that audi nonsance over christmas was bad enough, anyone now getting the private banking add which takes you away from here to their site.
yes this is a free site and stw need to make money but this is not good

You could always subscribe – at a whole £1.49 per month – and resolve the problem yourself.

These threads are really annoying, it’s getting like there is at least one a day….

There is a reason these annoying threads are getting more regular, its the annoying adds.

What annoying ads?

I’m a subscriber, I still see the ads. Don’t particularly bother me, but if the intention is for subscribers not to see them then it’s not working 🙂

click the box in your premier account page john and turn all the ads off.

if the intention is for subscribers not to see them then it’s not working

User error. (-:

It’s a setting in your account profile, you can switch them off.

No premium brand uses or hosts such crude mass marketing.

Do you know, I did look but assumed it would be under “settings” rather than “account”. 🙂

It’s a bit drab without the ads…….

Maybe it’s just a wind up by lloyds private banks. They obviously don’t read the wealth threads on here and match their TMS which is…

To take advantage of our service you will need to have at least £250,000 in savings or investments, or a sole annual income of at least £100,000. Our products and services have individual terms and conditions. Fees and charges will apply.

Where do they expect the STW orderly queue to form?

Ads?

What is this, ten years ago?

See I don’t mind ads as such but ads that pop up grab your screen then when you click on the close clicks you through to another ad elsewhere that you weren’t going to look at? Well, that either makes me head to the lap top (where I run unmentions that’s stops this kind of shit) or stops me visiting on the iPad (where I do most of my surfing as it’s ‘always on’).

I was a subscriber for quite a few years but my sadly lacking interest in riding a non-mechanised bike of late lead me to ditch it. I had a free monthly subscription (and got a nice offer to entice me back) and was thinking, hell, I’ll re subscribe, hell, I might even take the print package again. But this private banking (click)bait and switch makes me think, nah, **** ’em.

Other forums I visit don’t pull that kind of shit and those that do I don’t visit anymore as I just don’t trust them, what else are they doing I wonder?

I’m with metalheart on this. Pick’n’mix kindly gifted me a month’s premium to allow me to switch off all ads, which is fine, but the fact is I really don’t mind the ads that sit around the edge of the page. What really pisses me off are the ads that totally hijack my pad, in such a way that they force me on to another page entirely, and repeatedly do so every time I click on the ‘X’ to clear the ad. The Lloyds one and the Tudor watch one do this, it’s a massive intrusion into my web use, and it’s unacceptable that I should be forced to pay extra just to rid myself of these adverts!
To repeat, I’m NOT BOTHERED by the adverts that appear on the site, I’ve made use of them, and I don’t find them intrusive.
I DO object to grossly intrusive ads that hijack my machine.
This is what STW looks like when the Tudor ad pops up:

[/url]Untitled by CountZero1, on Flickr[/img]

Intrusive ads are self defeating. you will either pay to get rid of them or just get rid of them.. however if they wernt intrusive you wouldnt mind seeing them, some are interesting and useful, i dont mind them as long as they arnt an annoyance. ANY ads thats an annoyance NEVER gets a click, any website.
Its like walking down a high street, ads everywhere but thats ok, shows you whats out there and sometimes brightens up the place.
But if every couple of meters your intercepted buy someone trying to hard sell you a product, your either going to avoid them or take them out!!
I hope this helps.

..which is why Google make their ads blend in, almost looking like content. I think they know what they are doing.

It’s not just here – many places are even worse now. The number of sites that have those side ads that move down the page with you but make the whole browsing experience so slow and juddery is increasing too. Surely advertisers that associate themselves with poor user experience must be doing subconscious damage to the their brand. I just navigate away from sites smothered in obtrusive adverts (or those ones with the advert audio that automatically starts) which surely must be indicitive of a greedy, counterproductive marketing and advertising space selling policy.

Reply to Cougar from here:

And yet, it’s kept your interest for several years. Must be doing something right, hey?

Several years? Nine months, that’s how long ago I gave up on Southern Downhill/RideIO after they started going the same way as Descent-World. FWIW my comment was chiefly coming from a value for money perspective, charging such a premium for something that frankly fell off the ark is just insulting. In comparison I voluntarily pay €1 a month to support a gaming outfit who provide:

A modern website and forum (Xenforo) which is consistently updated
Facilities to upload pics
Teamspeak servers for a multitude of games
Game servers
FTP server
Very little in the way of ads

All for 2700odd active members (regular culls on inactive members are carried out). Finances are so flush we could afford to spunk out over £600 on professional artwork commissions and still remain ridiculously in the black. We don’t have a shop to raise additional funds nor do we raise any other finances. The only additional outlay you have is (presumably) paying someone to occasionally prod the server which, if they were actually adding value to the site, wouldn’t have this discussion as a result.

Please don’t get me wrong and assume this is purely an attack on you or the site, I’m simply explaining why I, and presumably others judging by previous comments don’t feel justified in supporting the site financially (in addition to any magazine subs which are your premium source of income and should be able to pay for this). People have abandoned forums over far less, don’t be so arrogant as to think it couldn’t happen here.

