ASA gave Singletrack a telling off today

Nuff said, move on.

Popped in to Bespoke this evening, interesting and good to meet STW Hannah and husband.

I’m struggling to see what the problem is. Perhaps I’m easily pleased.

Perhaps I’m easily pleased.

Makes at least two of us.

I have a question.  WTF is a “display ad”?  As opposed to what, all the non-display ads which beam advertising directly into your cortex via a subliminal carrier wave?

More seriously: I understand the gripe and gods know I’ve fielded this question multiple times, it’s probably a good thing that the T&Cs have been shored up.  But I find it deeply weird that what Mark is calling ‘content’ is objectionable.  I would bet good money that almost everyone reading would agree that the BBC “doesn’t have adverts,” it’s effectively its USP.  Except, it does, you get trailers for Eastenders ahead of being subjected to The One Show.

Under “My Account” and “Preferences”

What the Preferences that randomly adjust themselves at least once a month? :D

Feels like slight air of “Snitches get stitches” to this thread now from the true believers (wasn’t me before I get an internet beating).

But basically someone complained about something to an industry regulator, and the complaint was upheld, suggesting the complaint was legitimate(?)… And?

Why has this thread even made it to a second page?

Thanks for adding the clarification Mark , I didn’t really notice the classifieds TBH, they’re just another ‘feature’ I don’t really care about, but clearly it bothered someone…

More seriously: I understand the gripe and gods know I’ve fielded this question multiple times, it’s probably a good thing that the T&Cs have been shored up.  But I find it deeply weird that what Mark is calling ‘content’ is objectionable.  I would bet good money that almost everyone reading would agree that the BBC “doesn’t have adverts,” it’s effectively its USP.  Except, it does, you get trailers for Eastenders ahead of being subjected to The One Show.

*sigh*. Exactly what I’m thinking. There’s a permanent, fixed banner ‘advertising’ something pertaining to the magazine, and somehow that’s ‘objectionable’ content? But if you buy a dead tree copy of the magazine, and see exactly the same thing, that’s acceptable?
How does that work, exactly?
There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding about commercial advertising by companies who are selling a product via a website or magazine, and advertising by said website or magazine promoting their product to readers and/or members of the community who read content of the magazine and/or website.

I pay to use the forum, because I haven’t bought the magazine in donks, my chosen browsers don’t allow cookies or advertisements, and I wish fervently to keep the magazine and the website functioning, because it gives me a huge amount of pleasure as a reader and contributor.

And honestly, I can’t see what the phǔq most people are whining about, because I literally cannot see any problems with the website at all! Genuinely, people are moaning about things that I just don’t see. I’m not doing anything exotic, at the moment I’m using Safari with DuckDuckGo on a six year old 10.5” iPad Pro, and it’s rare I have any issues. 🤷🏼

I would bet good money that almost everyone reading would agree that the BBC “doesn’t have adverts,”

I, and a few others, have previously pointed out this discrepancy, so almost is about right.

WTF is a “display ad”?

Quite. And how many can you fit on the head of a pin?

**** me people can moan. If you don’t like the site, other sites are available, foxtrot oscar.

Going to the ASA?! I have nothing but contempt for anyone who would do such a thing, this isn’t a big commercial website looking to rip you off, it’s a side hustle of a mountainbike magazine that is just about getting by and the adds are what keeps the lights on.

I’ve seen lots of posts about the site being “unusable because . . . .  something”.  Never do these people think, “there’s lots of other users who have no issues, maybe it’s me?”

I despair.

As a way of handling a complaint upheld by the ASA this has a whiff of the Sick! Bicycle playbook. Act all butt hurt and drum up a gang of sycophants to bemoan anyone with the audacity to raise an issue.  Who knows, maybe someone was genuinely caught out by the sales pitch and felt it should be corrected or maybe they were just stirring up shit. Either way there was a genuine issue to be addressed.

