Touch site ads. Accidentally tapping all the time

SpaceTime

I realise that you need to earn money but is there anything you could do to make the ads a bit less accidentally clickable on the touch site?

It's getting to the stage that I'm clicking into an advert for some foreign exchange company every few minutes when I use the touch site on mobile safari.

Scrolling down the page causes me to accidentally click ads.

It's actually becoming very annoying and it's starting to put me off using the site.

hullaballoo

I find this issue as applicable to boards as any other site. The difference being that here, there are far, far fewer ads that can be accidentally clicked.

SpaceTime

hullaballoo wrote: »

I find this issue as applicable to boards as any other site. The difference being that here, there are far, far fewer ads that can be accidentally clicked.

I don't agree. I'm being shown two ads on this thread taking up about 40% of the screen area and I've managed to click both of them accidentally !!

Puddle Q

SpaceTime wrote: »

I don't agree. I'm being shown two ads on this thread taking up about 40% of the screen area and I've managed to click both of them accidentally !!

Agree with this !

sjb25

SpaceTime wrote: »

I realise that you need to earn money but is there anything you could do to make the ads a bit less accidentally clickable on the touch site?

It's getting to the stage that I'm clicking into an advert for some foreign exchange company every few minutes when I use the touch site on mobile safari.

Scrolling down the page causes me to accidentally click ads.

It's actually becoming very annoying and it's starting to put me off using the site.

Really annoying

Youngblood.III

They also seem to be getting clicked when off the ad too...very annoying.
The captive area for the ad must be bigger than what the screen shows.

A-Trak

hullaballoo wrote: »

I find this issue as applicable to boards as any other site. The difference being that here, there are far, far fewer ads that can be accidentally clicked.

I've happily used the touch site since launch. Not once in memory have accidentally tapped an advert until the arrival of the new touch ads like of Plus 500 and Bold Chat.

Now I "click," on those ads numerous times a day.
The scroll lags when loading and the captive area seems huge. I'd find it hard to believe this is not intentional.

I get that ads are necessary, but in current format they're effectively ruining the touch site.
I've gone back to m.boards.ie and I won't be using the touch site with those ads.

osarusan

Ad Tech under the 'go to next page' at the bottom of a page.

Must have opened that hundreds of times now.

SpaceTime

Yeah I'm opening that Plus 500 one all the time and some other site that keeps prompting me to give it permission to access location services.

Something has changed in the last few weeks as I wasn't tripping over these ads all the time either.

Also from the companies' perspective, it's actually a waste of money as I'm increasingly annoyed with them rather than interested in their brands.

Unearthly

+1 Yes this is really really irritating

emo72

I thought my phone was broken.

SpaceTime

The ads are also in French even though I'm on eircom as my ISP and 3 Ireland.

Puddle Q

Will anything be done to take users feedback on board???

Turtyturd

Banging your head against the wall here lads. It's been six months since someone first complained about it and it's been repeatedly fobbed off.

Also do mods have a special version of the touch site? Funny how one of them jump in to every thread saying the ads aren't a problem.

emo72

I seem to click on that Levi's advert every time. It's getting ridiculous. I'm going to have to root specifically to install adblock.

SpaceTime

This is actually counterproductive for advertisers as it's sending people to them who've no interest in their products and who will be annoyed by them and start associating their brand with having to constantly tap the back button and losing their place on threads.

It's also going to cause mass adoption of ad blockers which will reduce ad traffic on the site and will reduce revenues.

Annoying end users is always a bad idea.

A Brad Maddox Guy

The Uber one is the only one I have an issue with. It's as if it's extra sensitive to touch and it opens up the App Store in a new tab which is getting very annoying.

Pretzill

I complained about this months ago because I use touch more than any other platform. Without any official feedback I have come to realise that certain ads are more sensitive than others, ironically these are the ads I have no interest in clicking on and are also suspect looking ones - like to the Plus 500 (which I managed to get rid of by clicking the tiny x on the right hand top corner and clicking stop seeing this ad)

I have also noticed this isn't just boards these ads, particularly the suspect ones keep hopping up through any touch site.

