Ad Reporting

[Scott]

Due to the recent discussions on ad redirects and the Ad Reporting Tool, I've compiled some Admin responses so we are all on the same page in understanding:


Unfortunately as we approach the holiday season the incidences of redirects and other unacceptable ad behavior will grow. We are (as always) working hard to ensure that our users remain as unaffected as possible. We hate redirects as much as anyone because it creates an animosity that we can't control! We do not gain anything from these malicious ads.

The ad providers we work with are responsible for advertisements on millions of websites around the world and unfortunately we aren't any exception. We understand that this is an inconvenience but we are blocking even potential causes of ad issues in order to combat the problem!

The Ad Reporting Tool works - but only if it's used.

The tool is not useless and does in fact work, but in order for it to work users need to actively report any offending ads. If you receive multiple redirects don't hesitate to report more than one. it would be helpful if you sent a 2nd report when it happened the 2nd time (and a third report if it happens a third time!). The more reports we have when an issue happens the easier it is for us to find the offending advertiser and block them, because we can cross reference the reports and look at what advertisers were on the page for any user that send us a complaint.  However as a user, please don't report the same redirect multiple times or report an ad just because you don't like it. This is equivalent to spamming, confuses the process, and may result in the reports being ignored.

Ads are blocked under one of two conditions:

1. We're able to reproduce the exact ad you described in your report and it violates one of our ad policies (such as redirects, popups, or inappropriate content).
   
2. We're not able to reproduce the problem you described, but we receive several reports about the same advertiser from multiple users.
   

With the multitude of forums we're required to browse every day on the support board we also actively handle any problematic ads we come across and block them on sight, though we're limited to ads that are served to our geographical location. The more the reports are able to narrow down the offending ad, the easier it is to determine which advertiser needs to be blocked from the rotation.

Note for iOS users (iPhone, iPad), Safari's cookie settings need to be set to "Always Allow" for the ad list to populate in the Ad Reporting Tool.

Please don't use ad-blockers or ignore the issue, together we can work to ensure that everyone's forum experience is free from the rogue ads.

Thank you.

[Ghost77]

A quick question as I've been having to use this recently - when I do, there are multiple entries for the same page/time, and I don't know why or which is the correct one to report. For example, I just got a redirect when I opened a thread. It's the only time I've visited that thread, and as soon as the redirect happened I opened the ad reporting tool. There were 9 entries shown for that page, all listed as "a few seconds ago". Looking further down the list, 6+ entries per page load seems pretty typical - and slightly confusing! Any idea why this is happening? I'm posting using an iPad on wifi.

Thanks

[Kami]

Nov 3, 2016 23:20:41 GMT -8 Ghost77 said:

A quick question as I've been having to use this recently - when I do, there are multiple entries for the same page/time, and I don't know why or which is the correct one to report. For example, I just got a redirect when I opened a thread. It's the only time I've visited that thread, and as soon as the redirect happened I opened the ad reporting tool. There were 9 entries shown for that page, all listed as "a few seconds ago". Looking further down the list, 6+ entries per page load seems pretty typical - and slightly confusing! Any idea why this is happening? I'm posting using an iPad on wifi.

Thanks :)

Each page load has 3 ads, so the first three are all on the same page. The next three are the page before that, and so on.

If you are clicking quickly around the forum, some pages will show the same time stamp. For instance, if I load the home page and within the minute click another page, that'll be the same time relative time stamp since seconds are not included. This also occurs if you refresh a page within the same minute of its prior load.

You can generally figure out which page is which if you keep track of groups of three (:

Hopefully that clears it up.

[JJ]

I'm getting bombarded with whole page ads on Proboards sites this evening, and I'd be more than willing to report them. But the last time I did, I was told I might have something on my own computer, like malware, which I did not. I also can't find the link/info here for how to report an ad by using that option, I used the search feature, I know it's here somewhere! There is no option when these ads pop up, it's a whole screen takeover. So, how exactly do I report an ad? Log the time, got it, but where do I report it? A little help here please.

