Preventing Ads From Splitting Text Modules

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   eugbugposted 4 years ago

   Ads get inserted between paragraphs in text modules, which can split them up and make it difficult for a reader to follow a passage of text. However I discovered if you use a soft return, shift enter, instead of a normal hard return, it prevents this from happening. A soft return while creating the appearance of a new paragraph, only adds an end of line (EOL) character in the HTML. So the ad placement system won't place an ad (it doesn't break up lines in paragraphs, only splits between consecutive paragraphs). You can create no space between lines or one or more line spaces by using multiple soft returns. Just press shift enter for each line.
   
   
   

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      wildernessposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Interesting.  And useful; thanks, Eugene!

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      samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      It looks like you're adding extra white space, but I'm not sure. If that's the case, it will probably be removed by your editor.

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         eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         That's just because I added two lines Samantha, or maybe three. A single shift enter won't actually add any extra line (unlike the line space added between paragraphs when just enter is pressed).

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      Carb Divaposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I'll start doing that. You are so much more adept at this than most of us (or at least me). Thank you for your help on this "we didn't want it" transformation. I'm an old dog but maybe I can still learn a few new tricks.

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      chef-de-jourposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Eugene you are a wizard when it comes to sussing out the issues still at large in this new migration. I've been thinking about this problem of unwanted ads for ages but do not have your logical/technical skills. Well done, we're all appreciative I'm sure.
      
      So all we do is find the capsule where the ad pops up, get to the last word of the paragraph, press shift and the ad will disappear or move? What do you mean by 'single shift enter' - is that shift and enter simultaneously? Or just the shift key?

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         eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Position the cursor at the end of the last word of the paragraph (you can use your "end" key) and press delete so that the first line of the paragraph underneath is drawn up to the same line that the cursor is on (if there are several lines, you may have to press delete multiple times) Then press shift followed by enter, holding both down at the same time. (sorry by "single shift enter" in a previous post, I meant  one "shift enter", i.e. doing it once).
         
         

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            bravewarriorposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            Do the ads show up when you're in edit mode in HP? I don't recall that they do. So do you employ your workaround after each paragraph?
            
            Also, do you type your posts directly into the text capsules? I copy/paste from Word. Does that make a difference?

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               eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

               No, only when the article is saved and viewed in author mode. I type directly into the text modules. In any of the modules where splitting and ad placement is occuring, I delete the paragraph HTML tag, bringing the paragraph up to the current line as described in my earlier post. You can check the HTML code of text when editing a text module (just click the "HTML" button) Paragraphs with hard returns will have the <p> and </p> HTML tags at the beginning and end respectively of the paragraph.

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                  bravewarriorposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  That's a bit tecchy for me, Eugene. Because I copy/paste from Word, I don't hit enter after each paragraph. Nor do I hit enter once I've completed the paste in each text module. Does that make a difference?

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                     eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                     It's only a problem if you find ads are splitting your paragraphs. As I described, all you need to do then is delete from the end of the paragraph to make the text a single block and put shift enters in where you want them. This does however turn the text into a single paragraph, so the same formatting will be applied to the merged text.

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                        bravewarriorposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                        I don't see ads splitting paragraphs in my articles, but I do see ads placed between my photos and the captions. The placement makes no sense. If an ad must appear, at least place it after the caption, not before!
                        
                        Samantha, is this something you can address with staff?

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                           samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                           We are aware of the situation, but unfortunately, that is something that we are unable to fix for now.

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                           Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                           I noticed that with the thumbnail photo's as well. Although I find the ad after every 5th photo more intrusive.  Nothing like trying to follow step by step directions and getting interrupted with ads. That's something that would make me find a new recipe or set of instructions real quick.
                           
                           I don't know how the ads are placed (I'm pretty sure they are random though, not set like they were previously), but from what Samantha has said in the past they are not looking to change it.
                           
                           It seems like the thumbnail photo's and their captions are treated as separate entities which does not make sense considering the caption changes when the photo changes. I wonder if it has something to do with the formatting? Every new photo scrolled through also creates an issue with the back arrow. You have to click back for every photo you scroll through which is also annoying.

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                              bravewarriorposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                              Not only that, but when we upload photos into the photo capsule, we enter the source and caption in the same box/module. So, how does text become separated from the photos once moved to the Maven software?