Admin, if you don’t like my opinion just delete this post and spare me the whingey email. TIA

the BBC “doesn’t have adverts,” it’s effectively its USP. Except, it does, you get trailers for Eastenders

My grandad used to rant and rave about this in the 1980s. One of his (very) many pet peeves was turning the TV on for Antiques Roadshow about 20 seconds too early, and seeing a damn advert for some damn show or other

As far as I am aware I haven’t bemoaned any response. I’ve genuinely responded honestly and openly and I’d made all the necessary changes BEFORE I started this thread. I wasn’t required to start this thread by the ASA. I thought I’d be open about it and offer explanations to any questions. It does seem that you really don’t like us Rubber. I sometimes wonder why you put up with us. But you are entitled to your opinion and not just because you are a life subscriber and I’ve rarely ever removed comments because they are negative about Singletrack. You clearly get something out of being part of this community despite us who run it and that’s fine by me. I hope we’ll change you mind with improvements in the future.

Is it possible to provide an actual “ad-free” version of the site at a separate tier or price point? So no ads or banners of any description, no affiliate links, no marketing or promotion, no tracking cookies or JavaScript?

I love the forum and would happily pay extra for this option. The slow performance is down to third party content, so ditching that means you still get paid but I get a much better experience on the site.

Is there a ‘strength of feeling’ or are there just a group of folks who’ll never miss the opportunity to complain?

There are people who are never happy unless they are complaining about something in this country. Even when they haven’t even paid to use it.

As a way of handling a complaint upheld by the ASA this has a whiff of the Sick! Bicycle playbook. Act all butt hurt and drum up a gang of sycophants to bemoan anyone with the audacity to raise an issue.

I don’t think that’s true, Marks post was just raising the topic for the attention of all. Some of the responses have been a bit much maybe e.g.

Whoever took the time to do that is a **** of absolutely epic proportions.

@Flaperon

Doing that with the site would be ‘problematic’. As we are all aware, there are countless ways that any user can access a website from a multitude of devices to operating system variations and versions – browsers, device cookie/privacy settings etc. Offering a product like that at a higher price would really need us to make it watertight in terms of ensuring that whatever device you choose to use you get that full, ad free and guaranteed service level. At the moment that’s just not possible with a website and I’m not going to offer up a website product I can’t be confident we can deliver.

However, it is possible with an app.

And we actually have one in development, although I’ll be clear, at the moment it’s on hold while we get the site migrated to our new server. It’s also expensive to develop and that too is holding things up. But, I hope in the future we will have a Members app that will perform exactly as you want it to and it won’t be a chargeable extra. It will be for all paying members.

Patience and money is required on that.

As a way of handling a complaint upheld by the ASA this has a whiff of the Sick! Bicycle playbook. Act all butt hurt and drum up a gang of sycophants to bemoan anyone with the audacity to raise an issue.

Seriously? In the predictable comments from the peanut gallery perhaps, but there is zero reason that this thread HAD to be created at all, Mark could easily just have dealt with the complaint and kicked it back under the carpet. We’ve been squealing about transparency for at least a decade, we should be applauding this openness.

I’ve rarely ever removed comments because they are negative about Singletrack.

You’ve rarely removed comments at all. That in itself should speak volumes, it’s why I bristle when folk post stuff like “oh but I can’t say this because I’ll be banned” or “I had my posts deleted for [some melodramatic/whimsical reason].” Cobblers. Bitch all you like, but keep it honest.

O/T, McDonald’s adverts and in store boards etc show their McCafe drinks filled close to the top – and they are never anywhere near, comically so in some places. They even have a line in the inside of the cup that’s an inch down (although it doesn’t say ‘fill line’)

Anyone know if that is an ASA thing?

Edit: A little bit sad, but I do spend a lot on their coffees and it bugs me!

‘pay money and we’ll stop annoying up you’ doesn’t work on me as a business proposition unfortunately

An NHS falling to bits.

