Question oh my that ad.

I love the ad banners, I really do. I have found a couple fun webcomics and such through them, but just now, seeing that " adult bondage sex toy" banner... wheee. That was interesting.... and a little disturbing. I know the staff has little control over the ads that run, but wow.

What have you been doing missy! *Wink wink,nudge nudge."

Certainly not visiting places like that. If I want my bondage sex toys, I drive down to the Warehouse district, like everyone else.

I thought those kinds of ads weren't allowed on AdWords. Apparently , I was wrong?

What page were you on when that ad appeared?

the Forum main page.

I've been getting tons of ads for foreign dating sites.
No clue why, the bondage ads would make more sense for me.

Domoviye wrote: I've been getting tons of ads for foreign dating sites.
No clue why, the bondage ads would make more sense for me.

I enjoyed the Ukrainian "Women" ad that used Jessica Rabbit to entice people to click on it.I did not know she was Ukrainian. I get a mixture of ads for sites I've shopped at/visited, dating sites, games, and off the wall ads that seemingly come out of nowhere, and the occasional related to the thread ads.

Domoviye wrote: I've been getting tons of ads for foreign dating sites.
No clue why, the bondage ads would make more sense for me.

Foreign bondage dating sites, perhaps?

There is one thing positive to say about the tracking beacons that get dropped in cookies and on your computer: when your teenage daughter uses your laptop a couple of days because hers is out of action, you tend to find out what site she visits and things she window-shops for based upon all of the pop-up ads that suddenly start appearing.

Women's hygiene products, lingerie, makeup, clothes, more clothes, more lingerie, even more clothes…

At least I know she's not one of the hostesses on these "extreme bondage girls want sex with you tonight" websites

And this is why you browse incognito mode, wipe cookies & internet history, delete system 32, and then reinstall windows 98. These ads wont track me!

The ads I get are, for the most part, innocuous. Right now I'm getting two (equal) ads for military-style web belts, one for business-oriented fiber internet from a Brazilian ISP, one for motorcycle fairings and two for two different suppliers of auto tyres (and I *have* been shopping for new tyres recently, so that's understandable).

Earlier today I had at least three different ads for three different colleges showing up at the same time. No idea why Google thought that would be a good idea. I mean, I'm in my fifties, and I have no college-age children. I often get the "Russian brides" sort of ad... but for a while there was a spike of "Muslim brides." Again, no idea why Google thought I would want a Muslim bride. Nothing against Muslims per se, but I wouldn't have anything to talk about with her...

I got $1000 cutoffs, Asian ads as well as various other dating services where I can date Kasparov over a bottle of wine and discussing art in skimpy panties. Oh MY!

Kristin Darken wrote: *nods* I had an Asian brides and a US dating site on sidebars with a new LG monitor on the leaderbar while looking at the thread. and now, I have Kasparov teaching me chess for Masterclass, a Lyft ad, and a math formula advertising Brilliant (whatever that is) on the leader... very random.

I recently added some changes to how the mobile devices get ads... we'll see how that works out. The goal is to use these new ad formats for mobiles and get rid of the sidebar ones. Which will make using the mobile site layout a lot easier.

Err, about that, currently I have no adds showing, just blank sidebars and top bars (I'm using an iPad).

EDIT: OK wired, they're back now ...

Currently my ads are... Pac-man, Pac-man, and... KCon? Not sure what that is. But it's local to LA.

I generally get the same mix of generic ads, targeted ads from major retailers, and dating sites for demographics that I am not a part of.

There was one dating site in particular that advertised itself with photos taken unattractively with poor quality. That was kind of weird.

just got one, dunno what it was for, but it had a solve for X math equation... You don't endear yourself to the girl with Dyscalculia by asking her to solve for X

I have an Audible.com ad with the following books.
Holy Friggin' Matrimony
G-Spot: An Urban Erotic Tale
Real Dirty (There's a pic of naked body on the cover)

And...

A bio of Casey Stengel.

One of these things is not like the others. (Or at least it seems that way.)

An ad for a toy remote control forklift. I don't know why.

Mostly Rooster Teeth adds, when i first read the topic title i thought it said "Oh, That's my add" as in "That's my Uncle," the RTAA reference RWBY makes

I've generally been pretty happy with the static ad banners, clicked few on a few products too, but lately, it has been dumping in more animated ads (only annoying when I'm using the forums), but somehow, it's also been throwing on videos in the narrow vertical banners on either side.

The animated ones I don't mind reading a story, but the video ones are awful, because I might be pages below it when it cycles to one of those, or opens on a refresh. Any way to ban video/audio ads completely from the ad listings?

