Singletrack site issues : redirecting to iOS app store

Just happened again. This time for ‘Papa Pear Saga’.

+1

Happens A LOT. At least 25% of the time I go to STW on my iPhone 5 with latest iOS.

Just happened to me. I didn’t even press on any links.

Just happened to me twice in a row – first time by clicking on my name in top right (took me to a game). Clicked back onto Chrome to come back here and it immediately took me back to the store (William Hill app).

Me too. No links, straight to some crappy game in the App Store. iPhone 5/safari/latest iOS

Just had this again twice in the last hour, both on the site and off the sites’ FB presence.

Based on a bit of digging, it’s a well known and thorny issue – almost 100% with the ad networks. There are suggestions here about blocking categories of ad, like games – makes sense as these are all the redirects I’ve had yet…

Shady App Install Ads Are Automatically Redirecting Mobile Users To App Store, Google Play

I’ve got so many categories blocked already it’s crazy. The problem is that there’s networks feeding ads into other networks who feed ads into other networks that it’s impossible to track anything down. I’m going to start turning networks off one by one over the next few days. Starting with Google. Please keep reporting any of these popups so I know if I’ve found a source or not.

So is it just me or has anyone else been logged out?

Chalk me up as another “victim”; William Hill app is the most frequent destination for me.
(iOS 7 on iPhone)

Me too, it’s been happening for over a week but thought I was pressing an ad by mistake.

I’m browsing on iphone 5 and redirected me to a dragon game.

Annoying!

It has also been happening to my ipad on here and on MTBR forums and that forum is so add heavy it slows to a crawl even on a fast cable broadband

I actually gave up surfing the site yesterday as it was so frequently opening the App Store. iPad running chrome.

2 in the last 30 minutes

1st was the pop up to open App Store, top ad on the right was Goodgame Empire or something
2nd was the force open of the App Store for Mecca Bingo, and it was Mecca bingo at the top ad position in the ads on the right

Yep, same, directed to whatever ‘game’ is current in the top right, fixed by logging in again. Everyone will just have to go premier…

Identifying the ads like that gives me something to hunt. So thanks for the info. All our network ad settings have apps, games, download categories blacklisted.
You guys are in the uk aren’t you?

Yup; in U.K. & via wireless BT router, but not logged in. Had the William Hill app earlier today, and at the top on the RHS of the forum page was an advertisement for said bookmaker.

UIn UK using a HTC get redirected to an Amazon page when I click on a thread. This is the address http://www.amazon.co.uk/b?node=3012216031&tag=singletrackma-21&camp=1698&creative=25778&linkCode=ez&adid=03ZCRJ3CK8TP3HHG4KFA&&ref-refURL=http%3A%2F%2Fsingletrackworld.com%2Fads%2Fiframes%2Fleaderboard.html

Yeah I’m UK

And whilst typing this had the force open on the App Store for Lovoo dating by K2G media, and then the pop up to open App Store too. Lovoo ad appears on the right, though not at top this time, second from bottom

Yup – just had the Lovoo one too

Me too. IOS7 and this is the only site it ever happens on. I’ve just been redirected to a William Hill app in the AppStore 3 times in the last ten minutes.

The obvious answer would be for STW to remove the offending adds or add stream but I guess that wouldn’t please the bean counters :-/

They are already trying to do this but it seems to be difficult to identify and remove only the offending ads, hence the request for more info.

5 minutes ago, redirected to App Store direct from STW in safari on iOS 7.0.4.

Was redirected to Mecca bingo app, Mecca bingo ad was advertising app at top right of sidebar on site at the time.

Here’s where I was: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/cotic-soul-touch-up-paint

Happy to give more info if I can but it’s a bit of a pain getting much out of Safari, unlike my lovely blockered up Firefox on the *nix laptop…

Yes I am trying to do this. It’s a lot more complicated than you may think. If I pull the ads (all of them) we breach many contracts and lose lots of money – money that doesn’t line our pockets by any stretch of the imagination but in a very real sense keeps the website running. Singletrack is not a company that makes lots of profit. Last year our profit margin was around the 5% mark. Since 30% of our revenue comes from networked ads simply stopping them from appearing is something that would be financially very damaging for us. We need to get to the root of the problem and with that in mind I’ve been working my way through the individual networks, adding filters, more category blocks. As far as I can see all of our settings in all of our network ad accounts with Criteo, AOL, Microsoft, Google, Lijit, SwitchAdhub are all set to block everything from gambling, adult, health, downloads, games, financial, apps etc. With our Google account I’ve reached the maximum categories I can actually block. For some reason they only let you block a total of 50 categories and I’ve hit that limit and I’m now unblocking one to block another. It’s real needle/haystack stuff and I’ve been working on for several days now.
You should see a lot of Amazon ads at the moment. That’s because I’ve verified that these are not the source of the issue and so I’m temporarily replacing the ads served from networks with these as well as our own house ads to try and narrow down my search. Those ads pay us nothing unless they are clicked and someone buys something from Amazon. They are our lowest yield ads on our system and I try not to run them if I can help it.
So, please bear with me while I try and solve this (We are not being targeted – it’s a global ad network problem). I’m in touch with all our network providers and they are searching too. If it was easy to solve it would have been by now. This problem is a massive nightmare for everyone involved in advertising. Some arse out there is deliberately making this happen and it’s helping absolutely no one.

