Hey, folks; I’ve had a few comments and emails from regular readers informing me that they were seeing ads on the site that were autoplaying video and audio, and which in some cases were hard or impossible to close down. I want to thank those of you who got in touch for doing so; Futurismic‘s readers are its lifeblood, and I long ago vowed never to subject you to tacky crap ads of that sort.
Indeed, the agency now managing those ad blocks made a point of telling me that they don’t accept ads of that sort on their network, which is why I decided to start working with them and drop the old Project Wonderful slots (whose new geolocational bidding system had pretty much deep-sixed the tiny income they used to make for the site). I’ve now informed the agency of the problem, and they’re looking into removing the offending ads from their system forthwith.
In the meantime, please pipe up and get in touch if you’re still seeing them: what would be extra helpful is if you could let me know what browser you’re using when you see them, whereabouts you’re located in the world (i.e. which US state, or which smaller nation), and – most importantly – what the offending adverts are promoting.
Thanks again for your patience; normal service will hopefully be resumed very soon. 🙂
Dear Paul, I really appreciate this kind of approach towards your readers 🙂
By the way, this post has given to me the final reason to disable Adblock Plus for Futurismic… I hope this helps you get some additional (micro)revenue.
Please keep up the good work!
Thanks so much! I hate to complain about ads, even when they’re annoying, because I know sites need to make money. But I really detest those that play sound automatically. I don’t like sounds I didn’t choose in the best of circumstances, and I really hate them before I’ve had my coffee.
No need for thanks, folks – as someone who spends hours online every day, I couldn’t with a clear conscience expose my readers to stuff that I know I, personally, would block or avoid. Basic business sense, really: would you eat the food from your own restaurant? 🙂
By the way, the agency were hugely apologetic, and had the problem fixed within a few hours of me emailing them. I’m hoping this bodes well for a reliable and mutually respectful relationship going forward…
Paul, I hate to tell you this, but it isn’t fixed and it may even be getting worse, not better. Now, not only is there an autoplaying ad for SONY, but another one came up for Right Guard, and (unlike the SONY one) I couldn’t even get this one to stop playing or reduce its sound level. I actually had to mute my speakers to shut it up. So you might want to have a talk with those folks again. Thanks!
Thanks, Robert – have passed that information on. I’ll post updates here as I get them myself (when not sleeping or otherwise AFK, natch). 🙂
funnily enough, I didn’t see them until I opened up this story page, then I get two on the page. They’re both the same Sony ad. Fortunately it has a pause button.
I suspect our thanks are due to the fact that other websites containing noisy ads would never even respond, much less do something about the problem.
I’m also glad that you got rid of the autoplay ads. I don’t mind video personally, although it does eat memory, but there are a lot of sites that I have stopped going to because of them automatically playing audio. The other incredibly annoying kind (which I am glad to say I have never seen here) are the ones which expand over the part of the page I am actually there for.