It was a Lowe's ad if I remember right, but it is hard to tell when it doesn't fit in the darn banner.

I haven't seen any video ads, or at least nothing with audio. It is the time of the year though. I am getting lots of school ads. Military School, Montessori Schools, online Universities, Reform Schools, etc.

And I did see one that I swear was for a Device, it looked like some sort of weird gun, and had something to do with roofing (I think).

I do love that ads that I have no idea what they are for, or even who the advertiser is. If I can't tell what you are trying to sell me, you need a better ad.

Currently I have a pellet stove (for heating your house) on the side and an online game on the top. Or at least that was what I had... Some sort of top or toy on the side? Foreverspin(tm)?

Or everyone could start using adnauseam . You don't see the ad and the advertiser sees a 'click through' and so pays the max amount. Except there isn't a click through and nothing happens on your end. Not only does it scramble the tracking cookies spying on you by sending them a tsunami of meaningless data, you never see the ad.

And Kirstin still gets paid to run the site. Win/win/win.

I got and ad for https://tapas.io/episode/489060 Cthulhu

E. E. Nalley wrote: Or everyone could start using adnauseam . You don't see the ad and the advertiser sees a 'click through' and so pays the max amount. Except there isn't a click through and nothing happens on your end. Not only does it scramble the tracking cookies spying on you by sending them a tsunami of meaningless data, you never see the ad.

And Kirstin still gets paid to run the site. Win/win/win.

But I actually get ads for stuff I buy on this site.

PS: Is it bad if your ad has misspellings?

Kristin Darken wrote:

E. E. Nalley wrote: Or everyone could start using adnauseam . You don't see the ad and the advertiser sees a 'click through' and so pays the max amount. Except there isn't a click through and nothing happens on your end. Not only does it scramble the tracking cookies spying on you by sending them a tsunami of meaningless data, you never see the ad.

And Kirstin still gets paid to run the site. Win/win/win.

Hmm... I wonder if that actually works. Because we don't automatically get paid for click throughs. It's not tied to purchases specifically, but you don't automatically get the shiny prize just because someone clicked and looked at the site on the other side. Of course, they DO say not to tell people on your site to click on all the ads.

Someone could look into that. Someone other than me... because one of the big no noes is for the owner of a site to follow the links. Which always sucks when its an ad I am actually interested in...

I used to sell Google Ads... I didn't work for google but at an agency and I was trained/certified by Google. My recollections are pretty hazy but you SHOULD get credit for every click that goes through... I worked the other end of the pipeline so my knowledge of how it worked at the website end wasn't the best.

For Advertisers, they would generally bid, for listings on google, an amount per click for position with a budget set for how much they would spend... and then it could be set-up to only get a certain number of clicks per day so they'd be able to stay up all month or without a time restriction so it would just be used. (There's a lot more detail and nuance to it all but that's the basics) That's why they tell advertisers not to click on themselves since they're basically paying each time they click to see if it works... The ads on websites are set-up to count similarly... in their cases there are times seen and click-throughs to the advertiser's site... but, clicks count higher and are paid for.

Payment amounts to the website for clicking are so minuscule (per click) that it pretty much makes no difference if you want to follow a few Kristin.

The reason I say you should get credit for all clicks is that if they're counting the clicks toward the advertiser's numbers they should be counting them for you as well. Now, having said that, my knowledge is over 5-years old and things like Adnauseum weren't much of a thing at that point so they may have made changes to the process to account for that.

Edit: Trying to piece my memories together on this so I may have said some of this poorly.

elrodw wrote: There is one thing positive to say about the tracking beacons that get dropped in cookies and on your computer: when your teenage daughter uses your laptop a couple of days because hers is out of action, you tend to find out what site she visits and things she window-shops for based upon all of the pop-up ads that suddenly start appearing.

Women's hygiene products, lingerie, makeup, clothes, more clothes, more lingerie, even more clothes…

At least I know she's not one of the hostesses on these "extreme bondage girls want sex with you tonight" websites

Why oh why would you share your user profile on your computer, I never do that I always if anyone needs to use my computer I will create them a user profile and say do what you need to do.
When they ask why I say privacy, I will also say that I do not want there searches under my user etc...
I also use privacy browsers that block most adds and also delete the history every time I close them.

Ebola wrote: And this is why you [...] delete system 32,

I'm pretty sure this particular Thinkpad has never had that on it, at least not with this particular hard drive.

Not that /etc is really that much better.

