A big thank you to everyone who has pointed out the weird, spammy ad that’s somehow managed to sneak past the armed guards we have stationed around the Compaq Portable that runs our ad server. Unfortunately, as some of you have noticed, our game of whack-a-mole to knock it down has not been particularly successful. I want to share with you all our game plan for addressing it and some assistance that might be helpful.
We’re on track to have our biggest month ever, and with that increase in traffic comes new problems. There’s a whole host of ads, categories, and ad technologies we don’t allow on this site because, especially as a member-supported enterprise, we want to keep this place clear of Badvertising. I’m sorry these ads are sneaking through, as it means we’re not keeping up our end of the bargain.
The world of programmatic advertising, which is our single biggest source of income, is built partially on trust. For example, we don’t allow ads that reference sex; those advertisers, in theory, are required to accurately identify that their ads reference sex so that we don’t run them. We’re going to have more than 15 million ad impressions this month, and it would be impossible to approve all of those in advance.
When someone has cheated in the past, a reader has alerted us, and we’ve banned that advertiser. It’s clean, quick, and easy. It’s also usually infrequent. Unfortunately, an individual advertiser or cluster of advertisers has found a way to get around our protections. The usual tools have not worked, so we’re taking the following measures:
- We’ve gone in and removed any ads that have high click-through-rates that seem like they shouldn’t.
- We’ve banned any related URLs.
- At the highest level, we are implementing a new technology that’s supposed to weed out this kind of badvertising. It should be rolling out in a matter of minutes. It costs us $$, but that seems to be the cost of doing business.
Here’s where I could use your help. First and foremost, I’m not sure how instantaneous the new filter is, so if you’re still seeing crappy redirects by the time the sun goes down on the Hollywood Sign please let me know. Also, if you ever see a bad ad, please email me and let me know any URL associated with it and what it looks like.
Again, sorry about this. We take this very seriously and will continue to work behind the scenes until it’s resolved.
Top photo: Depositphotos.com
I just use my proprietary, home-grown ad blocker and this site (among many others) appears to be none the wiser.
I read the headline without the benefit of spectacles and was briefly excited about the Weird Al redirects. But this is good, too.
(Al = ay ell, not ay eye)
I could go for a Weird Aluminum redirect, too.
I’m glad you are on this. It’s very annoying, and potentially a real problem when reading Autopian at work.
Yeah, I don’t need people seeing me looking at toe fungus remedies when I am simply trying to enjoy the wholesome content of The Autopian.
I was one of apparently many that flagged the “ad” this morning, and many months ago I reported a distasteful ad that was served.
Kudos to Matt and the team as they respond quickly to us that raise a concern and address the matters.
Can we get a membership that turns the sex ads on?
That’s known as the “Backseat Membership”, it’s an extra $50 a month
Take your damn smiley ‘Like’ you pervert.
Click here to find hot single seaters near you!
Mature 50+ topless (cars) are waiting for you!
Wanna get the lead out of your tank?
Need those headlights turned on?
That tailpipe feelin rusty?
Well, don’t look in the rearview mirror. Look at the heads up display! Grab that stick of yours and shift a few gears. Pretty soon your NOS tubes will be vented.
Thanks for the efforts you make in keeping the ads relevant. I have not had many issues historically, and that is markedly different than most other car sites. That is one of the many reasons I tend to visit this site much more than others.
Hold up, is that a resealable SPAM tin?
Is it not standard practice to fry the entire tin at once?
Not in this economy. Thanks, Obama.
This might be a good opportunity to do some pro bono scripting and skills-sharpening on my part. I’ll look into a way to get that info automatically – user acceptance testing is vital when the development side (I.e., approved advertisers) looks okay but there’s still bad stuff sneaking through.
Either way the transparency is appreciated,truly.
I just got an annoying virus warning ad.
Thank you for the transparency and for all the work you put in to keep this site excellent.