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      samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Fixes for these things often involve us overwriting the HTML, so if we fix it, it might make them have to revert what you've done. So we do discourage authors from finding workarounds, as that may complicate things down the line.
      
      Also, ads directly = author earnings, so if you are bumping ads around, it might reduce the strategic placement, and may be doing more harm than good.

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         Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         There is no strategic placement of ads though since the switch to Maven's platform. The ads are different on mobile vs desktop. The ads are not placed in the same way they were when we were on the HP platform.
         
         Can you tell us if the ads are going to be changed in the near future? From previous posts you said it was not going to change. I do not want ads before bullet lists, that is distruptive and not strategic placement at all.

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      Maffew Jamesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      It's because the HubPages text editor automatically handles the <p> tags for you when you hit return. If you input the formula in this way, it's setting it up as its own paragraph and telling the browser that this section of text is its own block.
      
      <p>
      Paragraph text
      </p>
      
      is effectively the same thing as:
      
      <br>
      Paragraph text
      <br>
      
      ...in terms of how it looks on the screen. There are differences, like <p> making the section of text a block element, and letting you style all paragraph text collectively with CSS. In this case, one important distinction is that <p> tags are obviously telling the ad script where it can place ads and so there's that issue of getting an ad inserted between the preceding text and formula.
      
      Using shift return as you have really feels like the ideal way to section that text semantically anyway—before even considering the ad position—because the formula really doesn't stand alone as its own paragraph. It's a disconnect between how the text editor appears to present content, compared to the HTML it is creating.
      
      I think your method of forcing the text editor to input a <br> instead of starting a new <p> is the right way to deal with this in niche situations where you need to ensure an ad won't break up the text. The other option is to just write it all in one paragraph, then switch to the HTML mode and enter <br> tags where you want line breaks and this will still keep all that text in the same <p> tag.
      
      The only alternatives for a HubPages fix would probably be changes to the text editor to make the writer more aware of what their text will look like to a browser, or changing how ads are positioned, which is tricky because <p> is such a nice sectioning tool to partition ads between text. If it can't be used, you'd have to do something like put entire text capsules into classed <div> tags and target ads between those.
      
      I don't agree with other people's complaints about not wanting any ads inside text capsules, because placing ads between <p> tags is common practice all over the internet and users are more likely to actually engage with an ad when it is positioned in this manner, integrated into the content. If people specifically don't want certain text broken, they should ensure it's all in the same <p> tag themselves.
      
      HubPages may have done it differently, but it was a dated implementation that had lower ad earnings as a result. The business can't survive without a decent income, and that income is also directly proportional to ours because they're not making money if we're not. Both parties win when more money is being made. I like my readers, the community, and formatting an aesthetic piece of content but I also expect a return on my investment as I'm sure many others here do.
      
      I do agree that ads shouldn't be placed in the middle of comments, however, and I'm sure they'll fix that when they've developed a new solution for comments and can reinstate the system. Right now it's clearly functioning the same within the comments section—targeting between <p> tags for ad positioning—and will require some additional logic to treat that section differently.

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         eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         In a multi-lined mathematical derivation with lots of lines of equations, I definitely don't want ads splitting up the flow. A show/hide codes button like there is in Word would be useful so we know exactly where the breaks are and what type they are.

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            Maffew Jamesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            What if that show/hide code toggle also placed borders around each paragraph during editing? Somewhat like this:
            
            
            Gives a clear visual representation of all the areas ads can potentially appear in for situations where the writer needs to avoid the text being split unintentionally.

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               eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

               Support for &NBSP would be useful too.
               I just noticed that the text editor supports the <pre> tag and pre-formatted text, so we can have multiple spaces at the beginning of a line. Unfortunately text appears using a fixed space terminal font.
               For example:
               
               <pre>     This   text      has    lots    of     spaces</pre>
               
               Gives this:
               
                    This   text      has    lots    of     spaces

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2. 95

   eugbugposted 4 years ago

   This is a single soft break.
   
   

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      samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Gotcha. Do you have a live example of a text capsule being broken up for our engineering team or did you already fix everything?

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         eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         I can "unfix" it

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   eugbugposted 4 years ago

   ...and this is two soft breaks:
   
   
   

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   eugbugposted 4 years ago

   Ok, I took all the soft breaks out and just created a new paragraph, i.e. hit enter after "...amps:" in the text.
   