I think I can rule out Google Adsense now and I’ve already ruled out Criteo. I’m going to switch them back on now and turn off one of the others. Microsoft next.

I’m really sorry for the PITA that this is. I’m determined to fix it but please don’t give us a hard time because ads earn us money. That’s how it all works.

Oh and this is definitely NOT a ploy to get more subscribers. We need the millions of visitors just as much as the thousands of subscribers.

It’s a single ad that rotates through Empire: Game of Four, Mecca Bingo and William Hill. It rotates through them every few minutes and with each rotation it triggers a redirect to their app. I’ve managed to replicate that here. It’s also targeting mobile users, which is why I can’t get it to happen in a desktop browser. At least I know what I’m looking for now.

Sorry to add to the headache… Just had this happen with no attempt by me yo of anything other than scroll down a thread of pictures…

^^ the missing link …

Sounds like you are making some decent progress in tracking it down. Perhaps if you beat everyone else to the solution you could sell it on to others 😉

No need to apologise. The more reports we get the better our chances of finding out where these ads are coming from. I’ve just disabled all ads from our SwitchAd network so I need the reports to keep coming so I can tell if its’ their issue.

My fear is that it’s not going to be that simple though. There are literally thousands of different ad networks out there and many of them take ads from each other so it is possible that the same ad is coming through many different networks.

If I am forced to turn off all the networks we will be in quite a bit of trouble.

+1 on it being a global issue.

It came up in a discussion on /. earlier that was ‘based’ on the ethics of ad blocking and how sites might try to shut down the blockers of their visitors. I say ‘based’ because /. tends to stay about as focused as STW does…

Hope you get to the bottom of it soon. The only real good thing is that the amount of interest this is getting from sites that can be arsed (IGN was getting hit with it back end of last year) it’s likely that the guys at the network/s serving up these iffy ads will conclude it’s not in their interests to run them if they get too much blocking. Interesting the ads that are cropping up here though. Previously it seems to have been low rent ads on the basis that malware authors didn’t really want to spring teh big bucks…

Using Chrome on Android and there are certain threads that give a “too many redirects” error rather than opening. Haven’t yet got into these threads once, so could these have some permenant content causing the same issue? I haven’t been sent to the Google Play store but if it only targets iOS… Shall I try and find a couple and post them here?

Yes, I’ve suggested this before but…..would an ad-free, forum-only subscription make financial sense to you guys? By that, I mean would you make more from subscriptions than you would lose through having a smaller number of users being targeted – or does a subscription only make sense at the current price (and taking into account you then have magazine advertising space you can sell)?

I’d understand if supplying a full answer to that might be giving away too much 🙂

Supplying you an answer would give away too much 🙂

News of something new is coming in a few weeks.

Time it for about a week after the last “free monthly subscription offer” terminates. Let folk experience a little ad-pain first, then hit them!

Tracker,

Any info you think is useful, please do post it here or direct to us at tech@singletrackworld.com

Cheers
Mark

Scot! I’m checking our office for bugs!

😉

Well, in the absence of a functioning memory an extended read has found the first “too many redirects” thread…

Will post any others that I stumble upon.

Edit, which now apparently redirects… To this thread whilst on my phone? Now I am confused!

Edit 2- presumably a copy/paste issue on the phone…

OK, trying again, from a laptop (where I can access the thread, finally get to read it as a bonus)
Strathpuffer thread

Trackers link in the first (longer) post sent me back here on OSX Lion Safari on the laptop if that’s any help.

Happening again – taking me to a link to ‘four kingdoms’ without clicking anything, whist on a thread about cancer diagnosis.

Just happened for the first time on my iPad using wifi, as I was scrolling the page up using my thumb on the left-hand side, so no obvious advert links down there. I got taken to this page:

which lead to this:

when I came straight back here. It’s the fact that I was scrolling down the left side of the page that strikes me as odd, as there is no obvious advertising on that side, so I can’t understand how it manages to re-direct.
But I’m an incompetent idiot when it comes to IT stuff anyway. 😀