Using Edge. Blank spaces. Let's hope this is a temporary glitch/technical issue!
Ads are steadily returning, like lost salmon, to articles here in UK, England. Hold your breath.....
I'm seeing ads using Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Are you using an ad blocker, VPN, antivirus, or have enhanced tracking protection enabled on Chrome? If so, turn those off and see if that helps.
No Matt. Ad blocker turned off and not using a VPN. However ads have now returned. The video also seems to be partially covering the sidebar ad.
Thanks for responding, Matt. It's something different. We are all experiencing this issue, except the US users.
Back to SQ1 I'm afraid. No ads on Owlcation articles viewing here in UK. Again.
After adding sites to Tracking Prevention in Settings, as advised by Eugene, ads returned temporarily. Now I'm just confused and concerned. What happens next? I emailed the team@HP and was referred back to the forum. Frustrating.
I am on Safari and yes, you are right, no ads! Maybe HubPages are doing a review and working on making some changes to the amount or placement.
Hopefully, that’s all that is happening.
I had a similar problem with Chrome browser about two weeks ago. If you have any browser extensions installed, try turning them on and off; it worked for me.
Best wishes!!!
That certainly would account for those falling impressions and that crazy CPM.
I'm on Chrome. No ads - but no Amazon links either.
I have used Opera for many years. I needed a change in browsers. I will get back to using Opera later this year. I also use Bing, tried Yandex.
And there was me moaning that my article didn't have Ads lol! oops!
I got so fed up of Edge that I now use my old faithful, Google Chrome lol!
I used chrome for downloading stuff mostly.
No ads, but my page views are still down on last week. Maybe views would have been lower if there were ads? Maybe ads don't make readers back out? What conclusions can be drawn?
I see ads just as always. I checked it with one of my Owlcation articles with Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Chrome.
The only difference I noticed was that the ads appeared several seconds after loading the page with Edge. The other browsers loaded quickly.
I wonder why all you guys don’t see ads. Why am I the only one who does? That is so weird!
Maybe I've caused a case of mass hysteria! I thought it was something to do with enhanced tracking turned on, but I turned that off and also set the level to standard, it's normally strict. Still no joy. This is on desktop. I can't see them on my phone either.
I can see ads in Edge and Chrome on my Windows laptop, too, and in Safari on my iPad. It's a strange situation.
Actually the common factor is that neither of us are in the US, so that must be the issue. Also three contents involved, Africa, Europe and Oceania, John Hansen and Jerry Fisher are in Australia and New Zealand respectively.
Edit, is it Oceania or Australasia, I have to look up my continents
Edit again: It seems Australia is the continent, Oceania and Australasia are regions.
So what continent is New Zealand in?
According to Google, it belongs to Oceania, so it's not in a continent. It's not necessary for a country to belong to a continent which makes sense considering there's lots of islands in the middle of oceans.
You might have found the problem. I'm in the US. So maybe only foreign countries are hiding ads.
Thanks for clarifying. Still no ads in New Zealand, but my articles are directed at the US anyway, where they seem to be working. Saturday ad reports show a fairly whopping $13.66 CPM. But overall views are down about 30%.
I don't know if this applies to the issue, but Google must comply with sanctions imposed by the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). As a result, Google Ads can't be displayed in certain countries or territories outside the US.
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues … nformation
https://support.google.com/google-ads/a … 740?hl=en#
The links are a sure read. Very useful. Thanks.
Opened some sites. Some are showing, others are not. Opened a news site in my country, and saw ads displayed on the site.
I thought it's a result of technical problem from Hubpages bit looks like something, which I don't know, is originating from Google. Or, is there an update from Google?
Read one of The Guardian articles and saw some ads. Maybe by Monday, it'll get back to normal.
On desktop, there's an annoying white band that stretches across the screen and covers text and images. I think it's the placeholder for the banner ad which should normally disappear on scrolling or on a timeout, but since there's no ad, it never does.
So ads are showing normally in US? but still not showing here in UK on laptop via Edge. Can only think it has to be a glitch specific to UK or the money hasn't been paid to Google for UK ads!? Hence no ads! Simple as.
It'd be good if someone in mainland Europe and India and further afield could verify if they are seeing ads?
Glen - your links are fascinating but the first pertains to US sanctions for countries such as North Korea and Russia etc etc and the second relates to Google's criteria for ads not showing. Mostly to do with non payments and delays and other issues.
