[Closed] Ads - new complaint

Right, I did a switch from Google to DuckDuckGo as preferred search engine in Safari on the pad, and that seems to have done the trick! I've not lost any of the other ads, so that's all hunky dory as far as STW Towers are concerned, I just don't get the screen blocking Maserati ad.
Result. 😀

Did this go anywhere? I'm assuming it was never meant to be the case individual users get this multiple times a day, I still do, every time I start a new session on mobile. Do the powers that be need this feedback or is it already being looked into?

It's still a load of old **** on the mobile, but on the laptop with plugins it's fine.

Every time I exit all Chrome mobile windows of STW, and even if left open, every few hours I still get that ad ****ing up the page.

Wouldn't it be easier just to pay the £1.50 pm by direct debit?
I'm poor, but even I can afford the small payment for a ad free life and a well cool magazine.
I also pay for Grit.CX the same way (as they have bendy bikes)

Are you 'avin a larf? The money for £3k bikes, Alps holidays and Audi leases doesn't grow on trees!

Wouldn't it be easier just to pay the £1.50 pm by direct debit?

Even if I did pay its unlikely I'd want to block ads anyway, my job means it's useful for me to see what ads are out there, the good bad and ugly.

not sure if this is the right 'ads thread' to post on but its the most recent, and i just felt compelled to post today.

im usually sat on my chromebook reading the forum with 'adblock plus' enabled. i want to support the site/mag, i pay a sub, so my conscience is clear about the ABP thing. the experience is great, no ads, not one, its quick, why are all you bods moaning about a few ads, they cant be that bad.....

ive just opened the site up on a works computer and WOWW, its bad! BIG maserati ad, banks, phone ads, just one big fairground experience, colour flashing all over the place.....quickly quickly, log in so the ads disappear cos i pay for my P to default to, ill be safe.

nope, even with my P, logged in, ive got bank ads, samsung phones, talkmobile, trainline, something called Nest smoke alarm.... i think its well out of order and i really sympathise with everyone moaning now.

i know we're not sposed to promote the use of 'you know whats', but really, when its that bad how can you not? i think its well OTT and the balance of paying for the site vs giving users a pleasurable experience has tipped alarmingly the wrong way.

this is my first ever post on the matter, didnt realise it was so bad, and just felt the need to show a bit of support for those 'moaners'.

EDIT: just opened it up again and am still astonished at the amount of ads im getting. jeep now, marks and sparks, theyre not even tailored to my search history or interests.
genuine question, am i mistaken in thinking the P got rid of ads? has something gone wrong somewhere? or is this really what its like for all 'P owners' all the time without 'you know what'?

Once you log in you then have to turn the ads off in your premier settings. It's not automatic.

Ahhhh thanks, didn't know that.

EDIT: can confirm alls well for P owners now. im sure youll all sleep better for that 😀

One day we'll look back at the Ad funded internet model and wonder how we tolerated it. It can't last much longer with ad blockers becoming more and more popular...

Don't badly laid out, intrusive or slowly rendering ads reduce traffic and potential income for the site?

Sadexpunk - that is the entire reason we get so annoyed, its the sheer amount of ads and that's before we even get into the intrusiveness.

Interestingly the game forum I'm a member of got wiped last week, terminal server crash with loss of all backups. Within a few days it was back up with new software on a new server with all the necessary plugins all thanks to the efforts of a handful of members. Not one ad, entirely member funded (voluntarily) and sporting a modern forum that does anything you ask of it (as much or as little fwiw). Makes you think.

Yes, but they don't care as they still get money for the number served...the fact we are all moaning about it isn't making any difference...given the lack of interest in sorting it, you either stop using the site (reducing site traffic) or you sort a solution out that makes it work...which apparently is meant to be banned but it increases site traffic...

The whole internet is increasingly unusable for those of us with slow connection speeds. When STW logs me out (frequently) it can take up to 3 minutes for all the crap to load then finally the last thing which appears is the "Login" button. I've bought the mag and been a subscriber on and off (mostly on) since pretty much day one, but if this persists I'll have to seriously reconsider.