1 in 10 councils facing bankruptcy

People pulling teeth out with plyers as can’t get a dentist.

Child poverty.

Food banks.

The Post office scandal.

If the ASA upheld a complaint, fair enough but is a banner advert or whatever really the existential crisis facing people in their lives? All that said, that’s not why I’m posting this, it’s really not.

@cookeaa
Feels like slight air of “Snitches get stitches” to this thread now from the true believers (wasn’t me before I get an internet beating).

I’m only quoting you for a positive reason mate, you are most definitely one of the many, many posters whose opinions I respect on here and I genuinely wouldn’t want you or any other poster to think I’m taking issue with them. The opposite in fact.

I do get a bit evangelical in regard to  the forum, its members, mag and the people behind it all. Not so much on here actually but in real life. Example; when I sometimes need to answer a question on something for my lad I’ll say, “let me see if they know on ‘my forum’ and I’ll let you know.” He knows exactly the forum I mean. He also knows you lot will usually come up with an answer too… even if it’s to a different question. 😉

I’m definitely guilty of being defensive of STW. The problem I have is that it’s hard for me not to be. The coffee mug I got as part of the “care package” sent to me when I had that bit of bad news a couple of years back is genuinely treasured here. To me it doesn’t just represent the kindness of  the STW staffers but of all you beautiful sods on here, one and all.

Just an example @cookeaa, you replied to a comment I made on here once some time back. I won’t embarrass either of us by saying what it was about. Hell, you probably just thought it a totally disposable reply you made, no big deal at all. It wasn’t anything to do with my little hospital visit or anything, you probably didn’t even think I read it. I did though. You have no idea on that day when I read it the effect it had. It helped turn around an epically bad day, bad month in fact. I never replied to your comment and I should have but I genuinely couldn’t think up a reply remotely good enough to express my thanks.

That’s the magic of this forum, “it” is a friend, an entertainer and even a shoulder to cry on occasionally. It’s even the friend that tells you something you don’t want to hear but need to.

Anyway…You lot have a good day today, whatever you are upto and sorry for the rambling post!

I haven’t bemoaned any response

I didn’t say you had

It does seem that you really don’t like us Rubber

I do like you and I enjoy the site I’m just sometimes disappointed by your attitude

FWIW none of the current ads bother me and I’ve not read the page in question. The only slight irritation I have is the autoplay videos that can’t quite be controlled but I’m not overly bothered by that either

I do like you and I enjoy the site I’m just sometimes disappointed by your attitude

+1

I find the attitude just bizarre, like this thread in which you were caught bang to rights for false advertising. It’s as if normal rules for providing a paid for service don’t apply to STW….

As an Extreme Centrist™, I think Mark’s OP was reasonable, the complaint was reasonable, the ASA response was reasonable (although I didn’t understand the middle bit), and the comments to which Rubber referred were ungracious and totally predictable. I’m sympathetic to Mark and the rest at STW Towers and can see how this might seem like a time-wasting action – but the fix doesn’t seem to have been very onerous and it’s fair enough that offers should mean what they say imvho.

And on that note I’m about to finally sign up for a paid membership if I can remember my password…

I’m always baffled by these threads. I really don’t understand the sheer nastiness of some of it. I’ve met the folk at Singletrack Towers, they are just nice people trying to make a living doing something they love. They really aren’t trying to ruin your life by building a website that annoys you. I’ve been here since the GoFar days and I’ve never really had any problems with the site that I thought were worth making a fuss about. I’ve paid, so I don’t get ads. I’ve set my preferences so I don’t get the videos. Sometimes a post can be slow to load – nobody dies. I guess this makes me one of Rubber’s “gang of sycophants”, but I’d prefer to think of myself as ‘reasonable’.

 I think Mark’s OP was reasonable, the complaint was reasonable, the ASA response was reasonable.