All of which leaves me to believe Arena haven't paid or have delayed or forgotten to pay Google UK (and other Google countries) for ad space!!?? Bizarre.
From what I can remember there was a similar issue before with ads not displaying in the EU or UK and I made a post about it. I wish there was a way of searching the forum for such things. Is there any way we can filter out our posts? The "your" button shows all activity by a member, not just posts they've started.
Yes, I believe that you're right, it's happened before.
I think they sorted it fairly quickly last time, they have to treat it as a top priority.
I am now seeing ads, but the same one repeated five times throughout the article is a bit much. Australia and New Zealand are in Oceania, Australasia, Asia Pacific..take your pick.
I tried three different browsers, Chrome, Edge, and Opera, but I still can't see any ads, only a gray band, which, as Eugene mentioned, is pretty annoying.
No, no ads again..just blank white space. Maybe it is some articles and not others.
Just adding to the thread. I have ads (May 23) and am on Firefox. Checked three articles. Am in California if that makes a difference. I had ads yesterday, May 22 too.
I have suddenly got my Ads back, but then they go again. Obviously doing something to them. I am in England.
Has anyone else noticed that the CPM is higher than usual while the impressions are extremely low?
Yes, maybe Hubpages have gone back to the previous method of displaying ads. So their ads were shown 40% of the time and our ads 60% of the time. Except it's more like 50% now. Impressions haven't dropped proportionately to views for me. Also earnings are finalised so impressions probably won't increase. Alternatively the drop in impressions could be due to non-display of ads outside North America. My views from the UK are about 80% to 90% of those from the US according to GA. Do we know when ads disappeared? Impressions dropped suddenly on Thursday.
My impressions account for one-quarter of the views recorded by GA. That's very unusual. Yes, the amount of impressions has been declining since Thursday, but today and yesterday were by far the worst ever. Maybe we are just getting impressions from the US visitors??
There don't seem to be issues for me here in Florida. It sounds like a regional problem. Still needs to be resolved as quickly as possible, though.
Nell, When I look at your hubs, I see ads. And I'm in the U.S. So that seems to relate to the reason I posted about before.
So, try looking at the first hub (Hourglass article) in my profile and let me know if you see ads. I bet you won't see any since you're in the U.K. I'm in the U.S. and don't have that problem, no matter if I look any my own hubs or that of others.
Therefore, I'm thinking it's not related to where the author is located, but rather where the reader is located.
Are you sure of that Nell? I can see ads, loading slowly yes, on Owlcation and Dengarden articles for example. I'm also in UK.
We are currently looking into the ads issue. I'll reply in this thread once we figure out what the problem is.
Hi chef, they were not there earlier, but I will take another look, thank you!
Nell, You are in the U.K. That could explain it. See my post above to you. I think you might have missed it.
Chef, so far you are the only one in this forum who sees ads outside the U.S. Are you using a VPN by any chance?
Yes Glen, here in UK I googled via Chrome random articles on Owlcation and Dengarden on smartphone, with no VPN, and slowly but surely ads appeared on both.
For good measure I just googled a random Wanderwisdom article and ads appeared again.
Thanks Chef. That’s puzzling. You are the only one with results that don’t match the others. I guess that means there is more to the puzzle than originally thought.
It still could be a cache issue that makes it seem one way when indeed it’s the other way—if you know what I mean. Thanks for your efforts.
To be clear, and what I told Matt, we are trying to determine if ads are blocked outside of the U.S. for viewers.
Being in the U.S., I see ads on hubs for all you guys. That means ads are not being blocked on hubs belonging to people elsewhere, as long as the viewer is in the U.S.
I was able to see the ads yesterday evening, but after reading Mr. Glenn's and Nell's responses, I double-checked it. The ads are not appearing in Spain too. Not sure what’s wrong.
Thank you for checking that, Misbah. That confirms my theory that I posted here two days ago. The ads appear in everyone's hubs when viewed by readers in the U.S. But they are blocked for readers in various foriegn countries. I emailed Matt about that so he can investigate further.
I can't see ads either. I checked using Edge, Firefox and Chrome.
Ads seem to be coming and going. I tried using a VPN with location set to the US and ads were displayed. Then I switched to the Netherlands and I could still see ads. I turned off the VPN and no ads could be seen from my actual location (Ireland). I enabled the VPN again with location set to the Netherlands and this time I can't see ads.