For non-subscribers adverts are unfortunately necessary as they pay for the site. No adverts = no site. However, they shouldn’t be intrusive or cause problems; if they are, that’s unintentional and you need to report them to tech@stw who can investigate (though probably not on a Sunday).

Well, better late than never.

Several years? Nine months

Your account appears to go back five years? Maybe I misread.

charging such a premium for something that frankly fell off the ark is just insulting.

Plenty would seemingly disagree, but I take your point.

TBH, the moderators don’t have visibility of finances / running costs, so I can only repeat what little I know. As far as I know the site is “getting by” rather than Mark and co sitting on their piles of cash like Smaug as some might believe. Site design and content is beyond our control I’m afraid. The best I can do is lurk here and stop you lot from killing each other (-:

Point taken cougs but enough folk have commented and identified the offending adverts (Tudor, LLoyds etc) by now.

To extend your point – no visitors = no adverts = no site, too!

Or less visitors = less ability to raise revenue from advertisers = poorer cash flow = oops!

Your account appears to go back five years? Maybe I misread.

total of 8 posts between 5 and 3 years ago coogles, then nothing until 9months ago – as far as I can see anyway

so yes, you’re quite correct 😉

I don’t know if it’s just my fat fingers but when I went to click the X on the Lloyds bank ad this morning I ended up on the STW subscriptions page….

+1 to Tudor watches one. The X is outside the viewing window- have to close and relaunch (or just close)

Fair enough. I didn’t collate an individual posting profile, just looked at dates.

I don’t know if it’s just my fat fingers but when I went to click the X on the Lloyds bank ad this morning I ended up on the STW subscriptions page….

+100 – where’s jive when you need him 😉 !!!

I just swipe back on the iPad and then click again where I want to go next and the ad disappears, saves trying to click on the x which inevitably means clicking on tha ad
At least with this version of annoying STW ad the page is not jumping up and down like a yo-yo loading different sized ads that meant waiting 2 min for the page to settle down before you could be confident beginning the synaptic sequence of tapping the screen and actually navigating to the post you wanted

That’s true. The jumping page was even worse……lloyds popped up as I typed this, hit the x and got dales trails!!!!

Mark – Resident Grumpy
The ad is vital to us. Sorry. That’s the price of the website you are typing on. That said the ad is deliberately hobbled by us at 1:24. Which means you should see it once in 24 hours. The agency supplying it would live us to relax that cap. They have a large budget they would gladly send our way but we capped it as tightly as we could anyway to minimise the disruption. But fact is. No ads. No site. The choice at our end is easy.

They sent us another campaign yesterday that they wanted to run at the same time as the Tudor watch campaign. I explained we wouldn’t have two at once. We have compromised by setting these campaigns to run in alternative hours of the day. However after I set the ad live I spotted it was auto playing audio. I have paused that campaign now – at cost to us – while I wait for the agency to fix the audio playing issue.

We think carefully about how the ads work and how the affect your visit to our site carefully. We turn away high paying campaigns often if we think they cross a line. But we need the money to exist. £1.49 makes it all go away for a month.
it popped up 3 times last night on the work ipad, i don’t have any objection to the ads, it’s the fact that you can’t get rid of it and it freezes the screen as per countzero pic.

I see the ad every time I visit, probably a dozen times yesterday (was a slow day) And the click to close it registers on whatever ad is underneath so it always opens up something completely different in another tab.

It used to happen with the diver one, but now it’s the green one – I don’t even know what it’s advertising, I try not to pay them much attention.

I have no issues with all the other ads, I totally get why they’re there, it’s just the popup ones that grind my gears.

What do people who’ve just found the site think of the ads. If I was hit with them I’d not come back.

how has this thread run for over 24hrs and others complaing have only lasted hrs before being locked. feel let down by the mods not treating me the same as the rest
5
4
3
2
1
locked

Showerman: I think this is the ‘official’ whinge about pop ups thread…. 😉

Welcome aboard.

how has this thread run for over 24hrs and others complaing have only lasted hrs before being locked. feel let down by the mods not treating me the same as the rest

Why do you need 37 concurrent threads discussing the same issue? Duplicates have been closed, is all.

Dunno about “official” but this (and the other one that’s still running) were the first ones.

How much would users have to pay to get rid of the ads then ?

Well, at least the non biking ones and the ones that annoy people.
Ads could be voted on by users / mods.

Fund it from the users not the advertisers, it would be attractive to a lot of people. Then it becomes more suited to the users not the advertisers. Perhaps that would gain more users and fullfill a better purpose.

Can you let us know if this is a viable option ?
Could you consider it ?
You have a lot of users now which is a good base to fund it from.

Just disable Javascript in Safari, it stops the pop-ups on an iPad

I just use Chrome if JS is needed for other sites.

£1.49 per month?

How much would users have to pay to get rid of the ads then ?

£15/year gets you a Premier Digital account.

Join Us

I like pop ups ads the more the merrier especially those with sudden big loud music or sounds. Scare the shite out of everyone in the office. Ya, I like! 😆

HTH.

Cougar – Moderator

HTH.

Nahh, that’s no fun in a dull office environment as I rather have the sudden loud music once in a while. Kill the boredom really. Cheer me up and hopefully annoy the hell out of everyone else. 😆