Over the past year or two, I’ve noticed that the ads on MR have significantly increased, and now they’ve introduced full-screen mobile ads that pause as you scroll, staying on the screen for a second or two before allowing you to scroll further. I understand that MR needs to generate revenue, but they’ve been profitable for years, so it makes me wonder if this is just driven by greed. They shouldn’t forget that their popularity relies on their audience, yet I’m growing increasingly frustrated. If they’re not careful, they might end up driving people away instead of boosting their revenue.
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MacRumors Ads Obsession
- Thread starter Chrjy
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We haven't specifically increased our ad density on purpose, though I suppose new ads are introduced over time and they are handled / introduced by the ad network.
We have noticed more intrusive ads and have been working on reducing them. One thing we do do is that if you are logged in, you should see a lower ad density.
Are you logged in when you are seeing the troublesome ad density or is it logged out? As a related aside, we do offer a paid ad-free option, but we still want to make the ad-experience reasonable.
arn
We have noticed more intrusive ads and have been working on reducing them. One thing we do do is that if you are logged in, you should see a lower ad density.
Are you logged in when you are seeing the troublesome ad density or is it logged out? As a related aside, we do offer a paid ad-free option, but we still want to make the ad-experience reasonable.
arn
The situation with the ads has deteriorated dramatically in the past 2 months. It's becoming almost unbearable to try to read articles on the site on iOS. The pages jump back and forwards as the various ads resize themselves and take over the screen. Sometimes you can't read a complete sentence in between each jump and your article ends up randomly several screens away either up or down. When you finally find it again, 3 seconds later it jumps off somewhere else. I've totally stopped looking at the site on my phone, which is where I normally would read it the most. I'm definitely coming to the site less overall - even on OSX - because of this frustration. I'm usually logged in when I visit the site. @arn
Apologies. We have been back and forth with our ad network and some changes were made a couple of weeks ago. Give it a try again if you haven’t seen it since then.
Otherwise I’ll work on it more.
On the website it is strange getting ads that are the size of an article in the main content panel. I just saw an ad for Jimmy Dean Sausage that was same width as and comparable in height to an article summary. That is disruptive to scanning the content. It would be nice if the ads in the main pane could be restricted to banners and the margins around the ads reduced.
It's getting worse. I just saw an ad for "Monkey Dong" (fake urine to use to pass drug screening tests) that was as big and prominent as the articles between which it was sandwiched. 🙄
Set up an account and get a paid subscription and the problem goes away. Something has to pay to maintain the site, however if the ads are that intrusive then there is something wrong.
I don't mind ads. But clearly something is going on at MacRumors because the ads have become intrusive lately. I wonder how much they make showing "Monkey Dong".
I admittedly had a good laugh looking up "Monkey Dong".
Reminds me of a friend that once mentioned "Beaver Cleaner", of course none of the group we were in had a clue what she was talking about until you visit: https://www.beaverresearch.com/ we still laugh to this day!!!!
But, back to the topic at hand, I don't see ads but there certainly seems to be a lot of issues surrounding content and intrusiveness lately. This is not my area of expertise but MR might want to explore a new ad partner.