Because of an ad at the top. All that comes up on the page is the same ad over and over again, every time I refresh, or close and re-start IE. Finally, after at least 10 tries, I got to the home page. In this instance, there was no ad at the top, only the Straight Dope banner.
Once before when I complained about this here, someone (I think it was TubaDiva) said that sometimes the ads being served are the wrong size and they interfere with the ability of the rest of the page to load.
My question is: why do sites allow this to happen (this is not the only site where I occasionally have this problem, although it seems to be one of the most common and most persistent)? Can’t the ad servers regulate the size of the ads they serve? Do sites like SD ever complain and get any satisfaction from the ad servers?
Roddy
If you have problems with ads, use Adblock (available for most browsers) to prevent them from showing up (oh, I still see spaces labeled “Advertisement” between posts, but no ads, so it isn’t a problem, and for those who think blocking ads is “wrong”, I’d never click on them anyway so there isn’t any benefit).
Of course, I realize that not everybody is going to or wants to do this and it only cures the symptoms, not the disease (faulty ad layout).
Thanks for that link, I will probably do something like that.
I guess my question remains, though, which is why companies or people are so sloppy about this stuff? They would never get away with it in print!
Roddy (a newspaper person)
Refreshing a web page or restarting a browser will not work much of the time. When you see the “refreshed” page, more often than not you are seeing a browser cache version of the page. It doesn’t change.
Next time, use the <CTRL>+F5 key combination (on a windows machine) to force a deep refresh. It actually clears the cached version of the page and forces the browser to download a fresh copy from the server. I don’t know the Mac equivalent if you are a Mac user.
Could you possibly tell us what the ad is … who or what it’s for?
We can’t do anything about it if we don’t know about it … as ads are served up differently depending on where on the globe you are not everyone sees every ad.
We’re sorry that you are inconvenienced but before we can potentially do anything about it we need more information.
I think people are assuming there’s some sort of blanket method of controlling things like this. Like a filter on ads that checks their size before loading, or a virusscan run on the ads as they’re called up, or something.
Thus they mention the kind of incident without specifics, because they want a blanket response, not “go tell Hanes Underwear to knock it off”.
And I realize a virusscan run on each ad when called up would be a huge burden on the servers, and a time delay on page loading.
Sorry, I don’t remember now (it was the same ad several times, then rotating ads, all causing the problem). If it happens again, I will note which ads are behaving this way and let you know.
Roddy
Here are a few ads that have done this to me over the past couple of weeks (usually one time per ad, not multiple times).
Microsoft Office 365 with American Express (this was today)
Madden13 XBox with 4G Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile with optimization? (not sure, can’t quite read my notes)
American Express with Walmart
Maybe there should be a sticky thread for reporting these.
Roddy
Ad serving is a complex, highly automated process involving thousands of advertisers, hundreds of networks, and several major distribution engines distributing a vast number of ads per day to users with a wide variety of devices, browsers, and operating systems. The serving of ads to particular users is customized based on whatever info the various players have accumulated about you. I’ve been involved with newspapers most of my life and the print process is child’s play by comparison.
I’m sorry you’re having problems, but our ability to do anything about it is limited. The Google ad system in particular is opaque. We’ve had things go seriously wrong behind the scenes (nothing that affects users), and the only way I can get anything done about it is to ask for favors from friends who work at Google. I agree that the current process is stupid and doesn’t work for anyone, both users and advertisers. I have some ideas for a different model and am trying to get the new owners of TSD interested. I have no idea if this effort will succeed and in any case progress will be slow. In the meantime, all I can suggest for anyone with problems like yours is AdBlock. Sorry if that sounds like a copout, but in the long run I think it’ll be better for everyone if I focus the limited time I have on systemic improvements rather than try to chase down this or that local issue.
One other suggestion: A hosts file preloaded with over 16,000 of the worst advertisers and malware/virus/etc. infected sites is available here.
There are many others available - just search google for “hosts file block ads” or similar. The advantage of blocking that stuff at the hosts level is that nothing can cause your computer to connect to those sites. It protects you from ads and malware, trackers and spyware, etc. not only in your web browser but from email attachments, malware and viri already installed on your system, applications that might be trying to quietly connect in the background and report your usage to persons unknown, or worse.
This will eliminate 99% of unwanted ads before Adblock even has a chance to get involved by simply stopping the unwanted connection before it ever occurs.
IE version 8, through my company network. I normally am not restricted as to sites I can visit, so I don’t think there is any corporate filtering going on. Windows XP, Dell PC.
At home, running Firefox on Windows 7, I have not noticed this problem.
Thanks, Ed, for taking the time to explain this to an internet ignoramus. I appreciate the complexity, and I will stop listing ads that cause the problem. Unfortunately, here at work I am not allowed to install programs on my own as I do not have admin rights to the computer that I use. That’s why I’m forced to use IE.
Roddy
Even if I am interested in your product, that doesn’t mean I’ll automatically click on your ad. It’s likely that I’ll click something else, pause, then hit the back button. At which point a different advertisement will load. Now I suppose you could try saturating my browser with the same ad, everywhere I go. But might it make some sense to add some retention to internet advertising? Think about the sponsorship route.
Join forces with Ad-Blockers. Set up a code of conduct: work with an ad agency that a) has no moving images and b) has no obnoxious images of the inside of people’s mouths and the like. In fact, even distracting headlines are a drag, eg “Stars in the Sand: 20 Awkward Celebrity…” It shouldn’t be hard. In fact you could sign up with 2 ad agencies, one with the code and the other not.
You might also experiment with the, “We don’t have to jerk our customers around,” model. It seems to me what you might want to do is a) Press your brand into eyeballs, but also b) get them to visit your website. And if your website has freebies (recipes! games! info on the product!) maybe the future customer would visit it on their own even.