And finally I found if scrolling in landscape rather than portrait format I don't touch the ads because their boundaries are narrower.

The ads are irritating indeed but there are ways to lessen that.

Jon Stark

Maybe I'm imagining it but the ads seem very sensitive to touch?

Lovely Bloke

emo72 wrote: »

I seem to click on that Levi's advert every time. It's getting ridiculous. I'm going to have to root specifically to install adblock.

Careful now. Dav said anyone mentioning that kind of software is getting banned.

KomradeBishop

Baldy Conscience wrote: »

Careful now. Dav said anyone mentioning that kind of software is getting banned.

Obligatory Fr. Ted.


As an alternative suggestion: Perhaps the problem ads, can temporarily have a 'click confirmation' added to them - so that when you click them, it opens a popup dialog saying something like "You are about to leave Boards.ie and be redirected to a third-party site, do you want to continue?".

A lot of websites do that to all links as a matter of course (not suggesting it be done for all links though).

You would still get revenue from the genuine ad-clicks, but accidental clicks would be less of a problem for users thereafter - the popup might be a touch annoying, but better (and faster to resolve) than opening up an ad you didn't mean to.

Lovely Bloke

I'd say the VAST majority of ad revenue, on any website, is from accidental clicks.

I mean, who genuinely looks to be advertised to?

Tilly

Uber is getting on my last nerve. Can someone sort these out please?

ThisRegard

I think the problem stems from their load time. You get a screen without the ad and when you touch a space to roll up or down the screen there's a delay, the ad loads, and the touch registers on the ad. Same when you're trying to scroll up and down past an already loaded ad.

Flippyfloppy

Is it possible to just block individual websites on our own servers?

padd b1975

Looks like the powers that be are hoping that this genuine feedback dies a quick death.

Touch site has generally speaking been hard going from day one, I really can't see things improving anytime soon on that front.

At least it's better than the app....

fits

Its really annoying me as well. Accidentally clicking on sites all the time lately as well. Maybe started a few weeks ago.

ganmo

padd b1975 wrote: »

Looks like the powers that be are hoping that this genuine feedback dies a quick death.

Touch site has generally speaking been hard going from day one, I really can't see things improving anytime soon on that front.

At least it's better than the app....

Are the ads on the app?
I came to the feedback section to complain about these ads, but seeing as though there seems to be no interest from the powers that be I'm now off the the App Store to see it there are any app a that will make life on boards easier

cunnifferous

+1 touch site is infuriating with these ads. They take up half the touch site!

padd b1975

ganmo wrote: »

Are the ads on the app?
I came to the feedback section to complain about these ads, but seeing as though there seems to be no interest from the powers that be I'm now off the the App Store to see it there are any app a that will make life on boards easier

Sorry, I was speaking in terms of general user friendliness.

The app lasted about ten minutes on my phone before being deleted, so I can't really recall if there was noticeable adds on every page.

Zymurgist

Am running into this same issue regularly now.

Typically when i scroll down on the screen and them tap on a thread that sits directly above an ad, I will be taken directly to the ad rather than the thread i clicked on.

Its as if what is presented on screen is a second or two ahead of where the device believes it is if that makes sense, and so when you click just above the ad the device thinks you are clicking on the ad that was there a second beforehand.

Am on an iphone 6 if that makes a difference.

Into The Blue

Is the site ad free for subscribers/mods?

Turtyturd

I'd say it is for mods...why else push the issue back on to users?

Had a bit of a breakthrough myself. Due to the slow loading I am now clicking the wrong thread and users profiles, but not half as many ads. :rolleyes:

cyning

Same is happening here... I really hope it's looked at soon. I can't read a thread or scroll through forums without clicking on an ad.

Tilly

How do we get someone to look into it?

Skylinehead

Tilly wrote: »

How do we get someone to look into it?

Feedback threa......oh.

Gavinn

Tilly wrote: »

How do we get someone to look into it?

They're going to ignore the issue as they're making money off the site being horrific to use on mobile.

