Now I can't use this site on the PC because of the ads!

On a PC using Firefox and the stuff all moves around for a while and then the forum shifts left and the STW ad appears over the top.

Any ideas how to stop it without paying?

I get that with chrome as well

I get that with chrome as well

+1, refresh and it loads proper after a go or two.

Its doing it for me too. minimise the window a little and its fine

It’s a rogue ad from a network screwing with the site CSS and stuff. We are trying to track it down now.

Thanks Mark – thought the site was picking on me because I said it is unusable on iPads.

Glad you are on top of this one.

Do ads just get randomly served via a 3rd party or do you vet them all first?

And again. How long before delete?

If you still do not know how to use Firefox you are sssooooo yesterday … 😆

Same as WCA here. Thanks for dealing it, Mark.

And it’s gone! 🙂

oooff.

Ads are a combination of what we call ‘Directs’ and ‘Network’. The Directs are ads that we get to vet because they have been booked with us directly by the advertiser. These tend to be mainly from the bike industry as it’s easier for us to have a working relationship with them since we know most of the industry by name.

Network ads come from a variety of sources and we don’t know what will appear on the page until it’s appeared. We have certain controls over the content of the ads via what is known as a block list. Our block list contains stuff like, Gambling, dating, sexual health, drugs, adult etc. So these sorts of campaigns shouldn’t appear.
At the top of the page for me right now is a Volvo ad. Volvo didn’t put it there. They paid an agency to distribute it across the internet to a certain demographic. Our website demographic and traffic figures are listed in a network database that these agencies can access. The last stage in the long chain of Network connections for that Volvo ad was Google’s ad display arm called Adsense.
There are other suppliers like Adsense that we use. For example Criteo. If you have been browsing the web looking at stuff on retail websites and then noticed the exact products you were just looking at displayed in the ads on here then those ads will have probably come from Criteo. These ads are called retargeted ads. That’s one level of targeting but others ads are targeted to the general demographic of the website rather than to individuals (retargeting). Other ads are just very random and the agency responsible for placing it down the line will have just bought cheap inventory that isn’t targeted in any way.
Ads on our site are prioritised by us so that the highest paying ads are displayed to you first. Only after a few page impressions into your session should you see an increase in the cheaper, not very targeted ads.
What this means for us is that you are most valuable to us for the first 4 pages you look at. After that the ads that are displayed around the content you view start to pay less and less.
For example, the Epic TV player pays very well but only for the first page you look at. As a test, open an icognito window (if you know about such things) and open a page on the site – You shoudl see the Epic TV ad. Now refresh the page and it will disappear and you should not see it again until 24 hours later.

Most high value campaigns are capped at 4 impressions in 24 hours. The theory being (backed up by lots of data) is that after the 4 time of seeing an ad the chances of you clicking it drop off a cliff, so further impressions tend to be a waste of time.

Hi Mark – I know you have been getting a bit of a kicking over the ads recently but I for one do appreciate you taking the time to explain this to us.
Thanks

Can I just add, that even though coming back to “forum leech” status from a premier trial, the adverts are hardly earth shattering annoying. Yes like the OP, the occasional miscreant ad gets in for a couple of hours but even the tablet specific lloyds/that watch one only tend to pop up when I change forums, not the end of the world.. and as for the 2 free review things, many thanks, couldn’t post that on the “news” pages as I’m not a premier member!

Our website demographic and traffic figures are listed in a network database that these agencies can access

How do you (or anyone else) know what your demographic profile is?

(not being accusatory or belligerent – just honestly curious)

I cant stand the Lloyds Private Banking one jamming the whole page of my tablet. rubbish 🙁

How do you (or anyone else) know what your demographic profile is?

user profiling via cookies, loads of sites do this as a service eg

https://www.quantcast.com/

They are on lots of sites and build up a profile (of you) by which sites you visit. They can then average these and create a profile for the average visitor to any site…

Not sure who STW use….

EDIT: Ghostery tells me it is AddThis, Google Analytics and OpenX.

I know you said this…

Any ideas how to stop it without paying?

… but just have a P. It’s less than 15 quid for the year, for how much time you spend here it’s probably a bargain.

Oh the problems of the common peasantry.

Come on WCA. Stop buying bloody cars at get yourself a nice shiny ‘P’. Elevate yourself above the plebs 😀

you are most valuable to us for the first 4 pages you look at

That’ll be the pages I see before I log myself back in again 🙂

Oh the problems of the common peasantry.

