Annoying Adverts Costing you Customers

PS This is not a site where members are paying "customers" to lose.... there are no "customers"...therefore, none to lose.

Below: Facts c/o ATS Info page reachable on the top right by clicking the circled "i")

"292,331 members generating 17,238,941 posts of substance (minimal contributions are not allowed) that cover 975,967 topics in 167 different discussion forums, you could say "the truth is in here."

And new content, new ideas, new speculation, and new theories are being generating at an astounding pace with 2,129 members creating 20,826 new posts during the past seven days. Also, in that same time span, we welcomed 231 new members and enjoyed visits from 5,948 registered members as well as 689,968 guests."

*courtesy of ATS

i have just joined and i find the adverts annoying but i will try what one member said to make them go away hopefully

If you are a mobile user, there is a way in one of the menus or something to change to desktop version. It's kind of hidden, not located at the bottom of every page like most websites. I've had less problems with ads since I switched over. I feel terrible for the pc users who have audio intrusion into their homes! I guess keep the volume down until you plan to use it might help? Ridiculous if you ask me. If it's money they are after, there are other ways besides audio intrusion or visual blocking of content. A donation button like Wikipedia would help. Or like one member said, at least an option to pay a subscription fee to remove ads. But maybe the ads are a necessary part of government/corporate subliminals... Or maybe receiving money isn't enough, or isn't the goal per se...they Need you to also...you knkw...work, consume, die... advertisers may pull support if there's even an option to avoid their pitch.

What are they doing with these dump trucks full of money anyway? I heard they don't even pay the moderators.

Actually. If we come to this site and the advertisers pay on a per view basis then we are making them money so in a round about way, we are customers. If viewership were to drop, so would revenues. We don't pay with cash but with time...energy... Timergy. The only resource that matters.

As for me I'll stick around since it's not a big problem for me. But I certainly feel for those who deal with the stated issues.

littled16
reply to post by nothingwrong

 

Why don't you just keep your volume set on "mute" until there is something you want to listen to? That's what I do and no loud ads attacking my ears any more- voila!!!

I usually have something playing on Youtube to listen to while I enjoy ATS..

why should I have to close down my music just so that..??


I do recall a time, not too many years ago where there was NONE of this advertising mumbo jumbo.

SOMEHOW... ATS survived then?? without all the ads??

why now, over the last year are the ADS going NUTS?

New owners? I have never seen new owners NOT ruin an experience for chasing a buck.

Can always tell when a campground has new owners, the old fun stuff gets nicked, and the rates go UP.

Gotta LOVE GREED!

mysterioustranger
PS This is not a site where members are paying "customers" to lose.... there are no "customers"...therefore, none to lose.

edit on 09-22-2013 by mysterioustranger because: (no reason given)

Obviously, this site is a business.. for someone(s)

And our clicking from page to page INCREASES the REVENUE STREAM in and of itself.

therefore, when we enter ATS, we are customers, because we are helping someone MAKE MONEY..

I have NO problem with making money of you spend hours fixing the sites problems, glitches, hacker attacks, routers, etc..

But, when it becomes excessive, luckily the members here voice the concerns and don't just abandon the site, That shows character by the members.

And the World of Warplanes popups worked on me lol, and the World of Tanks.. (until they made my laptop as hot as a frying pan, then I discovered those games are known to Cook laptops).

anyway.. can we make a meeting in the middle? chill out some on the invasive ads, yet still have some clutter to cover expenses.

it is ONE thing to pay for the upkeep and improvement of the site..

It is an ENTIRELY different thing though to diminish our experience so someone can buy a new BMW (insert toy here), or pay for a Hawaiian cruise..

sligtlyskeptical
reply to post by nothingwrong

 

The whole internet advertising model sucks. The ads bring so much distaste to me that it greatly increases the likliehood that I will never buy that product or order from that site.

I have been mulling over an idea to form a website/club called the Anti-Advertising ..... or something,

Where, those people who HATE ads join, and make a pledge to NEVER buy anything that they see/hear an advertisement for.. lol

On your way to store and see a billboard for something? dang, that add just cost them.. turn around and don't buy it or go there.

We can take the power back from advertisers.. Whenever we see an annoying ad on TV/radio/billboard, REFUSE to BUY THE PRODUCT.. as a whole, we could END annoying ADVERTISING and commercials OVERNIGHT.

what of some Soda commercial came on and they knew that people hated ADS so much they quit drinking it?

Or whenever we see an add for a food product (even if our favorite food), we choose to NOT BUY it the next time we were going to.

On your way to the mall, hungry, and see a Taco Bell commercial/billboard? MAKE DARN SURE YOU DON'T STOP THERE.. no matter how much you love Mexican Pizza's and Chilitos.

we would make the Ghost of Bill Hicks proud..

reply to post by HanzHenry

They know your mind better than you do. I would bet that you don't even really see half of the advertisements thrown at you daily.

Good luck....but you've been hacked.

First up, Thank you Skepticoverlord for checking this out. I will send you updates of what is going on.

From my testing it seems that if you open the home page and just leave it open adds will start after 5 or 10 minutes. I assumed this was by design to stop people sitting on the home page and then going to a different site to do something else. It annoys you in to closing the home page so as to save bandwidth on the ATS servers. I might be a conspiracy theorist though lol!

I am also very bothered by load times. I sometimes have to wait up to a minute or more for a page to load. Looking at the bottom left corner of my screen I see that my browser is "Waiting for some.dumb.add.com to load" This really bothers the b off of me!

I would urge everyone to report full screen pop ups and adds that hijack your speakers to Skeptic as requested. If he is inundated with these reports perhaps he will be able to crack down on his advertisers and get them to obey the rules.

After all, if we break the rules, we get kicked off the site. Surely the same rule should be applied to those who would advertise here?