The spectrum of responses to this probably reflects how much people believe the complainant was acting in good faith with a genuine concern about this pressing problem, rather than just having a petty motivation to punish the STW team and waste their time, possibly because of some other grudge. I guess we’re not going to find out.

I do get a bit evangelical in regard to the forum, its members, mag and the people behind it all. Not so much on here actually but in real life. Example; when I sometimes need to answer a question on something for my lad I’ll say, “let me see if they know on ‘my forum’ and I’ll let you know.” He knows exactly the forum I mean. He also knows you lot will usually come up with an answer too… even if it’s to a different question. 😉

I’ve butted horns with Mark on several occasions, but you’re bang on the money here. It would be remiss of me not to speak my mind – it’s one of the reasons why I accepted the Mod request in the first place, I wanted to make a difference – but largely it was because in a few short months I came to recognise the value of this little community and felt passionate enough about it to want to pay it back

I’m sure there are those who think I’m a STW corporate shill always diving in to make excuses but the truth of it is, I’m fiercely loyal to everyone here. It’s why I’m aggressively defensive when baseless accusations get hurled around, it’s because it’s like they’re slagging off my extended family.  If people are talking bollocks then I will call them out on it whether they’re “free members” or the site owners.  That approach doesn’t always win me friends but, eh, well, stop talking bollocks then. 😁

Like Poopy, I have a similar experience IRL. I say “shall I ask the forum?” and no-one ever replies “what forum?”

Blimey Poopscoop! I’m tearing up now.

I make a point of being objectionable and dickish on the internet, I’m not entirely sure how to take someone viewing my posts positively.

You have a good rest of your weekend buddy. Same to the rest of you… Even the grass 😁

Maybe e it stems from that when the “ad-free” feature was introduced (in response to years of complaints about the site being unusable without an ad blocker, and using huge amounts computing power.

The sponsor banner were a subsequent introduction, hence people’s disgruntlement?

And while appreciate that STW won’t monitor every post on the forum, to not manage to monitor key threads that provide direct, unfiltered feedback on issues with the website or changes made to it seems short sighted.  Mark is on this thread, spit clearly happens and to deny knowledge that this has been an issue aired multiple times feels disingenuous and potentially could damage the stw brand.

I’ve been here for 20+ years, and I’m not going anywhere, and personally I’ve never had an issue with the operation of the website on any platform, so maybe I’ve been lucky.

The pop up videos were the most annoying feature ever.  Would be great if a link to the appropriate profile page to turn them off was in/under each pop up. My site usage definitely decreased until I stumbled on a thread of how to do that, so that’s a loss of clicks/eyeballs right there…

I quite like the fact that ASA have responded and given advice on how to fix.

It’s good Mark has taken it on the chin and admits he was annoyed it hadn’t been sorted before.

It’s kinda how the system should work, no?

For balance, I also thought there was a tiny whiff of using the thread to ‘out a grass’ within explaining the situation

And there seems to be a contradiction between the boss and a Mod about how many times this has been mentioned😁

Overall a good thread for everyone.

While it’s not something I’ve experienced (naturally as a free member), it seems reasonable to me. I’ve seen threads by full members complaining about this and the response has been “those ads aren’t ads”. To me they look like ads, and if I hadn’t seen all those threads and had paid I’d be annoyed.

I think you’ll need to clarify what on earth a display and is in the conditions though – that means nothing to a normal human being.

I started writing an explanation yesterday of what on the publishing side of things is considered a ‘display ad’ but in the end, typically for me, I went way over the character limit for the post. I did save the whole thing tho so in light of @munrobiker’s post here it is spread over multiple posts..
—-

Good point about these terms like ‘Display Ads’, ‘pop-ups’, ‘interstitials’,’Vignettes’ and countless others.. These are all display ads and terms used all the time in the advertising space – but how the heck are end users supposed to know this stuff so as to be in a position to know what is what and what you get and don’t get? I know what they all are and more because it’s my job to. But you guys shouldn’t be expected to know any of that.
So. Display ads are the ads that are pumped in automatically by outside networks. These ads we have little control over. We can control where they appear but we can’t decide what appears – to a large extent. We can’t control the price paid for these ads – that’s all done via a VERY complicated ad market that is frankly massively complicated and vast. Times of day, days of the week, months of the year, political issues, economics of the day and the moment all come together to influence how much we eventually get paid for an ad from this so called ‘programmatic’ ad system.