Eugene, Thanks for your help with the research. The only discrepancy in your review of results is that it displayed ads for Netherlands once and then it didn’t the next time. Therefore I’m suspecting it displayed ads the first time after using the VPN for the U.S. because it was in the cache.
That can confuse the issue. So the next time it seems to break the pattern, try refreshing the page to see if it changes. That’s easier than clearing the cache.
One positive thing I noticed today is that the number of impressions was higher than yesterday and the day before.
Weird stats for impressions again, they've halved and CPM has nearly doubled.
No ads in UK now! Just checked again, twice. Phone and laptop. No VPN. Ongoing saga. Got to be investigated. HP losing lots of potential earnings. Come on Matt and team, hurry up on this one.
Maybe just the erratic ads causing anomalies? Likely temporary?
Things seem stable for me this side of the Atlantic. My stats are reliably bad to mediocre, as seems to be the norm nowadays.
Could be Paul. I hope the technical staff are onto this one because of the obvious short-term financial loss but also medium to long-term effect on reputation and reliability.
Glad to hear the US is stable. We could all do with a bit of stability,a return to normality, if it ever existed in the first place. If I could use a restore point I'd go back to January 2019, when life was pure contentment.
Ever since the ad situation started, I've had two niche sites and their views fluctuate wildly. They keep dipping well below what they normally bring in and then gradually get back to their usual numbers. This is strange to me because the number that normally gets jerked around is Google's. I think there is some weird stuff happening this time directly with the sites. It could just be the ads aren't working consistently around the world.
Google seems to launch algorithm updates on a weekly basis or at least there's high volatility every week from looking at the stats on Semrush. I find however that if traffic drops to an article, it can take months to a year for it to slowly ramp up again. My traffic and earnings were the highest last year for ten years. The core update in May/June last year caused a steady decline in views, both to Dengarden and Owlcation and traffic never recovered.
This seems to be something different though. When people were talking about ads going off, that’s when I noticed a decline, and when more people said the ads were back… the numbers were creeping back up. This is also the list from traffic sources and not the numbers for individual articles.
Hey Eugene, Just out of curiosity, can you look at other websites that normally have ads and see if ads are missing there too?
Since you're in Ireland, that will be useful information if you find it's happening on non-HP websites.
Anyone else outside the U.S. can do the same experiment. It will be helpful.
I'm still thinking its related in some way to that report I linked to a few days ago.
Mr. Glenn, I can see ads on non-HP websites
Some are showing, others are not. Some like The Guardian newspaper are showing but a moment later, they have disappeared.
That’s what I suspected, Ben. So it has nothing to do with HubPages since it’s happening with other sites too. Thanks for following up on my request. No one else has yet, and it would be helpful to see that everyone else has the same results.
True, this issue isn't limited to Hubpages. I hope those outside of U.S.A. would try on your experiment so we can narrow whether it's your case.
Might it be a Google update that has given rise to this issue?
I think it might be related to the article I linked to a few days ago in this thread. I had sent that to Matt and he replied at that time saying they are looking into it.
I did Mr. Glenn. I can see ads on non-HP sites.
https://hubpages.com/forum/post/4245638
I can see ads on different websites as usual just can't see them on HP.
Thanks, Misbah, for checking. That is helpful. It could be based on the country you are in.
Checked again. Not a single ad is appearing on 5 sites I have visited.
The situation is affecting earnings considerably.
Thanks Ben. That is one of the most consistent things I see from everyone’s reports, despite some exceptions. That shows it’s not an issue with HubPages, so it’s not going to be easy to fix. I will pass this additional info to Matt, although I’m sure he is watching the results in this forum.
Ads are back this morning on network sites, but I'll check later if they disappear again.
Eugene, please try my experiment with non-HubPages sites. The results will be helpful.
I tried this site. With my VPN set to the US, I see ads. With it turned off, I still see them. I'll try a few more when I get a chance.
https://www dot partitionwizard.com/
You need to refresh page a couple of times. The first time you look at it after changing your VPN, it will show from your cache. So that could confuse the results. That might be why you still see ads after changing back to the UK. So far, some others have reported not seeing ads outside of the U.S. with non-HP sites too.
I repeated the exeriment and after clearing the cache and reloading several times, I could still see ads with the VPN turned off. I also repeated the experiment with the HowtoGeek website and the results were the same.
