Forum Adds, what an irritating joke!

[Tourer-Ted]

Wise words Parksy!

However, it's not always the actual site that's visited that gets compromised. It's the Ad delivery system provided by the third party! The visited site hosts these adverts from a feed system and has no way of knowing if they are compromised until it's too late.

I'm not biting the hand that provides me with a free forum. I'm just pointing out another good reason to use a robust ad-blocker.

This may be becoming more difficult for Chrome users shortly. As Google are mulling over the banning of all (except for their paid one) of them from their browser.

 

[Parksy]

I hold my breath every time that we advise members on this forum to use an ad blocker.
I can't help wondering if the powers that be might be reading this and thinking of ways to put a stop to their use. :woohoo:

 

[Tourer-Ted]

Well, that depends on them wanting to run a forum or a catalogue.

I'm sure a happy medium could be found with a bit of thought....

 

[Parksy]

Well, most of us have seen what this forum looks like without the ad blocker, what do you think? :dry:

 

[Tourer-Ted]

There are quite a few! From a feed provided by Google.

There's no more than on many other commercial sites. The only real annoyance in my opinion. Is that they aren't a fixed size. So they cause the page to appear to jump about as they load. If Future's forum devs could fit them into fixed size boxes then this would really help.

The ads we see are based on our browsing history. Makes me wonder how I got one for "blue breathable underpants" then? :blink:

 

[Hutch]

I personal don't get too many adds, and I am not using an ad blocker, about once a wee I clear my browsing History, I am using Chrome on a Samsung tablet.

 

[otherclive]

A real danger of these Ad delivery systems, like the one in use here. Is when they get compromised by undesirables and start injecting malware along with the adverts.

Several instances of this have happened, with big name providers, over the years.

Of course, they don't advertise about that too much!

Thats why home users are advised to install their own protection software. A no=brainer really. The world we live in surrounds us with ads of some sort or other. Even the BBC gives us all the gen in BBC 3, Iplayer, whites coming up in a months time, what's been shown last month. So I find PC Forum quite acceptable and if the company require to use ads to stay viable so be it. I use Adblock which works brilliantly.

 

[ProfJohnL]

There are quite a few! From a feed provided by Google.

There's no more than on many other commercial sites. The only real annoyance in my opinion. Is that they aren't a fixed size. So they cause the page to appear to jump about as they load. If Future's forum devs could fit them into fixed size boxes then this would really help.

The ads we see are based on our browsing history. Makes me wonder how I got one for "blue breathable underpants" then? :blink:

Hello Ted

I have made this point several times previously, the site knows the size they want to allocate to advertising so that should form part of the pages structure. To be fair whilst under the control of Haymarket, we had a number of their digital team corresponding on the forum and responding to such issues. generally most glitches were put right, but so far we have not had any correspondence from the new owners. so we don't even know if they value the forum, or not. I have to suppose that as they haven't shut it down or changed it substantively (with the exception of more advertising) that they presently happy to let it continue on its present footing.

 

[Tourer-Ted]

Hi ProfJohn

I took a quick look at one of their other brands, http://www.cyclingnews.com/
That site has an active Ad Blocker detector that forces a user to disable it before it will even allow access.

I suspect that a site's popularity will determine policy but being pretty brand focused . I'd expect them to bring this site in-line to their corporate model eventually.

Looking at advert placement, I suppose we should count ourselves lucky, just check out the Practical Motorhome site! :blink: