More ads than normal
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@moraghughson, @notthenewsinbriefs, @esuriitmonstrum, @ernesthides, @sholmes49, @diaemus, @renkuleader, and @walterpascoli, as well as @justjennifer — and I hope I didn’t miss anyone — can you confirm whether this situation has improved at all? We’ve been sharing your feedback with the ads team, and they’ve been iterating.
If you have more feedback, this what they’re currently asking for, particularly if the ads are still making the site hard to use:- Share a link to the affected page
- Share a screenshot. A full-screen capture with markup is most helpful
- Let us know whether you were using a desktop or mobile device
- Your thoughts on how it affects your site
- If the ad is inappropriate, please use the little icon in the corner to report the ad. You’ll see a message about the ad and a report option; use that if you will, please. If there’s an especially egregious ad you’d like to share with us, please include a screenshot and a link to the site (you should find something in the report screen).
And of course, if it’s a lot better now, we’d welcome that feedback, too!
Genuinely, thanks for your patience and candor on this. I know it’s been frustrating; the feedback you’ve shared is very helpful. -
Sorry to be late to this, but I have noticed this happening on my blog too. When I used to see the front of my blog, especially logged out, I would see one add in the sidebar and another placed near the bottom of the blog post. But these new ads completely ruin the screen and might make peope turn away without bothering to even scroll down to see the blog. I have my blog title on my desktop visible along with an ad that needs to be minimized to see the menu below the title, and a giant ad for a knife sharpener showing a huge horrible looking knife and nothing else on the screen. Can’t this ad box somehow be made smaller so more of the blog shows? I understand the need for free ads to run free blogs, but I don’t want people to stop visiting because they don’t like the ads. I have noticed a sudden DA drop recently which I wonder if it’s related to this. :/
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Thank you for your feedback and the screenshot. I’ve let our ads team know about your site so they can take a look. Out of curiosity, do you see the same issue with ads on a mobile device? If yes, would you be able to upload a screenshot of what your site looks like when on a mobile device?
Thanks!
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@supernovia That excerpt that I put on my front page? I was referring to a specific person who posted on Apr 3 (https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/censoring-mature-ads/) which no staff replied to, just other members saying to upgrade their plan. I know there’s a lot of people to address here for the support team, I guess one of the reasons we all congregated to one of the biggest threads.
And if I am to be fair, yes, the ads are getting a bit better — less stretching of the page with weirdly elongated ads and slightly less of them (down to five from eight). Still not super-pumped about an ad in the top banner, but it’s less unreadable.
Also, thanks for being discreet about my blog.
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@supernovia , thank you for your answer !
On my main website (walterpascoli art blog) I have a paid plan, but this website (222artblog) is also mine and it has a free plan . Look for example at this page : https://art222.art.blog/2022/08/25/pablo-picasso-2/
Nothing has changed on my 222artblog . The ads are present at the bottom of each article and are sometimes larger than the photo of the article. Sometimes ads are also on the home page. Screenshot taken this morning :
I am not sure that this is interesting for visitors …
Thank you .
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As you can see from the screenshot our blog is affected also. It is affected in such an extend way that except from the title on the home page the rest of the content is barely visible. Considering that this is a blog with articles that require a lot of reading we had many complaints from our visitors that the blog became dysfunctional. Moreover,they face an add which they’ll have to close in order to be able to read the desired article. We cant keep up with the new terms as we value the experience that we provide to our visitors. We are really hoping for a solution based on the previous productive experience we had working with wordpress.
https://oreinomeli.wordpress.com/
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@supernovia So since my site’s not so difficult to navigate any more, I’ve taken down my words asking my viewers to consider using AdBlock from my front page. I’m all for supporting sites where possible by disabling any ad-blocking software, but I still stand by the idea that increasing the number and intrusiveness will drive people towards using an ad-blocker, or avoiding the site altogether. I know Support isn’t involved with the decisions made, but like you say, this is another Catch-22 situation. Not enough ad revenue: increase ads, people use AdBlock even more.
Will still keep an eye on this topic though. Would be good not to have that ad underneath our banners.
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@supernovia This is the top post on the blog at 2100 hours on April 6, the banner has doubled in size thanks to an ad right underneath it, which isn’t very welcoming. The ads down the side are better than the ads in the post:
The ad on the left repeats in the text as a horizontal. The vertical ads to the side I can live with, the ones in the text are too big. https://taurangaorchids.wordpress.com/
Many thanks for your time and help with this.
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@supernovia TBH – I’m not seeing ads on my free sites while logged in or out. Nor, frustratingly in the context of this post, do I see ads when visiting the sites mentioned here, logged in or logged out. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Regardless, these sites with one exception are using Classic themes.
@esuriitmonstrum I replied in the forum thread you mentioned, but the site owner there was asking a slightly different question about being able to censor mature ads. If you have any question about that, could you please reply there so we don’t take this thread off-topic? Thanks in advance.
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Actually it wasn’t me who brought it up here. I mentioned that thread on my blog and staff saw it there, asked me which thread I was talking about here.
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@justjennifer No worries. From what I’ve seen you’re a very helpful member of the community.
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@themusingmeow I have also had this ad appearing multiple times on my posts and it’s really offensive having a huge stained blade appearing amongst your writing isn’t it?
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@supernovia My site isn’t any better. I am still getting multiple identical ads throughout every post and some of them are still impossible to remove. I particularly hate the celebrity ones (my site is mostly feminism-based and so celebrity culture is off-message and sometimes offensive) and I particularly object to the text being split up (ads at the side of the page I can live with). Here is one which keeps appearing but cannot be removed (clicking on the i takes you to the ‘Zemanta Privacy Policy’ page)
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Could someone please explain why WordPress can’t just revert to its previous format? Yesterday we had a battle strategy game advertised on a WW1 Remembrance page and today this. I think our website is under there somewhere. https://wardsendcemetery.wordpress.com/
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@aisajibaisajib Yes, this looks terrible on a mobile device too. Here is the screen on my phone when I first see my blog:
You can’t even see a blog name or anything when first loaded. If I scroll down and minimize the add on the top I get this add which is far too long and should be shorter:
Then the worst thing which is a new development on both desktop and mobile view is this! I’m really upset at this, when I click on any of the blog posts it loads a full page add that you have to click out of, I know from experiencing these ads on other websites that stuff like this is likely to make many leave the site without clicking through futher:
Finally when viewing a blog post on mobile there’s still a big banner ad at the toop followed by the same ad under the blog post before you get to the comments box and then being in the sidebar (which is at the bottom of the page in but more than once!)
This ad is huge when viewed on a mobile device. I understand it could be part of the sidebar, or at the end of the post which is where ads were usually placed, but this is too frequent for the same ad to be.
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I’d just like to add that again on the desktop today it still looks like this when loading the website:
And now experienced on desktop too the ad that forces you to turn it off just to view anything on the blog after clicking:
I KNOW what these ads make the blogs look like now…Clickbait sites! There’s too many ads and if they were smaller boxes I doubt any of us would be complaining, but this is like spam or those clickbait sites that force you to see tons of ads just to read an article. They slow down the site’s loading time swhich in turn lowers the domain authority and It’s disgusting to have so many. I know support team are trying, but you seriously need to feedback this to the ads team and whoever is on top of wordpress (or give me their details and I’ll do it) because people will NOT just pay a subscription to get rid of the ads, if anything bloggers will look to leave wordpress for good and find another free blog provider instead. This has really angered a lot of free wordpressers and it makes WP look really bad and is making our blogs look bad too, which if it does lead to less people visiting will just lead to ad revenue going down anyway as less people will visit these blogs with so many stupid ads.
I feel like I have to put a message on my blog or a sticky post just to apologize for wordpress’s lack of care for it’s community of bloggers. The ad forcing to click through for me is the most irksome. And if the banner ad at the top of the blog was not as tall then I wouldn’t be so annoyed.
Btw @justjennifer are you using an ad blocker?
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Thanks, everyone. We’ll keep sharing your feedback with the ads team, even if we can’t reply to all of it.
TBH – I’m not seeing ads on my free sites while logged in or out. Nor, frustratingly in the context of this post, do I see ads when visiting the sites mentioned here, logged in or logged out.
Now that is very curious @justjennifer! It could be that the ad network doesn’t have anything to show you. Personally, I can’t escape reminders of every dog treat, toy, or accessory I’ve ever investigated. I won’t make you test that! But it does make me wonder how varied the experience is as a site visitor.
and @esuriitmonstrum, thanks; that’s good to know at least staff didn’t respond that way. Obviously, upgrading is better for us, but we don’t want explicit ads either. And
From what I’ve seen you’re a very helpful member of the community.
She is a star. 🤩 And we appreciate your help in this thread, too!
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@notthenewsinbriefs – could you get a screenshot of the screen the little triangle icon takes you to? It should say something about the ads, but also give you the option to report it and let you choose one of these reasons.
For what it’s worth, though, I would avoid using that form to report ads that are causing problems with your layout. Send that feedback our way instead.
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