P.S. I do not use an adblocker, I know that Proboards relies on the revenue from the ads, but this is getting me a bit testy.

[Kami]

I would bookmark this link:
ads.proboards.com/ad-report.html

As long as you don't clear your cookies, you can close down the window from the ad and open a fresh tab / window just for the ad report page.

[JJ]

Thank you for that link, Kami, but that is a link to my own site, not the other Proboards sites I am visiting. My site doesn't seem to be affected - yet. I tried visiting two friend's sites this evening and got hit by ads and had to leave because I never could get to their site. Are you saying that I should only report ads that show up on my own site? Works for me, but I do feel badly for my friends wondering why people aren't posting.

[nariadreaming]

Nov 5, 2016 21:11:57 GMT -8 JJ said:

Thank you for that link, Kami, but that is a link to my own site, not the other Proboards sites I am visiting. My site doesn't seem to be affected - yet. I tried visiting two friend's sites this evening and got hit by ads and had to leave because I never could get to their site. Are you saying that I should only report ads that show up on my own site? Works for me, but I do feel badly for my friends wondering why people aren't posting.

The ad report tool will show links to ads on ALL proboards forums you've visited. When I open the reporting tool right now, it has links from my forum, and two others I've visited this evening.

[Kami]

Nov 5, 2016 21:11:57 GMT -8 JJ said:

Thank you for that link, Kami, but that is a link to my own site, not the other Proboards sites I am visiting. My site doesn't seem to be affected - yet. I tried visiting two friend's sites this evening and got hit by ads and had to leave because I never could get to their site. Are you saying that I should only report ads that show up on my own site? Works for me, but I do feel badly for my friends wondering why people aren't posting.

To confirm: the ad report link shows your most recently visited PB pages. If you visit another forum with ads (so support won't show up as an example since it's ad free) they should also appear. However bear in mind this tracks EVERY page load so if you are multitasking multiple sites they can easily get pushed off of the list.

[JJ]

Thank you, nariadreaming and Kami. I do multitask, and I do not see the other sites I was visiting. I will have to investigate this option throughout the day.

[Kami]

Could you visit another site with ads right now then immediately open the ad report? If the list does not show them at the very top, then i recommend making a thread for the admins to investigate the issue (:

[JJ]

Nov 5, 2016 22:15:27 GMT -8 Kami said:

Could you visit another site with ads right now then immediately open the ad report? If the list does not show them at the very top, then i recommend making a thread for the admins to investigate the issue (:

Sorry, I went to bed. I've been to both of the sites today and everything was fine.  I also went to check the time frame of when I visited the two sites and I was there in the period of time showing my Ad Reporting visitation hours, they just weren't there. So I was stymied. Then, I had a thought. Both sites are .net, not .proboards, would that make a difference in the sites visited showing up?

[Brian]

All ProBoards-run sites will show regardless of whether they're on freeforums.net, boards.net, proboards.com, or a custom domain.

[JJ]

Nov 6, 2016 9:34:41 GMT -8 Brian said:

All ProBoards-run sites will show regardless of whether they're on freeforums.net, boards.net, proboards.com, or a custom domain.

Hello, Brian Ordonez. Well, they didn't. I don't know what more I can say than this. I went back all the hours that showed in that report in the Ad Reporting option and it went back, um, 22 or 24 hours, and the two sites where I got the ads were not there. Unfortunately I did not do a screen shot so I cannot verify what I said. I don't make things up from whole cloth, but I am not infallible. Which is why I went to verify that I was indeed on those sites at those time periods. However, it doesn't matter to me anymore. I'm not going to worry about hijacking ads anymore, I'll just take steps to prevent the intrusion.

Thank you all for your attention.

[Scott]

JJ :

If you look at the top of the support page we have the link for ad reporting clear as day:

[JJ]

Thank you, Scott.