Pop-up ads: Feedback needed!

[melissapugs]

On Chrome on my pc:
Every single time I open up a notification on a subcribed thread from my email. At least 50% of the time when I click on my shortcuts from favorites.
On phone broswer (stock MIUI): I only go from email on that, about the same as above.
I am also getting them about 25% of the time when I navigate from one part of the forum to another.
I really can't handle any more add-ons for my poor overworked Chrome, as someone had previously suggested. I am getting the same thing in Firefox anyway.

 

[Phases]

I've been trying to review high priority PMs that have come through the night on my phone, and the ad makes it impossible to use my browser. Very frustrating when I'm in a hurry.

The ads so far today are as frequent as yesterday, so I'll stop commenting myself for now and sunday night give a last comment.

Hope others see this thread post their experiences as well.

 

[El Presidente]

To buck the trend, I've not seen the popup for ages.

I initially thought it could be because I'm on Chrome, but for a large chunk of the day, I've been using IE9 to see if I can get it to appear, but no.

I've idled on a page for a while (as from above posts that seems to make it happen), then clicked in to a link and it's still not popped up for me. Same with on my handset, no ads on Dolphin so I switched to the stock browser on CM7 and again no popups.

The only obvious difference I can see in my situation to those above is that I'm based in Scotland and the rest of you appear to be in the States? I doubt that's a factor though but thought I'd mention it none the less.

 

[socgray]

I typically would open the site on my Droid after clicking a link in phandroid's twitter feed. Since the pop-up ad displays over the content every time as an un-registered user and could not be X'ed because it floated away as I swiped the screen, I have been unable to read the articles for some time. I'll post again if I continue to experience this problem now that I have registered on the site.

If this isn't fixed, there is no reason for me to come to the site so the ads won't be viewed either. Perhaps pass that along to the ad company.

 

[The_Chief]

@Rob & Phases:

Being a Premium member, I certainly expected fewer "Phandroid" popup ads than this! I counted, and here's what I got:

Of the times I hit "refresh" in the forums, that popup comes up 2 out of 6 F5's. That's 1/3 of the time!

I can see maybe 1 out of 10, but I would surely not have expected a popup 33% of the time I'm in the forums. This makes Premium membership far less attractive to people.

Please talk to your ad folks and see if there's a way they can distinguish a Premium member's login and reduce the popup frequency to that IP some 50%. THAT would be at least tolerable.

Thanks!

 

[Rob]

Let me clarify exactly what is going on:

1. Welcome ads should NEVER show to mobile users
2. Currently, web visitors should see the ad 1 out of every 30 pageviews with the count resetting every 24 hours
3. We're currently performing some optimizations to our ad code that SHOULD allow ads to load faster
4. Once we're done optimizing existing ads, we'll be creating new boundaries to ensure all members see LESS ads and Premium members should NEVER get these welcome ads

The amount of ads shown to members/premium and the "Welcome Ads" displaying at unacceptable rates are two different issues but I'm working on both of them. For the past couple weeks I've been relentlessly requesting ALL Welcome ads be removed from mobile and although each time I'm ensured, the problem never seems to go away.

I've sent an E-Mail to our agency requesting they turn off ALL welcome ads to EVERYONE until they can guarantee proper mobile exclusion and accurate web rate limiting. We may not get a response until Monday, but I can assure you that the Welcome Ads and the protection of our Premium Members and Registered Members are a priority on which we're working to imminently improve.

Have a great weekend.

 

[callmeox]

I'm getting the popup Phandroid ad with each page transition using Dolphin for pad on a Honeycomb tablet.

Make the bad man stop.

 

[MoPhoMan]

every time I refresh the page in the Galaxy Nexus thread the pop-up reappears...and we are all breaking the F5 key over there so I am seeing it quite a bit.

 

[galfert]

I don't have the problem others do with closing it (or hitting the dodgey "X") cuz my screen resolution is qHD.

I know when I was on 800x480, it was impossible to hit the "X" cuz it would move off the screen..

I have qHD too. I'm using the HTC Vivid 960x540 and I can't close the ad. The x is too small. If I try and hit the x I end up going to the ad site instead of it closing. This is ridiculous. See image below. Pinch to zoom doesn't work.

 

[xkingofgodzx]

Agreed i used to like this site but the ad really kills it for me. I cant x it out on my Thunderbolt, i end up hitting a link instead. Please remove the ad, there are plenty on the site already.

 

[Phases]

Thanks for the reply Rob, appreciate the effort on this.

 

[strafholm]

Let me clarify exactly what is going on:

1. Welcome ads should NEVER show to mobile users
2. Currently, web visitors should see the ad 1 out of every 30 pageviews with the count resetting every 24 hours
3. We're currently performing some optimizations to our ad code that SHOULD allow ads to load faster
4. Once we're done optimizing existing ads, we'll be creating new boundaries to ensure all members see LESS ads and Premium members should NEVER get these welcome ads

The amount of ads shown to members/premium and the "Welcome Ads" displaying at unacceptable rates are two different issues but I'm working on both of them. For the past couple weeks I've been relentlessly requesting ALL Welcome ads be removed from mobile and although each time I'm ensured, the problem never seems to go away.

I've sent an E-Mail to our agency requesting they turn off ALL welcome ads to EVERYONE until they can guarantee proper mobile exclusion and accurate web rate limiting. We may not get a response until Monday, but I can assure you that the Welcome Ads and the protection of our Premium Members and Registered Members are a priority on which we're working to imminently improve.

Have a great weekend.