Kristin Darken wrote:

E. E. Nalley wrote: Or everyone could start using adnauseam . You don't see the ad and the advertiser sees a 'click through' and so pays the max amount. Except there isn't a click through and nothing happens on your end. Not only does it scramble the tracking cookies spying on you by sending them a tsunami of meaningless data, you never see the ad.

And Kirstin still gets paid to run the site. Win/win/win.

Hmm... I wonder if that actually works. Because we don't automatically get paid for click throughs. It's not tied to purchases specifically, but you don't automatically get the shiny prize just because someone clicked and looked at the site on the other side. Of course, they DO say not to tell people on your site to click on all the ads.

Someone could look into that. Someone other than me... because one of the big no noes is for the owner of a site to follow the links. Which always sucks when its an ad I am actually interested in...

A very short and quick experiment. This
"/?utm_source=criteo&utm_medium=banner&utm_content=logo&utm_campaign=lowerfunnel"
appeared after the website when I clicked on the top banner ad.
This "/?gclid=COO5r_OgmdYCFQ65wAodF7INlw" appeared after going to the same webpage from Google.
What does it mean? I have no idea. But there is a difference.

An ad for school "support" clothes. I just had to go look...

No Whateley Academy.

But there are two Whately Elementary Schools in MA.

Ya know, we need to make something up. I'm working less than part time now but at some future time might be willing to purchase something. Oh the ads seem to change depending on what I'm doing on the page. Business broadband before I started this reply, now Fiat and Paychex, a company that apparently manages payments to employees sort of a back office operation so that small business can off load some of their compliance.... Stranger and stanger.

After the last few phishing attempts, i use Adblock/UBlock.

I rarely use whitelisting.

Is there any other way that we could contribute to WA's running costs without having to have adverts?

Kristin Darken wrote: Phishing attempts? From Google ads? Not to sound incredulous but... that seems unlikely. It's not 'that' easy to get an ad approved to run on the Google market. Now, following an ad to somewhere and having something else on their site do something of the sort... that I could see.. but not the actual Google ad. Would be different if I were running project wonderful or another smaller ad system... but you should be safe running ads here...

Or did you mean that you set it up due to phishing elsewhere and simply don't turn it off here?

Yes, the second.

I really hesitate to use white-listing, as i do not trust any of the third-party-advertising-networks.

If there is any way that i can contribute directly to the hosting costs of this website, please let me know.

EDIT: Just to be explicit about this, i haven't had any phishing attempts from the ad here.

I am talking about ID theft that took place 16-17 years ago.

I've been relatively paranoid since then.

But as they say, it ain't paranoia, if someone really is out to get you...

Speaking of insane ads that appear here, I just had a top banner ad for US Secret Service Jobs... Now as an ex-vet I might accidentally qualify if I had focused (either in service or out) on a LEO career. But I didn't so... Anyway just one of those insane things that life can throw at you. I'm seeing lots of (usually top banner) ads for wood stoves, and on the sides dating sites. I guess they might be warranted as I do spend quite a bit of time at SOL. Including reading a new chapter by Shrike recently....

blackhead tools... and very nasty looking pictures of them being used to pop said pimples... seeing as I am nearly 37, and have NEVER had a pimple ( please don't hate me), I want to know why the metrics decided on that.

Well, ads will be going away soon?

Here's the funny thing: I used to be able to see the Patreon link, but I no longer can. When I force-reload the page, sometimes I see it quickly flashing before disappearing.

Maybe it's a Firefox incompatibility?

(ten minutes later...)

No, it turned out to be something wrong with my Firefox profile. I did the "Firefox Refresh" thing and now it's working again.

Now to reinstall my extensions and redo my personalizations... maybe I'll figure what's the problem.

Same thing in Chrome - a box covers over the link as the browser continues resolving all the HTML+CSS+etc.

Probably some part of the site being worked on.

As I said, it turned out to be a glitch in my FF profile. It's all going right now. Although for some reason often not all the ads load. I'm not using an ad-blocker, maybe it''s something to do with the high latency down here in Brazil... for the curious, you can check it with these tools:
tools.keycdn.com/performance
tools.keycdn.com/speed

Anyway... one of the ads that loaded just now was... I don't know... failed attempt at a pun? It was one of those mail-order-brides things, but the text was: "Meet your Czech soulmate."

Rose Bunny wrote: blackhead tools... and very nasty looking pictures of them being used to pop said pimples... seeing as I am nearly 37, and have NEVER had a pimple ( please don't hate me)

Sorry, but I feel obliged to add you to the list.

Ametros wrote:
Sorry, but I feel obliged to add you to the list.