious to the layperson let alone the number of devs on here just how badly things were done and continue to be.

someone said a while back that it’s a surprisingly small number of extra “p”’s that’s required to switch off the ads.

4k of them isn’t a small number. Another 40% needs to see a serious increase in usability, features and more to pull that number in.

This place still is nowhere near now 5yrs after I joined than multiple sites/forum were then….

Make it actually worth paying the subscription Mark and you’ll find no one arguing about it.

But ultimately, I’m beyond spending my time making the site work to the satisfaction of people that don’t contribute their own cash to what we do,

thats fair enough, but that group also includes people who used to contribute their own cash but stopped doing so because of the way things have been managed on here over the last months.  Maybe the number of lost customers/subscribers is insignificant, but if not I would have thought understanding why you lost that revenue might be useful to your future approach

As above, I would support the site happily IF it worked wherever I was. As it is I can only browse at work because the Accept button has been disabled, before it would blank out the entire page and make the site unusable. One day the site was fine, the next it was unusable.

Yes, I reported it. I had nothing in the way of an answer so I never bothered using the site since my phone is incapable of interacting with it and I get little actual computer time at home.

How many other folk do you think that has happened to that never even bothered returning?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, your software is garbage, either by default or because of the way it’s been implemented. Plenty of other forums using VBulletin, Xenforo and the like have had NONE of the issues you have, have more features (yes they can be turned off so you don’t have to see them!) and seem to survive on donations and a lone admin, never mind an entire staff, ads and paid subscribers!

Oh, and FWIW, road.cc uses Drupal, not WordPress so I doubt they are using the same plugins.

 Plenty of other forums using VBulletin, Xenforo and the like have had NONE of the issues you have, have more features (yes they can be turned off so you don’t have to see them!) and seem to survive on donations and a lone admin, never mind an entire staff, ads and paid subscribers!

You’re mistaking a forum with a magazine publisher. This forum could be made profitable at a lot less than £20 per person per year. That cost only exists because it’s supporting/subsidising a loss-making magazine. Mark has previously made clear that he’s not interested in only running a forum.

And without the forum the website has no anchor. Let’s be honest here, STW is just about the only UK mtb forum left and it’s still managing to lose people. If the forum was run well more people would stick about and more people would support it.

I’m well aware the forum is an aside but the issues I describe apply to the website as well – I should have made that clear.

For £1.99 a month I’d happily sub but only if the software didn’t make me want to throw whatever device I’m using out a window.

I’m done arguing. I’ve been more than honest about everything we do. I won’t be contributing to this topic anymore. If this website is worth £1.99 then you’ll pay it. If it’s not then don’t.