Intrusive Ads

[Mach2]

Has anyone taken notice of the advertising space on the right side of member posts? It pushes up against the actual font of the post itself without even a single letter space of separation. The margin is encroached upon. It makes it troublesome to read posts. Advertising on the internet in general has become more aggressive recently but this latest problem here in this forum is an "in your face" style of advertising. It seems to border on harassment.

[Hotolds442]

They are easily minimized for me, on both iPad and iPhone, and take up no space at all.

[Mach2]

They are easily minimized for me, on both iPad and iPhone, and take up no space at all.

Those ads shouldn't be there. Google has become an out of control monster virus. Google does not own the internet. Those ads should be above or below a post but never should they share the same line as the font. We are not watching a copyrighted video when reading a post. Google has no legal right to that space. I guarantee you that Google will be splitting posts in half with ads before long. What they are doing now is invading inside the margin of a post.

[kdvarmint]

Google has no legal right to that space.
How do you know? Is it an agreement with the forum? Are they a paying sponsor? I don't know. I'm not a paid member so I won't give an opinion and start a train wreck.

[J.Baker]

The solution is as simple as spending $15 for a paid membership as those ads in the first and last posts of threads only display to registered users. It's your choice whether or not you want to buy a membership, just as it's my choice to find an alternative method to still make some money off those who choose not to.

[Mach2]

J Baker when you write a letter do you put the greeting and salutation on the same lines as the body of the letter. No you don't. The post itself should have a margin that isn't encroached just as the ad shouldn't have the font from the post encroach upon it either. It's a matter of correct placement. The ads literally touch the font of the posts. That is 3 spaces too close.

[kdvarmint]

The solution is as simple as spending $15 for a paid membership as those ads in the first and last posts of threads only display to registered users. It's your choice whether or not you want to buy a membership, just as it's my choice to find an alternative method to still make some money off those who choose not to.

Just as I figured. Works 4 me.

[stangfish]

Mach 2. Desktop, laptop or I phone?

[Mach2]

Im on laptop.

[stangfish]

Is your text size set too large? Are you in a high magnification mode? What version browser are you using?

[Mach2]

This is 8.1 Windows. I use 100% ans125% magnification typically. Just this week I began to see what appears to be a shift in graphics locations. I was just looking at other settings to see if anything here has been changed by me.

[stangfish]

I experienced the same thing as paid member last year. I tried a different browser and had no problems. I downloaded the old IE9 and that fixed it. I re-upgraded to IE 10 and still have problems with things like editing a post on this forum but the other issues went away. I say it is the NSA.

[Mach2]

I say it is the NSA.

Probably is them. Dunno why we have the NSA. Islamic countries call our FBI and tell them there is a really bad guy in our country from their country that we should arrest and we ignore them

[stangfish]

They are after us not them.

[squirrelsniper]

I don't really find the ads that annoying. I mean, you get to use the site for free if you wish, so how do you expect the site admin to pay for all this stuff?

[Hotolds442]

I had problems earlier this week with tapatalk taking up the top half of every forum I visited that was running vbulletin. It had a close button, but it did nothing. I downloaded the free version of tapatalk, and it still would not go away. I finally ended up having to allow third party cookies, opening the forum, clicking the close box, and then shutting off third party cookies. Advertisers are now taking over the forums in creative ways. They're not doing it through individual forums either, it's across the board. The forums I run had the same problem and I found that by enabling tapatalk in the forum, you enable their embedded code that allows them to do pretty much whatever they want in their own little (not really little) space. I solved that by removing a line of code. I imagine that if they can tell you're not using tapatalk, they are probably collecting a lot more than that every time you visit a forum.

[J.Baker]

Advertisers don't take over anything - the person who owns the site and enables certain ad features and/or designates their own banner ad locations is what dictates what's seen and where. Has nothing to do with Google AdSense or any other online advertising partner.

3rd party apps like TapaTalk and such for phones and tablets are a totally different animal as they (those providing the app) can dictate what's included. Ads are especially intrusive in free apps as it's those ads that allow the app to be offered for free in the first place. Everyone seems to think everything on the internet is somehow free when in fact it's paid for in one way or another - directly or indirectly.

As I said above, this particular ad placement that only shows for non-registered and registered users is our indirect way of making some money off those who choose to benefit from the site without directly supporting it by purchasing a paid membership.

[Hotolds442]

Although mostly true, when you enabled the site to work with tapatalk, you allowed them to search my device for it. When it didn't find it, it put this huge banner on top of the forum telling me to download tapatalk for free, and I could not close it. I had the same issue on a couple of sites I run, so I found the enable code and disabled it. This came from nowhere on Thursday morning, and affected both my iOS devices for every forum I visited using vbulletin. I did not have the app installed at that time, and assumed it was something Apple did for us through Safari. A little searching revealed a workaround, so I disabled the detect JavaScript on my forums.
If you scroll to the top of this page, everything above the ad banner was hidden from view by the banner with no way to access it, making the user CP basically worthless. Tapatalk took over the top of the forum.
Removing the detect Java was simple,
Go to AdminCP -> Plugins and Products -> Plugin Manager -> Locate "Tapatalk: Add Tapatalk detect JS" -> Click on "Edit", on "Plugin is Active", set to "NO", and click "Save and Reload".
If you're interested.

and the actual code used to search devices:
<!-- Tapatalk Banner head start -->
<link href="'.$tapatalk_dir_url.'/smartbanner/appbanner.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<script type="text/javascript">
var is_mobile_skin = '.$is_mobile_skin.';
var app_ios_id = "'.intval($app_ios_id).'";
var app_android_id = "'.addslashes($app_android_id).'";
var app_kindle_url = "'.addslashes($app_kindle_url).'";
var app_banner_message = "'.addslashes($app_banner_message).'";
var app_forum_name = "'.addslashes($app_forum_name).'";
var app_location_url = "'.addslashes($app_location_url).'";
</script>
<script src="'.$tapatalk_dir_url.'/smartbanner/appbanner.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<!-- Tapatalk Banner head end-->


It's no longer an issue on my devices, but I'll bet money others have or have had the same issue.
Whether you do anything with this info or not doesn't matter to me, and I only mentioned it because I was pissed when I found out they were screwing with the functionality of my boards. And they have done it to yours too.

and I'm all in favor of you making as much as you can, I know what it costs.

[J.Baker]

I don't access the site much via my phone as it's a real pain to do most mod or admin functions through TapaTalk.

As for the huge banner across the top of Safari, mine shows an X to close it just to the left of the TapaTalk logo. Hit it and the banner goes away so I don't see why it's such a huge problem. *shrugs* Leaving the JS script enabled ensures that those visiting the site in Safari will know that there's a better, more user friendly app available to view the forum with so I see it as more of a positive thing than a negative thing.

That said I haven't updated the site to the newest updated version of TT yet so there may have been some additional change I'm not aware of, but that new version announcement was just emailed out last week.

[Hotolds442]

Mine showed the x too, but it didn't do anything. The banner just wouldn't close on either device.

shrug all you want, it was a pain in the rear not being able to access the user cp.

at least you know there's options if TT becomes too intrusive.