It's not just STW though, about the only 2 sites I can reliably use with out intrusive ads stopping everything loading is BBC and Facebook.

Oh and whilst I'm at it, the gradual change from written articles and reviews to videos means more and more content is not accessible to me as videos rarely run without buffering every few seconds. To give you an idea, downloading a 45 minute SD programme on iplayer took 49 hours...

I appreciate I'm in a minority with this, but it does seem the writers of websites assume everyone has 4g/50Mbs access to the internet. My connection speed is often as slow as 0.5Mbs with no reasonable chance of improvement.

One day we'll look back at the Ad funded internet model and wonder how we tolerated it. It can't last much longer with ad blockers becoming more and more popular...

I was looking for a blocker for iOS and saw this in one of the reviews.....

[img] [/img]

Well, this is a fun meet-up.

I have to say, no ads when logged in here, just the usual logging me out shenanigans.

Content / hosting has to be paid for somehow, t

See those 'P's next to people's names....

he solution is smarter ads that are not so intrusive. Print mag ads are cool, nice photograpghy show casing products we might actually buy

The rise of Ad blockers is unstoppable though.....

See those 'P's next to people's names....

They pay for the staff's Maseratis.

When STW logs me out (frequently) it can take up to 3 minutes for all the crap to load then finally the last thing which appears is the "Login" button.

Bookmark http://singletrackmag.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=forum/ - it'll take you to the forum if you're logged in and an ad-free login page if you aren't.

I have to say, no ads when logged in here, just the usual logging me out shenanigans.

The last time we discussed this it seemed to be mostly some quirk of Safari. It was suggested that Opera stops it.

The rise of Ad blockers is unstoppable though.....

It really isn't. Detecting ad blockers is easy enough to do, and then you can serve different content accordingly. Plenty of sites do it these days, forums especially.

Really? I must not go on the right forums then as I've never had anything different barring a polite disable request. I've also never frequented anywhere that its even fractionally as much of an issue as on here.

The Maserati ad is a joke covers the screen ever time I look at the site. And the bandwidth the ads are using is nuts. The site is now borderline unusable.

Bookmark> http://singletrackmag.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=forum/ <- it'll take you to the forum if you're logged in and an ad-free login page if you aren't.

The last time we discussed this it seemed to be mostly some quirk of Safari. It was suggested that Opera stops it.

It does make for an interesting business model though.

dragon - Member
The Maserati ad is a joke covers the screen ever time I look at the site. And the bandwidth the ads are using is nuts. The site is now borderline unusable.

Another admission that the adverts are causing problems, but this time you are asking the customer to make a change.

Oh FFS, really?

1) No-one in the history of the forum has ever disagreed that the adverts cause issues [i]for some users.[/i] If you look back at any one of the bazzilionty-one other threads where we've discussed this issue at length you'll see that no-one in a position to fix it has ever been able to reproduce the error. The workaround is something that came out of a recent discussion where we attempted to narrow it down.

2) I was suggesting a workaround for the 'frequently getting logged out' issue which is nothing to do with adverts so your argument is moot anyway.

3) You're not a customer. Customers buy things.

3) You're not a customer. Customers buy things.

I appreciate that you're not an owner, but you are closer to the inner circle than most and are probably aware of the thinking behind the policy.

I have exactly the same access to the "inner circle" that you do. I don't have a scooby about their advertising policy, I don't work here. Why on earth would you think I did?

I expect that the site owners have done studies / trial-and-error tests to work out the best way to do it, it'd be pretty poor business practice otherwise. But your guess is as good as mine.

lol 😆

I do use other forums. None of them have the level of advertising intrusiveness this place does. Some of them have things similar to the P thing. But they seem to exist without the horrendous non premier experience, the repeated log outs if you have paid up and the condescension shown to users who are having a bad experience.

Please fix it.

