What is with the ads all of a sudden?

General Discussion
1

All of a sudden CarTalk is looking like a click bait site. The pop-ups just keep coming.

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2

Where on the screen do the ads appear? I havenā€™t noticed any new ad placement strategy, but Iā€™ve noticed in recent weeks the ads that appear in between the posts are now changing size more often, and when they do it makes the postings move up and down and become very hard to read through the list. Is that what you are noticing? Iā€™ll mention that I havenā€™t seen this happen today (7.13.2024).

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3

Loosely being talked about hereā€¦

Sluggish forum-site response

4

There was a banner across the bottom and a very annoying video coming in from the right side. If you clicked it off, it came right back.

Iā€™m not seeing right now though.

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5

I see them also, on desktop and mobiles. Pop-up blockers enabled on all.

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6

Happened yesterday I think, I just exited out and pulled it right back up and they are goneā€¦

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7

Clicking the X or ā€˜Close Adā€™ fields in the corner of some ads only TAKES YOU TO some fo the ads, not close them.

8

Itā€™s a wildly spammy platform. Iā€™m sure I should change browsers or settings or whatever. But Iā€™m on quite a few sites. This one ranks up there with the worst.

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9

@keith

All of a sudden CarTalk is looking like a click bait site. The pop-ups just keep coming.

Are you running with the Chrome browser?

If so, I wonder if the sudden change youā€™re experiencing is due to this recent change, and that you began seeing it once your browser got updated:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-chrome-change-that-weakens-ad-blockers-begins-june-3rd/
or hereā€™s another link:
Google Chrome will limit ad blockers starting June 2024 | Ars Technica

In that case, try a non-Chrome browser with one of the popular ad-block extensions enabled.

10

I use AdBlock Plus with both Firefox and Safari and have no problems.

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11

Keith (post 3 above) says: There was a banner across the bottom and a very annoying video coming in from the right side. If you clicked it off, it came right back.

If scrolling moves the banner up/down along with the posts, thatā€™s an in-between posts ad. Those are just the price of admission. Likewise, the video at the bottom right. I canā€™t remove that one either, but I find it is easily ignored. The adā€™s pay the bills here, and for this forum to remain the bills must be paid. So some user tolerance for the ads is required. My only complaint about the ads are the in-between posts ads that change dimensions. These cause the entire thread to bounce up and down, making it hard to read through the posts.

When I first surf to CarTalk.com every day I usually click on one of the car photos on the first page. I expect that probably helps funds the site.

12

Firefox and uBlock Origin. No ads.

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13

Using Chrome the ads are a rectangle across the bottom and a pop-up video selling something along the right side. My experience is like the others, itā€™s a Whack-A-Mole game to keep them from covering up things Iā€™m reading. If I try to draft and post a reply I can see most of the draft Iā€™m creating, but itā€™s often hard to proof read it without fighting off the ads, and I have to X out the bottom banner and click the red Reply button fast, before the banner blocks it out again.

In Firefox, no ads.

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14

Iā€™m using Safari without any ad blockers. Whatever happened has gone away. Iā€™m seeing the normal amount of ads again. A few ads I can tolerate, the site needs some revenue to pay the bills. The ā€œclick baitā€ was unexpected and annoying.

3 Likes
15

Is anyone else seeing ads here about parasites?

16

Ads are parasites. :wink:

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17

Get ready to be cancelled. LOL

18

Noā€¦ not yet.

19

hmmm ā€¦ interesting. It seems nobody else here is being sent ads for treatment of infectious parasites. Of late Iā€™m subjected to a dozen or more each session. Maybe I have this problem, but donā€™t know it? ā€¦ lol ā€¦ Definitely seems an unusual advertising subject for a car-forum. I havenā€™t seen any today , hopefully theyā€™re now gone for good.

20

At some point you did a search that somehow caused those ads to pop up because of the cookies that are now on your system. There are various solutions, but thatā€™s for you and your IT friend to work through.

1 Like