Obnoxious auto-playing audio ads - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 04:15:51 am
content: Anyone else getting these?

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 05:28:10 am
content: Never seen or heard of such a thing except on Facebook.Certainly not here on EEVblog. What is it advertising?

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 05:53:51 am
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on March 01, 2017, 05:28:10 amI don't actually remember. Closed the tab as soon as I captured the screenshot.

author: MrBungle
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 06:19:43 am
content: Quote from: KE5FX on March 01, 2017, 04:15:51 amhttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/cdc-health-smoking-commercials-slowing-down-connection/

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 09:31:35 am
content: What are these "adverts" of which you speak? Are they a form of blinking icons like the widely reviled HTML blink tag?

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 06:58:47 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on March 01, 2017, 09:31:35 amAds help to pay for the site. Some of them, like the TI ads, are occasionally interesting and useful. Abusive practices, however, need to be called out.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 09:02:03 pm
content: Quote from: KE5FX on March 01, 2017, 06:58:47 pmAlas, the bad drives out the good.I could tolerate (translate: ignore) the odd small ad that doesn't move, doesn't suck power, and downloads fast without many many DNS lookup and cookie download latencies. Unfortunately the ad industry conflicts with all of those.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 09:11:03 pm
content: Not eevblog, but increasingly I am experiencing websites that either crash or don't load under the weight of mashed in adverts frequently with excessive use of javascript, particularly on mobile platforms.This reminds me in some ways of the Boo.com days where little if any attention was paid to user experience.

author: RGB255_0_0
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 09:15:23 pm
content: The internet was great when reputable sites were using simple text adverts from Google. Maybe some banners. Fine, got to pay the mortgage.Then we got Flash ads infested with malware.But the worst are ones that auto play audio and until Chrome added that audio symbol on the tab, you'd be hard pressed to find it on some sites that had time delays on it (sneaky bar stewards).These drove people to No-script, Adblock and others and sites wonder why we block themEdit: you might say the ad industry is choking themselves.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 09:25:32 pm
content: I've been running Adblock for years, ever since ads started getting blinky/animated, playing sound or video it became mandatory as far as I'm concerned, I won't use the internet without it.

author: smithnerd
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 09:55:48 pm
content: I find anything that auto plays incredibly irritating, so I browse with JavaScript off by default and enabled selectively via the Firefox extension NoScript.I also set media.autoplay.enabled=false in about:configThis provides a 'click to play' default for media in Firefox, for those sites that I have JavaScript whitelisted for.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2017, 11:10:02 pm
content: If ads hadn't got so obnoxious, I wouldn't go out of my way to block them. I realize many sites depend on ad hits for business but advertisers have done this to themselves. When they clean up their act, I'll consider not blocking ads.

author: W2NAP
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 12:21:32 am
content: Quote from: james_s on March 01, 2017, 11:10:02 pmindeed, when it was just a simple static banner image. I just ignored it. but with the video ads and annoying screaming ads, I block ALL ads everywhere.I will say I am not afraid to step up and toss some cash to a site/forum I do enjoy

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 12:26:27 am
content: Not sure where these are coming from that people are seeing it. On my home machine I am using IE mostly and always for this forum, as I am right now - no self-playing video ads with sound, and I REALLY hate those things, especially when they launch another window silently behind everything else and you can't figure out where the &%*#)@ annoying sound is coming from. And they are ALWAYS a ear-bleed volume levels - my volume is set where it is quite comfortable to watch and listen to say YouTube videos but when one of those things comes on, I'm sure my neighbors can hear it. I don't have adblock enabled and I just am not getting any of those on this site. At work I use Chrome to browse the forum, and I don't get those sort of ads there, either.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 12:32:51 am
content: I don't believe the inference was that this type of Ad appears on the EEVblog - because I certainly don't see that.What I DO see is this sort of thing popping up elsewhere. Little video windows that fire off a video Ad that I can't stop unless I leave the page. I've not gone for any Ad blocking, but this enforced theft of my download allowance is really irritating.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 12:46:10 am
content: Quote from: Brumby on March 02, 2017, 12:32:51 am... and waste of your remaining life.When using a cellular link, my brother was amazed at how much sooner pages were shown if ads were blocked. Some sites went from unusable to usable.

author: jfasoc
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 09:16:50 am
content: This is one reason why my general browser is jailed without access to sound.

author: f4eru
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 12:54:37 pm
content: Adblockplusit's magic.http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2017/02/08/where-are-the-tests/

author: dimkasta
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 01:12:04 pm
content: I hate to admit it but I use adblock too (and I run a few websites myself, relying on ads for support).On most ad programs you have much versatility in what ad types are allowed on your pages.I understand that interactive ads pay better, but they practically kill performance and user experience.Add to that the often broken rules (for example max 3 adsense ads per page), and the stupid clickbait calls to action (popups etc), and you can easily understand why users are using adblock.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 01:23:28 pm
content: With IE11 and adblockplus installed, if I select any of the EEVBlog subgroups now I get the attached message but this thread came up in the recent history and I can obviously view and post in it. Going up one level to EEVBlog Specific, I get the same bad gateway message.If I run Edge (no adblockplus) everything works fine.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 01:29:56 pm
content: And a little more info if Dave cares, I can turn off adblockplus in IE11 and the bad gateway error does not show up. However, I am unable to post because of the ads I mention before.Dave's YT (owned by Google) videos generate enough traffic that Google is attempting to increase the amount of ads without paying Dave for it? Dave seems to know nothing about it. As I mentioned it started this week and seems to be unique to this site.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 01:36:03 pm
content: And just for fun...Running XP in a virtualbox with firefox 3.6.8 (no ad block), Dave's ads come up just fine. At the bottom I get:undefinedundefinedundefinedTake that Google!

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 02:46:39 pm
content: I knew I wasn't dreaming when I thought someone said they were getting the annoying audio/video ads here. I wonder if something is a little whacked on your computer. I don't get that stuff either reading or posting here with IE 11. The only ads I get are plain SILENT banner ads and so forth.I do have another secret weapon - the hosts file. That could be why I don't get a whole lot of garbage - though I DO get those annoying ads from other places like Facebook. I use the hosts file from here:http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htmwith a few modifications because it actually does block a couple of sites I actually use. I had tried this tactic years ago but it blocked so many things that it made my computer almost unusable until I reverted to the default hosts table. This one now seems to work quite well, outside of a couple entries I manually changed I haven't been blocked from anything legitimate. Also is browser-independent.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2017, 06:31:09 pm
content: Could be there is a problem with the PC. I have ran various scanners with no results.It does appear the gateway error is now gone.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2017, 05:54:11 am
content: Adblock Plus has a setting to not block acceptable ads. In my experience, it works quite well, although the definition of "acceptable" seems to be quite strict as few ads make it through at all.