Maybe other forums are just run by "enthusiasts"? This one is part of a proper business that pays people's livelihoods. Hence the fact it NEEDS to make money.

*gets logged out after 30mins of inactivity*

*tries to log back in*

Well this is an entirely reasonable welcome back 🙂

[IMG] [/IMG]

..and that's a gripe. Adblocking schnizzle would just work whether I was logged in or out, paying customer or not 🙂

It would be nice if it wasn't left to mods to answer to this logging out business and maybe there would be at least something from the higher beings, in the way of a response.

Of course, I could get a life, but it does grind my gears it's never responded to (not that I've seen anyhow)

The only adverts I see is the big bazookas - doesn't everyone see them?

I get logged out as soon as I navigate say from the page. The ads that then come up when I come back to dye drive me crackers. To the point where I'm starting to think I'm gonna cancel my sub and just go somewhere else. Not a flounce as such. I'm just a bit irritated by it.

Maybe other forums are just run by "enthusiasts"? This one is part of a proper business that pays people's livelihoods. Hence the fact it NEEDS to make money

From my experience in making F2P games, it's a delicate balance. You need to make money to pay for the product, either through spenders (which will make up a tiny proportion of your user base) or through adverts.

However, you have to ensure that the experience doesn't alienate 'free' users, especially if your product is heavily community based - you risk shedding members and shrinking the community and losing positive word of mouth (reducing potential new users). If you lose too many users, or make them feel like that they have to use adblockers, you make your product less appealing to ad providers.

I personally found the ads massively cumbersome and intrusive (both pop ups and auto playing videos), and didn't want to fork out for a second subscription for the household (t'husband's has one), so I kind of abandoned the forum until iOS9 came out! I'm sure the chaps in STW towers will have a pretty good idea if the ads are having a negative impact that outweighs the positive though - presumably not as the pop up ads are still apparently in force.

*puts tea on*
(which is impressive, in a tent in a field at an Easter party)

I really don't understand why anyone is not running a browser with an ad blocker enabled by default?

I have to login every couple of days...even with remember me selected. I only access this site on my phone these days...and each visit has the car ad showing...not each time I log back in, each time I check the forum (was about 7 times a day but now once a day unless I've found a thread worth tolerating the slow speed for - like this one where we get to complain to no-one and nothing gets done - makes paying a subscription seem like a stupid idea as the basics don't work. Actually this sounds like a similar discussion to the parking fee at FC land and what it gets used for - clearly not what those who pay think it is used for)...

That ad drives me nuts, when I click to close it I end up opening the ad behind the X.....

the condescension shown to users who are having a bad experience.

It's more frustration at continually having to field these threads. I understand that it's frustrating for those affected of course, but opening Yet Another Bloody Thread achieves absolutely nothing. Rogue ads get stamped on when found - email tech with as much info as possible. We don't know what causes the logout issue as we cannot replicate the problem.

Please fix it.

I'm sure STW will be more than happy to, as soon as anyone works out how.

That ad drives me nuts, when I click to close it I end up opening the ad behind the X.....

If you disable ads in your profile and bookmark the link I posted on the previous page, you shouldn't be seeing any ads here ever.

[quote=toppers3933 ]I get logged out as soon as I navigate say from the page. The ads that then come up when I come back to dye drive me crackers. To the point where I'm starting to think I'm gonna cancel my sub and just go somewhere else. Not a flounce as such. I'm just a bit irritated by it.

I was about to suggest that those having problems like this really need to be emailing tech towers with details of their OS/browser/cookie settings etc so that some investigation into the root cause could be carried out. After all, it's not that everyone is experiencing these problems. But then I thought - why aren't the tech guys providing some sort of automated response form that the affected users could click on and that would collect and forward this info? I think we'd all like to see a bit more pro-active problem resolution. Those of us that pay and have no problems still have to "put up" with seeing all these complaint threads.

Sorry Cougar, you posted this bit

I'm sure STW will be more than happy to, as soon as anyone works out how.