Others things we can control..

We can add ads that we sell directly ourselves (usually by doing deals directly with bike brands) into this system and we can set a price for these ads and a priority. This means that the first few impressions of ads you see when you first start browsing our site should be for these ads as the price they pay is higher than the programmatic prices. These ads we call ‘Direct Sold’ ads and they are usually ‘capped’. Capped means they are set to only display to you a certain number of times per day. A typical cap would be 4 impressions in 24 hours. This is a typical optimal setting worked out over years of advertising data. In very general terms, the chances of any particular ad getting a click from a user drops off dramatically after it has been seen 4 times. ergo 4 impressions in 24 hours in order to reduce wasted impressions.

Most of our direct sold ads are sold on a price per thousand impression rate with a fixed budget for a period of time. This means the system will deliver the impressions evenly over that period of time and ensure that no one sees the ad more than 4 times in a 24 hour period – if those are the cap settings set. Sometimes we’ll have a takeover campaign with no caps – so for example the OneUp hubs site skin takeover that many of you may have seen over the last week. These are what we call confusingly ‘sponsored’ campaigns. Not to be confused with actual sponsored site positions and articles. These ‘sponsored ad’ campaigns simply mean we set the cap to unlimited for a short period of time – usually no more than a couple of days. These campaigns are not really designed to get lots of clicks – rather it’s brand awareness. The idea is to get the brand name or product into your heads consciously or unconsciously..

1/3

…

There’s a character limit?!? :)

There is.. Hang on I’m just preparing part 2..

Because all these display ads are delivered through an ad system – we use one called Ezoic – all these ads involve some level of 3rd party tracking. Tracking can mean a lot of things from just counting how many times they get clicked and displayed (clicks & impressions) to targeting who sees them via the system reading a tracking cookie that already exists on your device that is often updated with information about your previous browsing history. 

You ca  stop this level of tracking by either blocking 3rd party cookies on your device entirely or by setting the individual controls in the cookie/permissions popup – If you’ve already clicked on on that you won’t get it for up to a year, however you can trigger it by clicking the little cog icon that sticks to the bottom right of your screen.

But it’s important to understand the limitations of these controls. You can still receive targeted ads even if you block cookies. Ads can appear based on your IP address for example. Your IP address will give ad networks some information about you – for example IP addresses often designate your approximate GEO location. This is why you tend to get ads for UK products when you are in the UK and not US specific ads. These ads are simply looking at your IP address and comparing it to a table that shows where that particular IP address is based. The location accuracy of this is pretty broad – in other words not very accurate. It can go down to a regional level generally so they can work out if your device is in west yorkshire. Sometimes they can work out which town you are in but that’s about as deep as it goes.

You can get round even this level of targeting by using a VPN service that essentially offers up to the world a different access point to the internet for you. a good VPN is useful in lots of other ways too, like allowing you to access UK Netflix when you are on holiday. They are great for privacy. With cookies turned off and a VPN I’m not sure what the ads on our site would look like. If anyone wants to share a screenshot if that’s what you are using that would be fun.

Lets’ talk about Display ad sizes and terminology.

We have the ubiquitous MPU (Multi Position Unit). This is the square ish ads you see a lot on mobile. They are 300×250 pixels in size.

Leaderboard – 728×90 pixels (In the forum on desktop is common for these)

Half Page (HPU) 300×600 – Get these in the RH column on desktop

Billboard – 970×250 – Big bugger you see a lot at the top of pages.

