The voices in my head also told me to use Adblock, and for once, they were right.
That and No Script.
Either you do as Oakminster suggests or gather the log files Tuba is asking for (in other words, do the admins’ job for them).
ETA: There’s a third option to leave and not come back, but that probably goes without saying.
I think it was a car ad with skydivers. The sound was the wind. I heard it within seconds of my going to the list of GQ threads.
Do you contract with every single advertiser such that you need that info to find the culprit?
If so, do you have limitations against audio coming up?
I’m familiar with pop-up blockers but didn’t know you could block ads that are part of the web page itself. Its not that big of a deal to me really. If you simply stated that we have no problem including annoying ads that play audio on our website I’ll deal with it.
We deal with a network of ad brokers – the Straight Dope does not contract with any one company. That’s why we’re asking for more information because without knowing useful information (like, say, the name of the company the ad is for) we have no way of tracking it down.
Did someone flip the Spanish-mode switch on Cecil again?
Oh please. It’s like trying to identify an actor in a movie when the person your talking to says
“Hey, who’s that actor? You know, the guy who did that movie? The one about the guy who did the thing with the thing?”
You’re gonna have to be a little more specific.
Ads aren’t static, so they always appear the same to every person each time they load a page. They’re fed by servers and rotating, and are geographically and sometimes zip code based. What you see and what I see may be very different. When Jerry goes and looks at the page, all he will see is the code for “insert google ad here”, not what ad was showing when Irishman opened the page at 9:47 a.m. CST in Houston.
OK. Is there something I should look for to help you figure out which ad broker is supplying ads that have annoying audio automatically come up.
After all this time, can I assume that you don’t want ads that have annoying audio automatically come up ???
Just had a culprit show up in this thread…
It was a Mucinex commercial and appeared between the OP and the first reply.
Thank you. This is the kind of information we need to try to figure out what’s going on.
Now, did the audio start to play automatically, without you doing anything? Or did you touch the ad or mouse over it?
My understanding is that they’re not supposed to just start playing automatically.
If you hit the ad or mouse over it and it starts, you’re supposed to be able to clearly see a way to stop it/close the ad.
We appreciate your cooperation.
Never did anything to or near any of them…they always start right away and before I ever get down to where they are appearing.
I have reported this situation.
I think you’ve discovered the boards “spanish mode”, kind of like Buzz Lightyear’s spanish mode discovered in Toy Story 3.
Ole!
I just had a very loud video ad for Reel Steel on one of the pages, with absolutely no way to pause it. If it is one thing I absolutely can’t tolerate it’s audio on a webpage that plays without me telling it specifically to play. I’ve had it wake up my daughter before if I’m in my study at night and I had my speakers up earlier in the day and never turned them down.
To clarify:
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You saw an ad for Mucinex and you heard audio in Spanish? If not, what did you hear?
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Did happen to notice if there was a small triangle in the upper right corner of the Mucinex ad? This indicates a Google ad.
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What is your location?
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What browser and operating system are you using?
By default, audio in ads is supposed to be off. Moving the cursor over an ad (mouseover) may invoke audio. If you didn’t do this but hear audio anyway, something is goofed up with a particular ad and we are happy to submit a beef to the appropriate ad provider. However, we need to know:
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The name of the advertiser. There are thousands of ads, and in the absence of identifying info it’s impossible to track down a bad one.
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What exactly you saw/heard that was objectionable.
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Whether you see a triangle in the upper right corner of the ad. This is a relatively new thing. We have three ad providers, one of which is Google. If you see a triangle, we know the ad came from Google. If you don’t, we know the ad came from one of the other two providers.
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Your location - many ads are geotargeted based on IP number.
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Your browser and OS - sometimes ads misbehave because of a browser idiosyncrasy.
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Whether you saw/heard the ad on (a) the SDMB or (b) a TSD column archive page. Different types of ads appear in these two venues. It’s NOT necessary to indicate the thread; this provides no useful information.
Thanks.
Did this appear on an SDMB page or a column archive page?
SDMB page…it was one of the inline ads that appear below the OP. It is possible I moused over it as I was moving my mouse around the page, but frankly a mouseover shouldn’t be consent to start playing stuff either…the mouse pointer has to be somewhere on the screen, and just moving my mouse around to certain links will eventually roll over an ad at some point.
I’ve since installed Ad Blocker Pro, but I’m sure that’s not what the SDMB wants everyone doing to avoid these things. Thanks for looking into this!
Mr Ed: I’ll let you know the next time I hear one.
The OP mentioned spanish… my peeve is relative to any unwanted sounds that come up.
Hi,
yes, I know, what I should do is pony up… but since apparently you guys report obnoxious ads…
For the last couple of months I’ve been getting one which plays the tinniest, most horrible Jingle Bells cover ever. It appears in all the forums and also in my PMs. It’s one of those “you’re our 567654 customer today! Click here to win an iPad!” ads, clicking on it takes me to aldaniti dot net
Location Spain, but I also get those “amazing trick!” ads for locations outside Spain, and ads in French… but they’re silent, so it doesn’t bother me.
Pls send a screenshot of the offending ad to tubadiva at aol dot com. This will give us a better idea who to beef to.
Has something changed about the ads? All of a sudden I have started to get video ads with sound on the page. Just happened twice in the last couple of minutes. Some ad in Japanese in the Game Room and an ad for Kia on GQ.