Cougar, nice one thank you, I'm clearly an eejit!! 😉

[IMG] [/IMG]

What flames?

But isn't the main issue the fact there's issues. Maserati affecting a lot of users/customers. Logging out when remember me is hit etc etc.

I understand the mods frustration at yet another bloody thread but why is the new thread happening?

I haven't checked but how easy is reporting the issue to the relevant tech given all the info they'd want?

I can only really access the site on Android and even then I think it successful 50% of the time the rest it's either blocked with an ad or blackness envelopes the screen.

It's more frustration at continually having to field these threads. I understand that it's frustrating for those affected of course, but opening Yet Another Bloody Thread achieves absolutely nothing.

Well, if the search function was any good, maybe users would be able to find old threads rather than start new ones. 😈

[quote=bongohoohaa ]

It's more frustration at continually having to field these threads. I understand that it's frustrating for those affected of course, but opening Yet Another Bloody Thread achieves absolutely nothing.

Oh, never mind 🙂

bikebouy said it best "Nobody is listening to you". except cougar who by his own admission is nobody,you are the product,why pay to be what is for sale... 😆

I pay, but post much less frequently as I am constantly logged out. Of course, this means I have the insane adverts.

It's a shame, but like many others...it's the reason I don't really have much to say here any more.

I never look at the rest of the site, too much hard work.

I think we'd all like to see a bit more pro-active problem resolution.

Sure, and I don't want to sound like an apologist. I'd like to see that too, it'd make my life easier! I can only assume it's down to finding the time, there's always priorities.

if the search function was any good

I use this:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/search-the-current-site/jliolpcnkmolaaecncdfeofombdekjcp?hl=en

I'm half inclined to see if we can make a sticky Advert thread, then everything is in one place for tracking purposes and I don't have to keep saying the same thing over and over.

I'm half inclined to see if we can make a sticky Advert thread

Please do, it'll make your life easier and probably everyone elses as it means less replication. In theory at least.

Why is it just you that keeps saying the same thing though? Why can't the owners come on and tell us what they are doing to fix the issues? Can't replicate an issue doesn't mean there isn't one...given the volume of complaint threads suggests there is.
Until it is fixed, users will keep posting issues. Putting them in 1 thread allows the owners to ignore a single point rather than seeing a frequency.

footflaps - Member
I really don't understand why anyone is not running a browser with an ad blocker enabled by default?

POSTED 10 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

Sorry Modz & Da Ownerz..

But this ^^

And get a P obvz

bikebouy - Member
footflaps - Member
I really don't understand why anyone is not running a browser with an ad blocker enabled by default?
POSTED 10 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

Sorry Modz & Da Ownerz..

But this ^^

And get a P obvz

Ditto.

Also fail to see why Cougar feels he has to take responsibility for answering the whiners and requests that he stops this admirable yet fruitless approach and starts to shovel the shit upwards.

My observation being that it is more often than not, the unpaid volunteer mods fielding the issues that really need to be addressed more regularly by those with more vested interests.

That said, quite why people who use this fine resource and expect to freeload is bewildering... 😕

But it's not just 'freeloaders' is it? Like others I too am regularly booted out and have the advert joys trying log in so not really a valid point is it?
And as above why should I be expected alter my setup across multiple devices to counter a glitch here, and only experienced with this site?

Jeebus! I will occasionally get logged out, maybe once a fortnight, I use the link ( favourite bookmarked ) that Cougar reposted (again) on the previous page and I log back in. Not difficult, or particularly time consuming and my rural broadband speed is circa 1 - 2Mbps.

I also access this on 3 different iOS devices and found the finger pressing button selecting set up not quite as arduous as sailing across the Atlantic...

Now now now and free free free. Youth eh?

I wonder how much traffic there would be if the "freeloaders" had a viable alternative? A damn sight less I imagine. Funny how so many sites manage to survive on donations and a couple of top banner ads (Descent World and SDH at their height managed to get by rather well) yet a supposed business venture can't scrape enough cash together to keep going so floods users with shite to keep the pennies rolling in.

