I have an iPhone6 with the current iOS 11 installed. If you install the adblock plus app, it can be enabled in Safari via Settings->Safari->Content Blockers->AdBlock Plus->[On].
That's interesting. If you saw some red text in the top left that said "Howdy! The site will be going down shortly for maintenance. Please refrain from posting until this message is removed, to avoid losing your post." then that's coming from a style you shouldn't be able to see or select. I've manually assigned you the beta tester group and the no ad code style. If somehow things have got "mixed up" you can manually override / force the selection. Please go to http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/profile.php?do=editoptions and choose the "no ad code" style manually in the last options section and press "Save Changes". This should set the "green" no ad code style for you.
Please see my comment above.
Ok, I have made a change to our Adsense settings. There is a very new option I just noticed called "Ad Balance". It appears to be a quality control lever. From what I can tell, we should now start seeing blank ad spots where "cheap" ads would have been previously, and it is my understanding that these crappy popups live within that realm. Not sure how long it will take to kick in, but please let me know your feedback again in 24 hours. Thank you for your assistance and feedback.
I did not have that page with a Howdy or anything.
I have installed the app that will hopefully block it.
I truly appreciate that you have made a pathway for me, but I feel like I would be getting special priveledges if done just for my convenience.
If I can help narrow down the issue, I am here to help, especially if it something that could compromise the site in any way, if not, I can use another device if it is just an annoyance.
Ok, I have the phone here running the adblocker app, is working fine on the regular site prior to login...
How to spread the word to other unsuspecting users? A sticky decribing avenues for ad blocker apps?
Just read your last post Jason, will look forward to that.
I have installed the app that will hopefully block it.
I truly appreciate that you have made a pathway for me, but I feel like I would be getting special priveledges if done just for my convenience.
If I can help narrow down the issue, I am here to help, especially if it something that could compromise the site in any way, if not, I can use another device if it is just an annoyance.
Ok, I have the phone here running the adblocker app, is working fine on the regular site prior to login...
How to spread the word to other unsuspecting users? A sticky decribing avenues for ad blocker apps?
Just read your last post Jason, will look forward to that.
Last edited:
I think it's best to address the problem not the symptoms, and I thank everyone who has contributed to this thread for their feedback. I know it's not the most glamorous of work / debugging for you to do, but I want you all to know I really appreciate it and I hope that in all seriousness your effort has a positive outcome for the long term future of diyAudio (ie: ability to earn income, thus the ability to re-invest in the site).
Having our members put at risk from dodgy ads is the worst situation imaginable for me from a ethical standpoint. It would also be bad to remove all ads just when diyAudio is in greatest need of resources to grow to the next stage of its life and have it fall into decay. Longer term, selling out all advertising inventory to companies closely related to DIY is the goal (so we don't need to leverage Adsense etc) and I am working towards that. If it came down to it, of course I'd ditch all the ads if we had to, but I think this is a resolvable problem for us (see below) and we should be careful not to "throw the baby out with the bathwater". In the longer term it's also in Google's interests to solve it, it's their primary revenue source as well.
So, we have worked out that the site is not hacked (great). We know that the problem is occurring for only some users, on some mobile browsers (great to know). Now I have the information to try and resolve the issue at its root. A ticket has been raised with Adsense support along with all the evidence you guys have submitted in this thread, PM and by email. Let's see where that goes. I am hoping that the "Ad Balance" setting in Adsense I just adjusted will make a significant difference. At current settings, it will slice 90% of the lowest paying ad impressions out of circulation and I am hoping this will eliminate this problem by default. Let's review in 24 hours.
As far as advising people to turn on ad blockers, I have no problem with that if it's a last resort (and see my instructions above for how to do this), however I hope that for the few people who seem to be doggedly affected by this, they will already be reading this thread and can take that advice using the instructions above if required. I'd ask that they switch off any ad blockers in 24 hours so we can see if the changes I've made have resolved the issue for them.
Thanks for everyone's help in working this all out.
Having our members put at risk from dodgy ads is the worst situation imaginable for me from a ethical standpoint. It would also be bad to remove all ads just when diyAudio is in greatest need of resources to grow to the next stage of its life and have it fall into decay. Longer term, selling out all advertising inventory to companies closely related to DIY is the goal (so we don't need to leverage Adsense etc) and I am working towards that. If it came down to it, of course I'd ditch all the ads if we had to, but I think this is a resolvable problem for us (see below) and we should be careful not to "throw the baby out with the bathwater". In the longer term it's also in Google's interests to solve it, it's their primary revenue source as well.
