Yesterday afternoon, ads started appearing between posts.

I'm a member so i know i'll get ads at the top and bottom of the a thread, but why are they now appearing inbetween posts as well?

Not only that, the ads that appeared yesterday were for a gay dating site, a phillipino dating site and another random dating site.

My wife was sitting next to me on the sofa whilst i was browsing the forums, sees the ads and wants to know WTF i'm looking at.

Very embarrasing.

What's going on? Has the policy on the ads that a member sees suddenly changed? I've just logged out and gone back to look at the same page and i can see the same number of ads when i'm not logged in as when i'm logged in as a member.

 

I hope this is a error of some sort - its way over the top and not what I'd expect to see on the only internet site I pay for.

 

There is no change in policy or practice. I removed to the interpost ads for a few weeks to gauge the financial impact and it was severe, down nearly 50%, so I put them back. but reduced their number too two, one after the first and 3rd replies. I removed the ad slot at the bottom of the thread.

 

But members are seeing the same number of ads as non members. I logged out, and then viewed the same thread as a guest. The same number of ads appear in the same place.

One of the benefits of membership, apart from supporting the site, is a reduced number of adverts. That doesn't appear to be the case.

Secondly, the content of some of the ads themselves is pretty poor. Gay, Asian and Inter-race dating sites? Can you not at least filter the content?

 

Nothing has changed in that regard. What you aren't seeing are other types of ads other than Google's. The ads you see are based largely on where you live. I've added some of the dating sites to the site filters but there are a lot of them. I've emailed my rep at Google to see if there is a way to remove those types of sites completely.

It's not just you who is pissed about them. We make nothing on those ads, nobody clicks them. They are simply taking up space and making the site ugly and cheap looking.

 

 

I haven't heard back about the ads yet. I've gone and added a bunch of the links I've seen to the filter list but from my experience it takes a while for those to kick in. I guess I'll just wait for an answer and add any new links I see by hand until then. Ads aren't all bad if they are useful but useless ads are of no value to anyone. Having unrelated ads is not desirable.

 

[QUOTE=cthree,Apr 30 2008, 11:23 AM] It's not just you who is pissed about them.

 

Any news?

 

Not from them. I've filtered out all of the dating-type ads I've seen but due to geo-targeting I may not see the same ones as you.