   This is the HTML. I tried posting text, put the post seems to be stripping out the codes and interpreting them.
   
   
   
   ....and this is the ad being placed between paragraphs:
   
   
   
   
   ...also the link to the article:
   
   https://dengarden.com/home-improvement/ … Multimeter

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      wildernessposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      There is another one, further down in the same article.  Ironically, it advertised a kitchen faucet in an article on electricity.
      
      

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         eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Probably lots of them in this and other articles because I use new paragraphs whenever I do equations Hopefully HubPages engineering can sort it so I don't have to fix them all.

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      bravewarriorposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I counted 12 ads running thru the middle of the page/text of the article, 1 ad between the end of the article and the comments that have been carried over, and 8 ads interspersed between comments. That's 21 articles running in the middle of the page!

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         eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Hmm, do we make any more money by generating all these ads with lots of paragraphs?  I thought originally there was a fixed number of ad placements. Do longer articles have more ads and earn potentially more?

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            bravewarriorposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            That could be, Eugene. I just checked one of my articles that's on ToughNickel. It's not as long as yours and has 51 comments that were carried over. Here's what I found:
            
            8 ads running thru the copy
            0 ads between the end of the copy and comments
            12 ads running thru the comments
            
            So, there are 20 ads running throughout the whole shebang. I didn't even count what's running in the margins (on yours or mine).

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               bravewarriorposted 4 years agoin reply to this

               Just checked one of my articles on TurboFuture. 5 ads within the copy, nothing between end of copy and comments, but a whopping 18 ads sprinkled within the 97 comments. Total 23. Twenty something seems to be the targeted number of ads on each page. I wonder how this will transfer to new articles that will no longer allow comments. Hmmmm.....

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            samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            I counted 14 on an article with a length of 1,899 words, 14 on an article with 1,547 words, and 21 on an article with 3,947. Around 3-4 of those ads in all articles were the right-hand side scroller that just kind of cycled, rather than pop up consecutively—so I'm not sure if I'd really count them as separate ads. By my findings, I assume that yes, length does have something to do with it, as does the number of comments. But I'm not sure if there's an actual set number. The comments thing won't really matter as they will be reinstated eventually and most content on the site that isn't new already has a couple.

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               Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

               I'm not finding that to be the case. I'm curious if tables and maps cause less ads in an article? That's the only thing I can think of, based on what I'm seeing on my articles.
               
               I have a 2991 article with only 5 ads throughout the whole article and nothing in the comments/Q&A (but that section is very small. No Q&A, only 8 comments). This article has a table.
               
               Another article has a table and a map and only has 7 ads throughout the whole article/Q&A/comments (1557 words, 12 Q&A, and 19 comments).
               
               A 1776 word article on the other hand with no table/map/ect has a total of 19 ads spread throughout (6 in the body, 6 in Q&A, and 5 in the comments). However a 2785 word article with no added features only has 11, but the comments section is much smaller so I'm assuming that plays a small role as well otherwise they would be very similar (8 in the body, 3 in Q&A).

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                  samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  Haha, you're thorough. I'm not exactly sure then, but what you're saying makes sense.

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                     Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                     When I saw Bravewarriors comment farther up I was kind of confused because I never remembered seeing quite that many on mine. Figured I'd see what mine were when I saw your numbers and could compare article length lol.
                     
                     I don't write on the sites she listed and I'm not sure what site/s you where looking, at but I'm assuming all sites would run on the same basis? For example if there was a set number or if it's based off how many words are in an article. Or however ad placement is determined.
                     
                     I know some sites/topics have better paying ads, but the placement of those ads I assume would be roughly the same across all network sites.
                     
                     Edit to add I think the recipe template also limits ads. I don't know exactly how many words it was as it was not my article, but it only had 2 ads in the body and 2 within each of the thumb nails for a total of only 4 ads plus an additional 2 in the comments.
                     
                     It almost seems like using these features are a disadvantage in regards to ads being placed on these articles.

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         bravewarriorposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Oops. I meant to say that's 21 ads running through the middle of your article.

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      samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you for this, Eugene. I will get back to you with the team's findings. I'll have to see whether the length affects ads.

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         bravewarriorposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         You're welcome. I'm curious to find out what the driving force is behind the stats.