Wide leaderboard – 970×90 – Like a wider leaderboard

Mobile units come in 300×50, 320×50, 300×90, 320×90 sizes.

Then there Vignette ads.

These are the ones that look a bit like a popup and set an ad right in the middle of your screen when you land on a page for the fist time – the background of the page will be blurry. They have various ways to close/dismiss them that are not under our control.

Pop ups – after a certain length of time on a page or after a certain level of scrolling these will pop-up or slide in to cover part of the screen. Again, these will have some way to dismiss them. Once dismissed they should not appear again on that page. You may move on to another page and they could appear again or come back to the page after a set time and they may reappear. They are the most annoying types but they are popular with ad networks because despite this, they are proven to actually work well. An ad working well is not measured in simple clicks (It’s common to suggest that they only work because of mistaken clicks but networks can tell when this happens as the next page will be cancelled very quickly). Their effectiveness is measured by how the user then engages with the next page. Pop-ups, unfortunately, result in higher engagement and sales at the landing page. I know! They are really annoying for the rest of us but they result in good results/sales for the advertiser – weird! It’s because they literally can’t be ignored – you have to do something to move on as a user when they appear and even if you dismiss them, that act means you have seen the ad/product/brand and that has a net positive effect for the advertiser – again.. weird.

There are sticky ads and floating ads too. Sticky ads are the ones that stick to the top or bottom of the screen even when you scroll. Floating ads are often used for the floating video unit that appears at the bottom of a screen and stays in place while you scroll. We use this for our own video content player although there are no ads in our videos shown if you are paying member – and our paying members can disable this video floating player in their account settings.
Site skins are as I’ve mentioned already. they sit in the background of the page.

Sponsored ads are not included in the ad free part of membership. They are not delivered by our ad system so there’s no 3rd party tracking. They are essentially just static images that we add to the page directly. We count their impressions and how many times they get clicked in exactly the same way we count how many times any part of our website is clicked or viewed. This information is called 1st party data (3rd party data is data that is shared with or collected by other companies). Only we see this data but we will share the actual totals with the sponsor – just numbers. There’s no personal information included about any user – just a big number that shows how many times their sponsor logo/ad/image was viewed for clicked.
Other 1st party ads are those we use to promote our own stuff ie. subscriptions and our own merch. A parallel has been noted by someone that these are like the trailers for shows you get on the BBC. Like sponsored links/logos/images these are put on the page directly by us and we don’t use our ad system so there’s no personal information passed on to anyone else.

Phew! That was a lot longer than I planned. But fire any questions at me about the specifics if you like. Or email directly.
 

having read that all again I guess a way to define our Ad Free offering is ‘No 3rd party delivered display ads’. But again, that means nothing to most people I bet. Like, what is a 2nd party ad if we have 1st party and 3rd party stuff? Even I would have to look that up :-)

Just say “fewer ads” then 🤷‍♂️

Hope you’ve had a nice weekend @Mark :D

What does fewer ads mean? 1 less? Maybe the sticky ad doesn’t show? If the issue we had to begin with was that ‘ad free’ is vague depending on the definition of ‘ad’ then ‘fewer ads’ doesn’t solve that really. It’s a pretty dramatic effect when you become a full member. ‘Fewer ads’ doesn’t really sell it from a marketing pov. And we DO have to market ourselves.

Wonder if the same person dobbed on Spotify for being ad-free when I most certainly hear ads in podcasts.

Or are they clever in saying it’s “ad-free music streaming”?

Why are we attacking the person that reported it?

There have been multiple complaints before now.

Nobody seems to have paid any attention.

The complainant escalated it via proper channels.

The complaint was upheld.

STW acted on the judgement.

All is right in the world.

Whataboutery doesn’t come into it. You can’t pick and choose where regulations apply just because they’re “good guys”.

I’m always baffled by these threads. I really don’t understand the sheer nastiness of some of it.

Me neither. People need to get some perspective, nobody lost a bollock.