I keep hearing ads play, in Spanish

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81

That’s a good technical answer, but it automatically implies the next question: Why don’t they audit the site periodically with the specific intent of watching for advertising abuses?

Hell, leave out “periodically”. That would be a good site maintenance practice, which would probably be too much to ask. How about “for the specific purpose of troubleshooting a reported problem?”

I’m a software engineer. If a user reports a bug, once the user has reported enough data to identify the location and circumstances of the bug, I attempt to reproduce the error in an environment similar to the bug report’s.

This is a bug. The environment is well documented. (Most forum pages, not logged in as employee or paid user.) I have seen no evidence of attempts to reproduce and confirm the bug.

The only action I saw in this entire thread is a query to the advertising contractor.

That’s “passing the buck”, and without specific detailed information, I’m sure they don’t feel any incentive to act. After all, their customer isn’t really being inconvenienced. (“Their customer” is the site. We, the site’s population, are the site’s customer. Our pain is not necessarily the site’s pain, and almost certainly not the advertising agent’s pain.)

I suspect the advertiser’s perspective is “that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.” They make money from every ad they display, even if it’s one against the stated wishes of the website they contract with. They only lose money if their website partner breaks it off because of it, and in this case, I’m not seeing much danger of that based on the efforts I’ve seen so far.

Of course, I could be wrong. This could all be playing out in tense unseen negotiations between SMDB and the advertisers. We may already be on the verge of having the issue resolved. I certainly hope so. But the action to date doesn’t support how I pictured the process working, so I remain dubious.

82

We require input from the community at large because the ads are served up locally – that is, the ads our users see are customized for their part of the globe, or the best guess the ad servers can come up with.

So the ads I might see or hear if I was logged out of the board would not be the same as you would see (or hear) unless you lived down the street from me.

The Straight Dope has users all over the world and so their ad experience is going to be different. The staffers can’t possibly begin to cover the entire world.

It should also be noted that Straight Dope subscribers see and hear no ads on the message board at all. But this is optional and not a requirement, though we appreciate the support. It’s $14.95 a year.

83

I understand this. I don’t mind being reminded, of course. I won’t discuss the value proposition of the membership option here; that’d be a hijack.

And the localization is a good technical reason, although I point out it would only reduce the likelihood of detection of inappropriate advertising, not eliminate it. Since the Chicago area is a rich and prosperous advertising demographic, local staff is highly likely to detect at least SOME rogue advertising when it occurs, without any extraordinary effort.

In other words, “We can’t catch them all” isn’t a good argument against trying. Especially in a situation with a known reported defect affecting broad regional variation. You don’t have to cast your net too precisely to see the problem, I suspect.

Anyway. I humbly suggest this approach for at least this rash of malvertising. Try it out. See if it can help. It can’t possibly cost much. Turn off your advertising block while doing your daily moderator duties. It could provide critical debugging evidence. (And I use the word “evidence” intentionally: in my experience, I’ve learned that when communicating with a contracted partner, sometimes it requires evidence almost to a legal standard.)

84

As Ed pointed out further up the thread, we are in a new situation, with new owners and new ad partners. You can consider us still on “shakedown cruise” kind of status, we’re still going through the changes, so to speak.

We do hope it gets quieter around here, though this might take a little while as ads cycle through. Your patience and tolerance and good reporting skills are all appreciated as we work through these issues.

Thanks for your input.

85

The “daily moderator duties” are done by different moderators during various times of the day, 24/7/365. It isn’t done just during a set period, so when would you have them do this?

86

Since you ask…

All the time. Do moderation duties with advertising turned on.

If the advertising is egregious enough to interfere with moderation duties, it almost certainly crosses the line of undesirable advertising, unless the line of undesirable advertising is considerably more liberal than currently understood.

And again, the idea of monitoring advertising as a recurring task in board maintenance would be gravy. I myself conceded it probably wouldn’t happen. But the technique is also viable for bug investigation, as a special task related to specific and actionable community reports. That’s the meat of what I’m suggesting, pie-in-the-sky “how to do recurring maintenance” ideas aside.

The status quo cannot possibly be the best that can be done. I offered up a technique which could be used for either maintenance or debugging. How it’s employed, or even whether it’s employed at all, is up to the good graces of the Best Damn Forum Maintainers In The World. (Yeah, that’s blatant flattery. :p)

87

Ad debacles occur on a regular basis around here. That’s *never *going to change. As was outlined upthread, here are your options:

  1. Put up with it.
  2. Install ad-block.
  3. Buy a subscription.
  4. Leave the SDMB.
88

Yeah. I’m getting that impression.

I suspect I’m falling in line with the clientele that wants different emoticons or in-forum avatar pictures or something. Of course, tolerating advertising in violation of stated policy is a bit apart from “I don’t like our smilies”. In software engineering terms, it’s “BUG, WONTFIX” instead of “ENHANCEMENT, WONTFIX”.

But again. It’s just a suggestion, and frankly, it’s counterproductive to tell people to shut up and color.

89

We’re not supposed to get ads with autoplay sound - our ad providers know this. Something got screwed up. A number of users were kind enough to send screen shots of noisy ads, which I’ve sent along to the guy at Sun-Times Media who deals with this stuff. I have a meeting at STM tomorrow to discuss various issues; this will be one of them. We’ll get this fixed as soon as we can.

90

I appreciate that. It’s unfortunate that this is happening in spite of your stated preferences regarding autoplay audio. In terms of my engineering background, it’s a quality of service issue between the customer (you) and your provider, and I’m glad to understand it’s on the agenda. I hope the discussion is effective.

91

Thanks for the update!:smiley:

92

Ahhh, I was feeling left out because I hadn’t gotten the auto played ads in Spanish yet, but I just did. It was frosted Mini Wheats. I didn’t get that screen shot in time. However, I also clicked the X in the top right and corner to get rid of the ad and got a weird video player after I did that. It gave me the heebees because it looked like an embedded player similar to YouTube and I thought that wasn’t allowed on here. That is screen shot linked below.

93

I was down at the Sun-Times today meeting with various people - among other things I had a long talk with the remnant ad guy about problem ads. He told me our ad provider thinks they have identified the source of the autoplay sound ads and put a stop to them. If you encounter any more such ads pls advise and provide details as requested above. Online ad distribution is targeted based on browsing history and whatnot; different people see different ads. This means we must rely on user report to track down bad ads. We appreciate your cooperation and apologize for the inconvenience.

94

Just heard one for “Droid Razor Edge by Motorola” in English on this board. Sorry, missed the screenshot.

95

Maybe this will help (maybe it won’t) …yesterday I heard an ad from Courtyard Marriott playing with sound in the middle of a thread 20 minutes after I visited the Marriott site.

96

I just had a Bing ad autoplay with audio in this thread.

97

Aaaand I just got a Spanish ad with audio autoplaying in this thread. It was a Toyota Prius ad.

98

As a reminder, please provide (1) advertiser and product name, (2) what language you hear, and (3) screen shot if possible - either post a link to photobucket or send to tubadiva at straightdope dot com. Thanks.

99

An Orbitz ad just autoplayed (in English) for me in two different threads.

I’ve installed AdBlock now, so hopefully this will be my last post in this thread.

100

Skittles ad, in English, in this thread - Who would you hire: The unemployed local or the employed outsider? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board