"Oh, ad views have shot way up? Ignore the plebs, they're not going anywhere and they'll shut up eventually."

jester77

Yeah, it's definitely intentional and very infuriating. What I've been doing recently and it has helped a lot is when you see an ad is about to appear scroll up and then flick the page down for fast scroll and then touch the screen once past the ad. You'll have to scroll back up a bit again to continue reading. Not a great workaround but a lot better than the alternative.

Into The Blue

Into The Blue wrote: »

Is the site ad free for subscribers/mods?

Yep, used to be a subscriber for 7 years and had no ads.

Lovely Bloke

Gavinn wrote: »

They're going to ignore the issue as they're making money off the site being horrific to use on mobile.

"Oh, ad views have shot way up? Ignore the plebs, they're not going anywhere and they'll shut up eventually."

Someone already looked into it

Thread, it's pretty recent (May)

Dav wrote: »

No, they're Google ads. We have strict limitations about the types of ads we run, but there are 2 problems: 1) dickhead advertisers who deliberately mislabel their ads so they appear on site's that have specifically denied that sort of content and 2) Google gives absolutely zero fks about the sites serving the content and only care about taking more money in so never take action against the people who keep abusing the service.

In case it's not obvious, this stuff makes me furious because it's us that has to deal with it and it's our members who have to suffer their incompetence. Google is one of the biggest companies on the planet, they could fix this practically overnight if they wanted to.

Dav wrote: »

OK, here's the thing.

The next time people say "get an ad blocker" in response to any issues we have with advertising and display ads, I'm banning them from whatever forum they're saying it in, ok? Those ads pay my wages and the wages of my colleagues. To come along to our place of work and actively campaign against our ability to pay our bills, our rent, put food on our tables, etc is way out of order.

Dav wrote: »

The location of the ads is a factor in how they work. If we put them all at the bottom of the page, they'd only be worth a fraction of what we currently get.

Dav wrote: »

The smaller ads that were there before are no longer an option because they make zero money I'm afraid.

I've been giving some thought to this to. It's a pain in the arse to have to be facing this though since every fracking ad that Google serves has a "report" link on it, but the more you click it, the more you'll keep seeing that ad (or at least this has been my experience with that 500 ad and the numerous Russian Brides ones that keep repeating themselves for me).

cyning

It's not really the content of the ads that's the issue. Or the location: I have no problem at all with either I appreciate boards has to make money. It's that when you are scrolling up and down the page the ad margins seem to be outside where they show on the page or that there is a lag. Either way there is something wrong.

Pretzill

Just another possible workaround for this problem - whilst checking setting on my phone - (standard Android smart phone nothing fancy) in the accessibility section there's a touch and hold delay mine was default at short delay - reset it to medium and now I'm not opening the ads by mistake -

KomradeBishop

This will probably make a difference:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/06/28/1646206/google-will-reduce-accidental-mobile-ad-clicks-with-mandatory-borders-and-more

Menas

KomradeBishop wrote: »

This will probably make a difference:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/06/28/1646206/google-will-reduce-accidental-mobile-ad-clicks-with-mandatory-borders-and-more

I really hope they implement that. Half of all add clicks are 'accidental'. That is nuts.

Not a NSA agent

Glad to see its not just me, often when I try to swipe past an ad it clicks on it. Im using a nexus 5 and the adds are about half the screen. Some ads do appear to be more sensitive if thats possible, todays annoyance is hostelworld.

EoghanIRL

There is this one add that redirects you to the App Store. I can't scroll down the page without clicking it.

Edit:
The ads are making the site unbearable.
I can't use it without clicking on the ads constantly and getting redirected to the App Store.

Chorus_suck

This post has been deleted.

SpaceTime

Things seem to have improved ?
The touchable area seems narrower on these ads and they're just not quite full screen width either which is a lot more tolerable!

Turtyturd

SpaceTime wrote: »

Things seem to have improved ?
The touchable area seems narrower on these ads and they're just not quite full screen width either which is a lot more tolerable!

This just today?

Because yesterday they were as bad as ever.

Ciano35

Touch site is unusable for me today because of the bold chat ad.

Unearthly

Ugh keep clicking on them when scrolling down. Absolute pest of a thing