So, we have worked out that the site is not hacked (great). We know that the problem is occurring for only some users, on some mobile browsers (great to know). Now I have the information to try and resolve the issue at its root. A ticket has been raised with Adsense support along with all the evidence you guys have submitted in this thread, PM and by email. Let's see where that goes. I am hoping that the "Ad Balance" setting in Adsense I just adjusted will make a significant difference. At current settings, it will slice 90% of the lowest paying ad impressions out of circulation and I am hoping this will eliminate this problem by default. Let's review in 24 hours.
As far as advising people to turn on ad blockers, I have no problem with that if it's a last resort (and see my instructions above for how to do this), however I hope that for the few people who seem to be doggedly affected by this, they will already be reading this thread and can take that advice using the instructions above if required. I'd ask that they switch off any ad blockers in 24 hours so we can see if the changes I've made have resolved the issue for them.
Thanks for everyone's help in working this all out.
Last edited:
Hikari1 I think that probably indicates that the problem was with the low cost ad's which are now not being served. Your local news site is probably serving these ad's. If it were you phone, then you would expect it would have problems with all sites not just particular site. Also if it was doing it before on diyAudio and now it is not, then I think that is a pretty good indicator that Jason's changed setting has eliminated (or greatly reduced) the incidence of this issue.
Tony.
Tony.
Hikari1 I think that's a very good signal that we are on the road to fixing the problem. If you were having persistent problems (across multiple sites previously, let me know?), and now diyAudio is "fixed" and others are not, it suggests that the new strategy is working.
As Tony said, it's likely that most sites have not adjusted this setting (it's only new). I would imagine 95% of Adsense sites wouldn't have changed (or even know about) this setting yet. Those dodgy ads will still be feeding to those sites (until Google makes it a big enough a priority to implement a Confiant style solution to stamp them out, or however they do it, which they must eventually).
For better or worse, diyAudio is a forum and if there are problems people are going to report them. For a newspaper style site, the number of people who would bother reporting a problem is much smaller and there is less of a focus on the concerns of the people browsing the site. Here, your concerns are my #1 priority
So, again, I do thank all of you for letting me know this problem is / was affecting you.
Right now I have this "quality" lever pulled all the way over. It's blocking 90% of impressions (globally) and only letting the highest paying 10% of impressions through. I will leave it like this for a full week and gather everyone's feedback. After that, if this strategy has worked, I can try backing it off a bit and see if it sticks. The most important thing is to see if this works, and I have my fingers crossed...
As Tony said, it's likely that most sites have not adjusted this setting (it's only new). I would imagine 95% of Adsense sites wouldn't have changed (or even know about) this setting yet. Those dodgy ads will still be feeding to those sites (until Google makes it a big enough a priority to implement a Confiant style solution to stamp them out, or however they do it, which they must eventually).
For better or worse, diyAudio is a forum and if there are problems people are going to report them. For a newspaper style site, the number of people who would bother reporting a problem is much smaller and there is less of a focus on the concerns of the people browsing the site. Here, your concerns are my #1 priority
So, again, I do thank all of you for letting me know this problem is / was affecting you.Right now I have this "quality" lever pulled all the way over. It's blocking 90% of impressions (globally) and only letting the highest paying 10% of impressions through. I will leave it like this for a full week and gather everyone's feedback. After that, if this strategy has worked, I can try backing it off a bit and see if it sticks. The most important thing is to see if this works, and I have my fingers crossed...
Last edited:
I was busy with other things and did not read much on diyaudio the last weeks. Just wondering why I didn’t receive any notification email for this thread until today 01:53 GMT+1.
Today everything seems to be fine, very few visible ads on the forum’s site, may be your filter is set too strong.
Merry x-mas to all!
Today everything seems to be fine, very few visible ads on the forum’s site, may be your filter is set too strong.
Merry x-mas to all!
It appears that our email sending service was having some block problems (reported in another thread), but if you have started getting emails that problem may have sorted itself out (it almost always does, just a matter of time).
Yes, I had the filter set to block 90% of ads, which was overkill, but needed to be done so that we could be sure that was fixing the problem (it looks like it did the job).
I just have backed this off to 75%. As time goes on I'll keep pulling it back every few days, and post an update here, hopefully we can find the right balance. When I have a moment, I need to find a nice way for the ad space to fail (or not appear) in the event no ad is served.
Merry Christmas to you all
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.