While I’m not a member, I do have my adblocker disabled for this site … so at least you get ad impressions. I appreciate you trying to keep them clean, doubly so because I often browse from my work computer.
Thanks Matt for doing the work.
Badvertising? Badvertising? You haven’t lived until an old lady from church lets you know that “something is wrong with the website”, and when you go to check it out you’re redirected to a gallery of… shaved, bedildoed vaginas. And it turns it its a script that you have to have manually removed because nobody’s paying attention and someone with a dormant user account used “123456” as their password because it matches their luggage.
What was that old lady from church expecting? A bloody corpse on a cross?
I’m assuming that is how she gets to the weekly lives stream.
As someone who works in the technology field, I wholly appreciate how frustrating the whack-a-mole game can be. I really appreciate your transparency and commitment to making this the best automotive community on the interwebz!
If you’re going to run an ad blocker, please buy a membership.
A big part of the reason this site is able to prise money from me for a membership is that I do have ad blocking. Otherwise I’d just be a scummy leach. Don’t be that please.
The stupid thing is that ads like this aren’t effective either. I recall seeing a study a while back by Google and the obnoxious types (popovers, autoplay videos, etc.) piss people off so much that they aren’t effective even from a revenue perspective. Which means this is 100% fradulent and an attempt to game the system.
It’s a game of one-upsmanship and if you beat the system, you’ve won, something…
The thinking may truly be that flawed.
“At the highest level, we are implementing a new technology that’s supposed to weed out this kind of badvertising. It should be rolling out in a matter of minutes. It costs us $$, but that seems to be the cost of doing business”
This is just Otto sitting at the Commodore 64 and reading ads while getting paid in twinkies or something, isn’t it?
Sno-Balls, but yes.
I’d make a joke a about child labor, but we know you are joking.
No one likes Sno-balls
Thank you!! I love the transparency and how seriously you take this!!
Transparency from an ad-supported website? Is that even legal? 😉
A sincere thanks y’all for being who you are and making this place tick….
I appreciate the effort to serve clean ads. I also do not run any ad blockers and accept all cookies because I like targeted ads, and I even click on ones that are for something I’m interested in. Please keep up the good work.
I accept cookies because cookies taste good and I like the cookie monster! But anyway, yeah this site is the best and I’m so excited because it’s almost…
MARCH 32ND!!!
Don’t let this masterpiece of an ad be banned!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/emSujVRXbjvALpT89
Jokes aside, this website is far better with ads than most news sites and especially BarnFinds- which is full of adult ads and wack comments.
That masterpiece is made 1000% better by its placement on the page. What’s inside Torch’s head? Well…
I’ve been getting on-screen security alerts for the last week or so on the site. It just happened again when moving my cursor across the screen or up to the top banner to sign-in/out.
Same here.
Same- it’s just granny tricking stuff but still annoying.
Those “granny-trickers” rake in millions of dollars a year. There should be a law.
My ad blocker is still working – I am on a computer, not a mobile device.
Yes, but that blocks all ads. This site does need ad revenue to continue serving us new write ups.
I only got it a couple times and haven’t seen it for days, the one that I have been seeing again that was super annoying, then seemed to go away for a while, but is now back is the full page ads that make it hard to scroll on mobile. If you don’t realize in advance it’s a full page ad and scroll quickly past it then you get stuck and it drives me insane! More often than not I end up closing and reopening the page because it doesn’t let me scroll.
Had it happen to me more than once iPhone and ipad
Yes! I have gotten so frustrated with these ads. I am but a lowly cloth member, which does say *less* ads. I didn’t notice any decrease after I signed up- but if there was one ad type that I would request be removed, it’s the full-screen, can’t scroll past ads.
Still happening as of 10:21AM Pacific this morning but much appreciated that you know about the issue and are working to solve it.
Thank you Matt. I’ve been getting it about every five minutes today, glad to see there’s a plan in place!