(Descent World and SDH at their height managed to get by rather well)

The "glory days" of sites like that were prior to the major publishers putting much effort into the online side of things. As long as you got your results and reports up in a couple of weeks you were going to beat the publishers to it, so it was easy for a group of volunteers to run a successful site. Now most of the biggest names in cycling journalism are being paid to write for online sites, so the bills stack up.

DW was reliant on an army of volunteers to produce content and manage the upkeep. I sunk hundreds of hours and pounds into it myself for nothing more than the love of it and the free kit for reviews. The income from ads paid for the hosting and I think I got a couple of hundred quid towards flights to Leogang one year, not that I begrudge it at all, but it's not comparable to the current situation which requires significantly more income not just to pay for the production of content, but hosting, design etc.

Consider also the scale, obviously I know the DW stats of yesteryear and working in the online advertising industry I have access to some of the stats for the current crop of MTB sites. These days you are talking about sites that are bigger by a factory of 20, 30, 40 times! It's total apples and pears.

As Tenacious Doug says - huge difference between an "enthusiasts site" that exists on free content and just needs to cover hosting costs, and an actual business that has to (and rightly should) pay wages. Sadly this is one of the disconnects in modern times where people don't want to pay for content (either directly or by being sold as an audience to advertisers), yet somehow expect people to put in time, resource etc to create the content.

I fully support the owners making as much money as possible to pay wages and not have to shed staff/contributors due to not enough revenue. If there's the odd rogue ad, that's just one of those things. In the scheme of things it's not really a big hardship.

Precisely you two there is no comparison between DW and here cost wise.

I'm sure Tommy, Jon and Ian would see the funny side.

That's in the new version of the ...

They managed to create a 'new' one for Grit.cx. The problem is that i suspect that Grit has sucked up a lot of time and money, with the resulting noticable impact on here.

You're frustrated at fielding complaints about how abysmally crap and intrusive the ad experience is here?

Boo bloody hoo. Perhaps if someone listened and fixed it, there wouldn't be so many complaints.

I'd like to thank Cougar for putting his head above the parapet and answering questions, and, yes, it might be a good idea for a thread like this to be a sticky.

In the end this place is a consumer choice, but lucky to be one with little competition perhaps?

With 500,000 Facebook likes, or whatever it is, a lot of traffic, and a magazine that seems to do ok, there must be a way to be more selective and intelligent about the way the ads are presented. And also fix the logout thing. We shouldn't need to use Cougars link or ad blockers.

+1

The ads and logging out let down an otherwise great site.

I've had to resort to using an adblocker on the phone to read the site as it sucks so much data per page loading all the ads, also really clogs up the RAM too after a few pages. Don't know another site like it!! Even the crap BikeRadar site works better 😐

On the laptop at home I don't have a problem as my connection speed is so slow that the ads never get a chance to fully load although I do notice the ridiculous amount of ad-tracking things that try to load up, 20 or so last time I checked. Considering this forum is one of the simpler ones out there (two sub-forums, mostly text with no avatars or other stuff, part of it's attraction) it's amazing how much data it sucks up to load one sodding page!

Sounds like this is the Facebook of bike forums...the data being captured could be sold to fund vast improvements (and reduce the number of complaints)...

how abysmally crap and intrusive the ad experience is here

just sat here reading the maserati recall thread, and knowing how it happens on here, its now becoming a bit of a joke brand due to the big ad.....

is this actually a ( very small) backfire for them? yeah i know realistically we werent gonna buy one anyway, but if google brings up stw threads slagging them off and in our little world theyre just one big joke, is this a negative? or is it really as they say, no such thing as bad publicity?

I was going to reply to this thread, but just got a redirect to William Hill app on iOS app store 🙁

is this actually a ( very small) backfire for them? yeah i know realistically we werent gonna buy one anyway, but if google brings up stw threads slagging them off and in our little world theyre just one big joke, is this a negative? or is it really as they say, no such thing as bad publicity?

