Ads are out of control.

1. 97

   Sustainable Sueposted 18 months ago

   I cannot believe how many ads I found on DenGarden this morning! I was going to promote my article on leaf blowers to a commenter in my Facebook community group, but when I checked it I was ashamed. Every other paragraph was an ad!! PLUS the ones in the side column. Some of my best articles are on DenGarden, but I feel like I can't promote them anymore. No wonder ad revenues are going down. The site owners are totally overdoing it.

   replyreport
   1. 83

      bravewarriorposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      I just went into one of your Dengarden articles. The only ads I saw were a video at the top and one in the bottom right corner. Lots of white space where ads once were.

      replyreport
      1. 97

         Sustainable Sueposted 18 months agoin reply to this

         How long did you stay there? I just tested a couple more articles and noticed that it takes awhile for everything except the first photo and paragraph to load—I'm assuming because there are so many visuals . . . mostly ads. It took at least 15 seconds for most of them to launch. Then you could see the rest of the article.

         replyreport
         1. 83

            bravewarriorposted 18 months agoin reply to this

            Not very long. Apparently, I didn't give them time to load. I do agree with you, though. With the onslaught of ads on the niche sites, our articles are an embarrassment.

            replyreport
   2. 95

      jansharesposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      Sue, I just looked at your article about hanging plants and counted 28 ads. Some were the same ad repeated a few times as I scrolled down. Is it because the ads float? That's bananas! I'm on my laptop. I had a feeling that was the reason I don't get a lot of likes when I promote my articles on Twitter and fb.

      replyreport
   3. 100

      chef-de-jourposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      This is an ongoing issue for many writers here. As I see it the HP team don't have the power to stop the rot. TAG persists with their abominal ad placement regime which Google 100% views as low status. Consequently our articles are knocked down when certain updates occur. I'm still writing fresh material but am frustrated. The text should always be top priority, in clear capsules uninterrupted. TAG prefer nauseating ads every few lines! Madness - they could make more money with a simple readjustment.
      The waiting game continues....

      replyreport
      1. 100

         chef-de-jourposted 18 months agoin reply to this

         abominal = abominable

         replyreport
      2. 92

         SerenityHaloposted 18 months agoin reply to this

         I agree that there are too many ads. I'm hoping there is a change that makes this more sensible. On mobile, not only are there ads between text but also at the top in the video player and at the bottom as a banner.
         
         It just encourages people to put on an ad blocker.

         replyreport
         1. 99

            DrMark1961posted 18 months agoin reply to this

            Do you know if ad blockers are blocking the new video?

            replyreport
            1. 92

               SerenityHaloposted 18 months agoin reply to this

               That’s a good question. I have an ad blocker on my laptop. I don’t see the video there. I see text, some big white spaces, and article images.

               replyreport
   4. 92

      Titiaposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      Same here, I'm also really ashamed to show them on my FB. The other day the man who's going to restore one of my dad's Indonesian War drawings asked me to send him the link. I did send it, but appologized for all the rubbish adds it's showing.
      I know adds are a necessity, but breaking up the text in so many pieces like these adds do is terrible. I used to be proud of my articles, but I'm not anymore.

      replyreport
2. 91

   Kenna McHughposted 18 months ago

   I would love to hear from the HP staff about these ads.

   replyreport
3. 94

   eugbugposted 18 months ago

   The video not being left aligned on desktop when it moves to the right sidebar is really irritating.
   Is there a reason why article images can't load before ads? At least it would cut down the number of white spaces, especially if there's several images and interleaved ads (resulting in 6 white spaces for 3 images). Whitespaces just confuse readers because they don't know what to do except backout. Even if hairline rectangles saying "ad" or "image" could be loaded first, it would help.

   replyreport
4. 97

   CYong74posted 18 months ago

   I'm getting a lot of white spaces too. I'm wondering whether it's because there are not enough ads to fill all the ad slots.
   
   Days ago, I went through one of my longest hubs and the same Acer ad repeated well over 10 times. Then they abruptly stopped. As if they have hit a certain quota.

   replyreport
   1. 94

      eugbugposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      This could suggest that if the ads are bid type ones, bidding is terminating with no interest in serving an ad to these placeholders.

      replyreport
      1. 97

         CYong74posted 18 months agoin reply to this

         That's the impression I get.
         
         But maybe there's good news. The ads are now repeating every 4-5 para instead of every other para. Maybe things are changing.

         replyreport
         1. 94

            eugbugposted 18 months agoin reply to this

            I'd like to know the mechanism behind how ads are placed. The seem to look for anyavailable HTML "p" paragraph tag. Can this be changed and  delimiters used instead (which could be placed after text and image modules)? Are ad placeholders automatically created when a page loads? It appears that's the case, but it doesn't necessarily mean an ad will fill them. What decides how many ads there will be? Is it all automatic and there's no way of changing the settings?

            replyreport