Peasantry? He’s got a bloody hot tub and sauna in his shed!

I don’t mind talking about how it works. It’s actually fascinating really and unimaginably complicated when you get into it. In terms of demographics of the site, we don’t actively feedback anything – it’s all gathered by the internet giants as you browse around. Google gives us a daily breakdown of the gender of visitors – if you think about how they know that kind of stuff it starts to get a bit tin foil hatty.

🙂

Wasnt it boots that were able to work out when female customers were pregnant before the customer did! from changes in their shopping patterns?

It says here that you are wearing your favourite lucky pants today Stoner

🙂

I did some work for a global advertising company that basically sold the space people placed their adverts on : eg Billboards, radio, TV etc

They were working on the EYE To BUY process trying to track the punters from when they saw a poster to when it was repeated on TV or radio to when they clicked on the website etc

As Mark says, quite scary thinking about how they track your movements relative advert locations, link it to browser habits and scan postings to trace your TV and Radio preferences…

Mark – Resident Grumpy

Most high value campaigns are capped at 4 impressions in 24 hours. The theory being (backed up by lots of data) is that after the 4 time of seeing an ad the chances of you clicking it drop off a cliff, so further impressions tend to be a waste of time.

I see. Good to know.

Can I put in an add just to annoy STW folks? I mean bombard them with my as many smiley as possible with loud noise? i.e. seriously overdoing it to the point that when they sleep they see my “ad”.

Ya, that will learn them to bow down to me.

😆

we don’t actively feedback anything

No, but you allow the profiling companies to run Apps on your site and hence gather info via tracking cookies on your readers…

Not that I have a problem with that.

Despite repeatedly searching for vibrating butt plugs on Google, I still can’t get any ad’s from IndustrialGradeDildosRus.com to appear on any STW pages. Google aint that clever!

Mark, that’s a brilliant post! Thank you for taking the time to explain it, I now have a vague understanding of how the whole system works, I had absolutely no chuffing idea at all before.
Appreciate it very much. 😀

Most high value campaigns are capped at 4 impressions in 24 hours. The theory being (backed up by lots of data) is that after the 4 time of seeing an ad the chances of you clicking it drop off a cliff, so further impressions tend to be a waste of time.

In the case of the Tudor and Lloyds Banking ads, that is so very, very true!

Despite repeatedly searching for vibrating butt plugs on Google, I still can’t get any ad’s from IndustrialGradeDildosRus.com to appear on any STW pages. Google aint that clever!

Well it is but…

We have certain controls over the content of the ads via what is known as a block list. Our block list contains stuff like, Gambling, dating, sexual health, drugs, adult etc. So these sorts of campaigns shouldn’t appear.

They are not that smart – I keep getting the tripster ad but I’ve already bought one, and I get other ads for stuff I have bought online. It’s taking slace away from ads that might actually sell me something, like for one of those airwheels…

I would just like to say to the lloyds private banking people that have popped up 4 times today that with a combined household income of less than £40k and about, ooooh, £600 in savings and many times more in unsecured debts, i am probably a waste of that ‘high value’ advertising slot!
Watch advert has given up on me, mind.

Shhhhhh. Don’t tell Cougar what’s being discussed. He’s busy having a meltdown over this very subject elsewhere 🙂

Lloyds ad ends tonight.

How about rubber watch man?

That one is got a while to run yet.
I have just tightened up the capping on it though.
It is currently delivering between 1.5 – 2k impressions a day. To add some context it’s now 11:20pm and so far today we’ve delivered just under 900,000 ad impressions.

Lloyds ad ends tonight.

Tonight as in midnight Friday?
Had it twice early Saturday.

They are not that smart – I keep getting the tripster ad but I’ve already bought one, and I get other ads for stuff I have bought online. It’s taking slace away from ads that might actually sell me something, like for one of those airwheels…

You should be glad that while we (advertisers) “follow” you, we don’t always follow you so far as to know that much, certainly I couldnt with the networks on STW and our current setup, its technically possible but the cost of setup outweighs benefits in many cases as the cost is pretty low for those ad types so a bit of waste is not too significant. Admittedly it is a bit of a blunt method but it’s all built into the financial models for such adverts, they pay back even if we keep giving the ads after purchase on occasion.

Tonight as in midnight Friday?
Had it twice early Saturday.

And at 8.30 this morning