So you mean you are seeing ads on other sites all the time when not using the VPN to override your country? I just want to be sure I understood, because that is different from what others are experiencing. That would mean there is more to the puzzle that is not determined yet.
Yes Glenn, I can see ads with my VPN turned off and not overriding my country. However I only checked the websites I mentioned above. Impressions are now 50% of what they were 10 days ago.
So if impressions dropped to 50% that means many of your readers are not seeing ads. Where are most of your readers located? GA is the best source of that information. But it’s also reported in the Stats on each individual hub.
Just so you know, I see ads on your hubs from here in the U.S. And as far as I can tell, no one in the U.S. has reported any problems.
Thanks Eugene. Your reply is helpful. So 64% of your traffic is from outside the U.S. They are the ones not seeing ads. So your 50% drop with impressions makes sense.
I’ve discovered something that may or may not be significant. On my Apple devices, if I load an article on the HubPages network and then decrease and increase its magnification, the advertisements change their size with the article and remain visible all the time. The same is true on my Windows laptop when I’m viewing sites other than HubPages. The ads are visible and at a suitable size at all the magnifications that the laptop provides.
If I change the magnification while viewing an article on HubPages on my laptop, the ads disappear. Even when I return to viewing the article at normal magnification, they don’t reappear. I have to reload the article to see the advertisements. This is the case in both Edge and Chrome.
Very rarely during my experiments, a HubPages ad has changed its size when I’ve changed the magnification on the laptop, but this effect has only been present at certain magnifications for the article. The ads have disappeared at other magnifications, even though I gave them time to appear.
I am still unable to see any ads. However, there are some white spaces between the body of the text. ( I've used different browsers, including Chrome, Opera, Edge, and Safari but the results are the same)
No ads here in UK. HP knows of this problem. So, what next?
HP team is ok with this situation? Do they wish to rectify? It'd be good to get some feedback, info, insights, message.
The EU are trying to crack down on targeted advertising, but the issue occurs in Oceania and Africa too, so that's not likely the issue yet.
Are you guys seeing reduced revenue? Because I've been getting the white space for past couple of days and my income dropped by 2/3rds. But I only lost like 15 views a day.
geekystoner, where are you located? I see ads on your hubs from here in the U.S. Are ads missing on other people's articles when you check them out from your country? That’s the clue we are trying to determine.
Yes, views have dropped, but impressions have dropped by about 50% and revenue dropped too. According to Google Analytics, 36% of my traffic comes from the US. The rest is from other countries or sources that don't provide any details about the country of origin.
Of course, revenue will reduce with absence of ads in some places.
If you're located outside the US and can't see ads on other websites, try turning off Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox or whatever the equivalent is in other browsers. When this is turned on, depending on whether the setting is standard or strict, it can cause ads to be hidden.
Eugene, reading your comment sent me immediately to 'Settings' and I added websites Owlcation and Hobbylark to a tracking box ' Exceptions' - 'Tracking prevention is turned off' - on Edge and now I can see ads. But prior to the ads issue I hadn't altered anything or needed to add separate websites to this special tracking box. I'm not techy enough to know how or why the ads just seemed to disappear?
It could have changed with the last update to Edge. In any case, Chef, this is encouraging.
Thanks to Eugene, this might be the answer, although it’s not something anyone has control over. HubPages staff would not be able to change that.
It’s possible that the expectation to earn from advertising will continue to become more of a challenge, especially if browser developers continue to improve their ad tracking filters.
Even with tracking protection turned off, I still can't see ads on network sites. However the ad absence issue might be connected with a related browser update.
I Googled "restrictions in targeted advertising browser" to have a quick look and see whether there have been any articles/discussions in the past month or so. I didn't see anything relevant, but someone might spot something.
There aren't any "benign" nations on that list, e.g. members of the EU. But maybe it's not an exhaustive list of OFAC sanctions programs.
I think that list has been growing since that article was published. But you probably have a better understanding.
Yes, I'm seeing 'em too. Let's hope they stay put.
Impressions seem to have recovered well for Saturday. The ad problem must be sorted for the moment.
Still nothing near last year's values, but for me, the highest they've been since Sat, April 23.
Last April, I was a newbie on HubPages. So for me, it's the polar opposite. Will it be okay if I respond to your comment in April of the next year?
(Just Kidding)
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