[IMG] [/IMG]

i know realistically we werent gonna buy one anyway

Sadly this is one of the disconnects in modern times where people don't want to pay for content

But I do pay for it. In fact, it is about the only web content that I do pay for, apart from BBC via Licence Fee.

Anyway, I use the site much less now than I did in the past because of exactly the reasons covered in this, and numerous other, threads.

- Log out issue affect all of my browsers and devices, every day.
- Log-in button is the last thing to load, it can take up to 3 minutes before I can click it
- Maserati add is huge and when I hit the x, I get taken through the the page of the ad that sits behind it.

The log-in workaround helps, but it is still exactly that, a workaround.

Yeah, there are two issues here and they are being conflated. Anyone paying for an ad-free experience should expect it to work. As I've already said, there should be some sort of error reporting button to collect some user data in order to develop a fix or to highlight what settings etc are causing the problem (could be a ducks-on-water thing going on where STW towers are hard at work but we're not seeing it).

Having said that, maybe if more folk subscribed there would be more money to finance that investigation. It's a bit chicken-and-egg though as who would subscribe knowing they might still have problems?

Anyone paying for an ad-free experience should expect it to work.

....and don't forget those non-Ps who have considered going full P, but don't because of the issues described by current Ps.

I need a pee now. brb.

Having said that, maybe if more folk subscribed there would be more money to finance that investigation.

Or cull grit.cx.

I'm a big 'P' and I don't have any problems on Mac or iPhone using Firefox on Mac and using Google as my default search thingy.

- Log out issue affect all of my browsers and devices, every day.

So the million dollar question here is, what's common to all of your browsers but different from most other users (like, as a random example, me) who get logged out around once or twice a month?

....and don't forget those non-Ps who have considered going full P, but don't because of the issues described by current Ps.

I've worked in and around support for a couple of decades, and if I had a pound for for every time I'd heard variations on "I've never spent any money, but I was about to and now I'm not" I could afford to buy out GoFar and rewrite the forum myself.

So the million dollar question here is, what's common to all of your browsers but different from most other users (like, as a random example, me) who get logged out around once or twice a month?

Chrome at work on PC
Safari at home on iPad
Chrome on Android phone
IE on work PC

Not a lot in common there.

Any plugins / addons? Any other software running that might be frobbing your cookies (so to speak)?

You see Cougar, this is the problem; you are trying to get to the bottom of it in a piecemeal manner, often asking questions the users may not even know the answer to (or worse, think they do but don't). I know you are trying to help, so it's not a dig at you, but it really does need some more accurate and reliable method of problem determination.

I would consider subscribing but if I'm paying I expect a decent modern forum, of which this is neither. You couldn't even put it in the same century to be honest as DW was a far better forum when I joined in 2002.

Doug & Andy - I wasn't comparing STW content to DW or SDH, sorry for not making that clearer. I was referring to the forums on a pure like for like basis. STW, of course, is a business and its content should be paying for itself through mags. As far as I'm concerned the forums are nothing more than publicity, giving people a reason to get in the door so to speak. It's not a community first and foremost and I realise its business model is different but that still doesn't excuse the complete lack of communication or effort by the tech staff beyond Mark coming on once in a blue moon to tell us we're all wrong.

Put it this way, here's some off the shelf forum software that a forum of mostly 18-25yo gamers managed to afford last week when our site crashed jsut from ewxisting donation funds:

https://xenforo.com/purchase/

$190 for the forum software plus enhanced search, $440 if you wanted the copyright branding removed. With a bit of effort it could be rolled out in a month allowing for normal work schedules and the fact it's not an emergency restoration (we did it in about 3 days using 3 people starting the entire site and backend including sourcing a new server from scratch as there were no backups since the passwords were in the wind). That's small change or certainly should be for what is arguably the biggest draw to your business.