ETA: I will not turn off my volume just to visit this site. I might want to listen to music whilst surfing. Why should I not be able to do this?

So that people know I am not making it up lol I just sent the following to our skeptical overlord!



I was on the home page. I went to make lunch, came back and Hey!! I am a lucky winner! Not!!

reply to post by nothingwrong


I've seen some information on Linux admin websites, and a security discussion board I belong to, that the redirect is likely in a rogue ad being inserted into web traffic by two or more Australian ISP's.

nothingwrong
I am also very bothered by load times. I sometimes have to wait up to a minute or more for a page to load. Looking at the bottom left corner of my screen I see that my browser is "Waiting for some.dumb.add.com to load" This really bothers the b off of me!

I have a laptop that runs a script that times the loading of several pages throughout the site… it never goes anywhere but ATS, and has no email client. It logs load times from US, Canadian, UK, and Australian IP addresses. I've never seen page renders over 8 seconds, and rarely full page loads (with all ads) over 20 seconds. There have been some international ads that extend the page loads beyond 40 seconds, but it's been about 1 in 200.

The Windows laptop also has never had any malware issues or page redirects.

The two most probable sources of very-long ad load times are ISP's injecting their own ads, or malware replacing the ads we show.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


Thanks for the feed back.

I will let you know the exact address next time it happens. Strangely this only ever happens after submitting post to a thread. (The long wait times)

My computer is protected by several layers of virus and malware protection, I'll not go into specifics though for security reasons, of course!

I am in Australia, so the Aus ISP injecting ads could well be the answer to the redirect - surely ATS is able to prevent this? I can honestly say that this is the only site I ever visit where I experience this problem.

I will experiment with visiting the site using a VPN I have which goes back to a server in the UK and see if that changes my experience of the site, and let you know.

Just had another redirect from the main page whilst I was looking over the stuff there. This time to update2014 dot com.

Asking me to update Java. Umm. Scam. Have management totally lost control?

This site is sending it's members to scammers. This is something you have to power to stop.

Why don't you?

how is it that a local isp inject its own adverts? Doesnt ATS approve or disapprove what advertising to a point is shown on here?

w810i
how is it that a local isp inject its own adverts? Doesnt ATS approve or disapprove what advertising to a point is shown on here?

I think this is normal, but I don't know the technicals behind it.

After all - all the adverts on ATS that I see are for Australian products and services.
In the UK they are all for the UK, etc etc around the world.

Yes all the pages come from the same US (I guess) based server. It is logical that it should be this way.

ATS does have control over who can advertise it it's site, I would expect. This functionality is not something that can be forced on them after all. Therefore, logically, they must allow it to happen.

If the argument is that they have no control over which adverts are injected, then I am very surprised that they would agree to a deal like that.

I am a member of at least a dozen other sites which are hosted in the Us, the UK etc. My ISP does not inject of of these redirecting adverts into any of those sires. ATS is the only one where this is permitted to happen.

So my legitimate question is - Why do they permit it?

Oh, sweet irony! lol

As soon as I completed my last post here, I clicked on submit, the message was submitted. I was returned to the thread for a brief fraction of a second, then redirected to this page:





ETA:

All things Java are disabled on my computer, so it is not possible that an out of date plug in was discovered there. This is a scam. It does not even point you to a legitimate Java source. Just an site I don't know, which for all I know will download mallware/spiware or viruses onto my computer if I let it "upgrade" me.
SCAM!!!

Why is ATS not protecting it's members from scams?

reply to post by nothingwrong



To be fair that looks like there is something on your PC.

Looks like malware.

nothingwrong
Oh, sweet irony! lol

As soon as I completed my last post here, I clicked on submit, the message was submitted. I was returned to the thread for a brief fraction of a second, then redirected to this page:

ETA:

All things Java are disabled on my computer, so it is not possible that an out of date plug in was discovered there. This is a scam. It does not even point you to a legitimate Java source. Just an site I don't know, which for all I know will download mallware/spiware or viruses onto my computer if I let it "upgrade" me.
SCAM!!!

Why is ATS not protecting it's members from scams?

edit on 4-1-2014 by nothingwrong because: (no reason given)

Have you scanned your PC, cleared your browser etc? Could be worth a try first.

reply to post by nothingwrong


We only have control to the extent the ad networks we deal with have control. If a scammer gets an ad slipped into the network there's nothing anyone can do about it until we find out which network it's running through. If an ISP is injecting ads on its users's sessions there is absolutely nothing we can do about it, the only option is for the user to change ISPs.

Your insinuation that we are "allowing this" is as insulting as it is utterly stupid.

Why would any publisher "allow" rogue ads that do nothing but piss people off and, wait for it, the publisher doesn't get paid for?

The reason we have ads on ATS is to pay for the site, rogue ads injected into networks or injected by an ISP don't pay the publisher of the sites they appear on, that's why they're known as "rogue ads", no legitimate publisher with half a brain would allow the trash on their site. So, by accusing us of "allowing" these ads because you don't understand how things actually work, you are not only insinuating my partners and I are crooks and liars, you're insinuating we're idiots too.

We do our very best to to get rogue ads removed from the networks and have always done so. That said, 99% of the time the "rogue ad" was malware installed on the individual's computer either through email or by visiting less than legitimate websites.

With literally thousands of people on the site at any given moment, from all over the world, if there were rogue ads running wild on ATS there would be hundreds of people complaining about it. The few times we've actually been victim to them our Contact ATS email in box was flooded and there were dozens upon dozens of members reporting it in a thread like this one. That doesn't mean there would never be an instance where only a handful of people got the rogue ad, it just means it's never happened like that in over 11 years.

Springer...

Download Firefox GHOSTERY... I get No Ad's..LOL