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   Glenn Stokposted 4 years ago

   Thanks, Eugene. This is extremely useful. Using two soft returns instead of a hard return, as you explained, will produce the same paragraph break and avoid ads that interfere with text that needs to remain unified within a capsule.

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      eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I mentioned incorrectly that an EOL is added in the HTML at the start of the post. I should have said a <br> tag. I presume behind the scenes, the browser just interprets this as an instruction to add a CRLF pair and nothing else whereas a <p> tag for a new paragraph generates a carriage return/line feed, plus an extra line and also the end tag </p> marks the end of the style for the previous paragraph? CRLFs used to do my head in when I was involved in design of software for telemetry and reading from modems.

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   Shesabutterflyposted 4 years ago

   Thank you for this! I've been trying to fix two of my articles to try and move the ads out of the middle with no luck. Appreciate you sharing your knowledge with all of us!
   
   Samantha can you ask about the ads that pop up in the middle of the Q&A and comments? They show up in the middle of some of them rather than before/after. Is there anything that can be done if they are static?

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      samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I didn't know that was happening. Yes, I will ask.
      
      Edit: We will need you to send us examples to diagnose the issue.

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         Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         
         
         
         
         
         
         
         
         
         
         The one between the question and answer I don't find as intrusive, but it makes more sense to have them always at the end of the answers to help the reader not miss anything.

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            samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            Can you please also include a link? Thank you.

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               Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

               Ads appear this way on most articles I view with comments and Q&A, however these are the links the screenshots are from.
               
               https://delishably.com/desserts/Soft-Cookies-Everytime
               
               https://owlcation.com/humanities/Compar … e-and-John

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                  samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                  Hmm. I don't see ads breaking up comments, but I do see them in between Q&As. I've asked about this, and it seems like if the ad isn't breaking up a text block, it's not considered something that needs to be addressed right now.
                  
                  I have noticed it breaking up the commenter and the comment, but again I don't see this as a major issue, at least not right now with comments being disabled.

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                     Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                     It's an issue in the sense that you don't know who is doing the commenting, but like you said since we cannot comment right now it's not a huge issue. The ads in the middle of the actual comment only happens on longer comments. I know you said it will not be changing right now with them being disabled, but here is an example anyway.
                     
                     https://wehavekids.com/education/How-to … That-Works
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     

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                        samanthacubbisonposted 4 years agoin reply to this

                        I see what you mean! It is probably treating it like a long text capsule, then. I have bugged the team about this several times, so hopefully it is addressed before comments are reinstated. Thank you for sending me those screenshots/links.

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   eugbugposted 4 years ago

   The only issue I've found with using a soft return is that block quotes used on a newly created line also indent the preceding lines (and create the vertical bars on the new platform). This is because a soft return only creates a new line, not a new paragraph.

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      Shesabutterflyposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Are you noticing different ad placement on mobile vs desktop? I know there are less options on moble for ad placement (no margin for example) so the likelihood of different placement is possible with their new ad layout. Or different ad placement every time you open the same article?
      
      I did some editing on my top 2 articles and when I checked on mobile the ad was gone from the spot above my bulleted list, but when I looked on my desktop the ad still shows above the bullets.
      
      How are you addressing the different ad placements between the two? When I fixed one area it simply shows up in the middle of the text in a different section. Are you doing the soft return for every new line? Are you only doing it once or more than that to adjust the ads for desktop view?

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         eugbugposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         I haven't checked on mobile. I didn't exhaustively check that all my returns are soft returns, just where ads split modules and then implemented the workaround for those cases.

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   eugbugposted 6 months ago

   Just bumping this long discussion up again. I know there're worse problems like ranking and traffic, but imagine if the text editor could add HTML div tags around the code corresponding to text in text modules when it's compiled to HTML? (Div tags are used to section off blocks of code) I've seen discussions elsewhere which suggest that add placement script avoids placing ads between paragraphs when blocks of code are encapsulated by divs. Someone else suggested in the  thread that breaking up text by ads can be a good thing as regards gaining a reader's attention, but not always so in my opinion, for instance if it's a mathematical derivation.

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   eugbugposted 6 months ago

   ....It would be up to us then to ensure paragraphs are sufficiently short so that sufficient ads can still be placed to generate revenue.

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