It sounds great that they keep making assurances to you that x or y will be taken care of but if if it never happens then it seems to me that it doesn't take the proverbial rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that maybe I should find another company to do business with. The mobile users continue to recieve ads that are very difficult to navigate around as has been noted with the extremely small "x" to close out etc. I would be very appreciative if these problems could be rectified however there are numerous forums out there. Not that there is anything perferct but...

 

[Xyro]

The only obvious difference I can see in my situation to those above is that I'm based in Scotland and the rest of you appear to be in the States? I doubt that's a factor though but thought I'd mention it none the less.

You might be onto something there actually - it wouldn't be the first time I've been unable to see the ads plaguing American visitors to AF. I'm also in the UK and I don't see the ads. I tried on both firefox and IE and didn't see them.

I have seen them plenty of times in the past, but the current issue doesn't seem to be affecting me.

 

[dautley]

You might be onto something there actually - it wouldn't be the first time I've been unable to see the ads plaguing American visitors to AF. I'm also in the UK and I don't see the ads. I tried on both firefox and IE and didn't see them.

I have seen them plenty of times in the past, but the current issue doesn't seem to be affecting me.

So are these adds targeted by location I wonder? good question for the add agency!

 

[Steven58]

It sounds great that they keep making assurances to you that x or y will be taken care of but if if it never happens then it seems to me that it doesn't take the proverbial rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that maybe I should find another company to do business with. The mobile users continue to recieve ads that are very difficult to navigate around as has been noted with the extremely small "x" to close out etc. I would be very appreciative if these problems could be rectified however there are numerous forums out there. Not that there is anything perferct but...

I understand your frustration. I sincerely want to say that your continued membership is welcome and encouraged. Whereas you are always welcome to go elsewhere, we hope that you will call Android Forums your android home. I assure you that we all will be seeing positive movement in this area in the near future. Let's give it a chance. Thanks!

Steven

 

[Phases]

As most of you have probably noticed.. the ad network, as instructed, have turned off all the pop-up ads until they can guarantee a fix.

Thanks Rob!

 

[ardchoille]

I understand the need for ads, but I'd like to voice my opinion about an ad I see here at AF. When I use my android phone to access this site I have noticed an ad that sometimes appears in the middle of the screen and it hijacks the entire screen. I see the ad but it's too small to click the "X" in the upper right corner of the ad. When I pinch to zoom the browser window the ad shifts to the right and any attempt to scroll to the right, in order to tap the "X" to remove the ad, results in the ad shifting further to the right so that there is no way to see the "X". The only way to get rid of this ad is to hit the back button and try opening the page I was on again. I haven't seen this ad in the last couple of days so it looks like it's being worked on. Thank you Phases and Rob!

 

[Phases]

I understand the need for ads, but I'd like to voice my opinion about an ad I see here at AF. When I use my android phone to access this site I have noticed an ad that sometimes appears in the middle of the screen and it hijacks the entire screen. I see the ad but it's too small to click the "X" in the upper right corner of the ad. When I pinch to zoom the browser window the ad shifts to the right and any attempt to scroll to the right, in order to tap the "X" to remove the ad, results in the ad shifting further to the right so that there is no way to see the "X". The only way to get rid of this ad is to hit the back button and try opening the page I was on again. I haven't seen this ad in the last couple of days so it looks like it's being worked on. Thank you Phases and Rob!

That is the ad this thread is addressing and has been turned off until the ad agency can fix it.

 

[Petrah]

I use my computer to view the forums 99% of the time (was recently on vacation and used my cell... the popup ad totally killed any enjoyable experience I could of had. Many thanks for disabling it till it can be fixed!).

As for my home work computer... my system security thinks the ads aren't safe because all ads are blocked. From my computer I don't see a single ad on this site, anywhere. However, when the site is lagging and taking forever to load, I can see the ad URL on the bottom left in Firefox trying to load. When those ad servers get bogged down it causes this site to load slower than molasses.

 

[Lock-N-Load]

Today alone, in 10 clicks I GOT 10 ads!!! I jumped all over the forums reading different things and each click got me an ad!! I even got an ad in the confirmation screen of a thread I started. Over-the-top!

 

[callmeox]

Popups are back in each page transition. My best guess is that it started around 11AM Eastern time.

 

[zebug]

I might get 1 a day, Firefox if that matters???

 

[tbzj7]

New member here, today about 9/10 pages that I load have the ad. Unbelievably annoying, especially since I have to zoom all the way out to try and click on the small x to exit out of it. About time to go to androidcentral forums and not look back if this is the mess I'm going to have to deal with every time I come here... Yeah its a free forum but there's enough ads on each page without having one huge one wasting your time

 

[Rob]

For those seeing the ads OFTEN: do you have cookies enabled? If you don't have cookies enabled, we have no way of realizing you've seen the ad already and shouldn't see it again for X timeframe. Please enable cookies and/or report back.

For those seeing on mobile: device? OS version? rooted? cookies on?

 

[El Presidente]

For those seeing the ads OFTEN: do you have cookies enabled? If you don't have cookies enabled, we have no way of realizing you've seen the ad already and shouldn't see it again for X timeframe. Please enable cookies and/or report back.

For those seeing on mobile: device? OS version? rooted? cookies on?

I don't know if it's relevant, but both myself and Xyro (the only non US members who've posted here) aren't having an issue. Could users location be affecting whether or not they see the ad?

I've tried multiple browsers, both on my phone and my PC's at home and work and I've not seen the pop up for ages.

I don't know if that gives you anything to take back to the agency?