I’ve heard isolated reports of auto-start videos on the site. I hate them every bit as much as you do, but I haven’t seen one and I can’t track down its source (we use multiple ad networks) without more information. If you see one, please get a screenshot of the ad for me. That might help me track it down and root it out. Thanks.
Aug 28 2011
Auto-Start Videos
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Wes
August 28, 2011 at 10:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve seen one video ad on the site. Wish I’d got a screen cap at the time, because it’s definitely happening. And it’s annoying.
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
August 28, 2011 at 10:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve seen two in the past couple of days, but they’re apparently lying low now that they know they’ve been spotted . . .
Francisco Bacopa
August 29, 2011 at 1:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Most pop ups never appear. Sometimes I get a warning there was a pop up, and about one in ten visits gets me a pop up for the Economist.
Running Firefox on Ubuntu 9.4 something. All is good.
Why aren’t there banners for Assassin Actual and other bloggers on the man Freethought page?
Infophile
August 29, 2011 at 1:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I actually saw one as I read this post, though it’s rather tame. It played once after the page loaded (and the “video” was little more than transitioning between frames; no sound), then stopped on the last panel. I’m not even sure if it’s worth reporting to you, but here’s a screenshot of the last frame of it, just in case it helps out.
Neil Rickert
August 29, 2011 at 1:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I am seeing very few ads. I think they are being blocked by “noscript” (a firefox extension).
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
August 29, 2011 at 1:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Infophile:
That’s not really what people are complaining about. We’re talking about complete, TV-style video ads with sound. At least one of which goes on from ad to ad and apparently never stops.
JesseW
August 29, 2011 at 6:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I saw one of the auto-audio-full-motion ads people are talking about, but I haven’t seen any lately. I did see one ad box that just displayed error codes. Here’s a screenshot.
democommie
August 29, 2011 at 7:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve seen numerous ads that have no “off” button. One of them was for “Tide”–a product I won’t use in any case–others have been running.
Just now I had to kill the window and re-open it as the page kept locking up when I was trying to type.
jshaffer
August 29, 2011 at 7:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve only ran across one such ad so far but that was when FtB was just starting. However, I usually read this blog at work with the sound off so I may have just not noticed them.
The ads that I really notice are the ones trying to get me to support Allen West, Rand Paul or Michele Bachman. There’s also the one urging me to try Christian Singles or the power of prayer.
Chiroptera
August 29, 2011 at 8:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What I didn’t like about the ads is how long it takes for pages to load. Sometimes my browser will even hang up as it gets stuck trying to load an ad from some site or another.
Some people have suggested the NoScript addon for Firefox. I’ve decided to give it a try; not only do the FtB pages load much quicker and without hanging up, but the same can be said for a lot of other sites that I check a lot (like weather.com!). Thanks, people!
I am sorry, though, if preventing the ads from showing on my computer is denying FtB needed revenue; I don’t mind the ads themselves, just the annoyance when sometimes I have to go get a cup of coffee while a page finishes loading. (I’ve also stated before that I especially liked the fact that so many of the ads were for conservative politicians or religious woo — Ed and PZ getting revenue from these sources was pretty funny to me.)
If you do need the revenue, say something and maybe we can work out an alternative way I can pay my fair share.
lordshipmayhem
August 29, 2011 at 8:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve seen a fair number of these auto-run videos, mostly for Tide. You can’t shut the blasted thing off, and I don’t think there was a Mute button. I haven’t seen any recently.
Ellie
August 29, 2011 at 9:07 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I haven’t seen any since I started visiting here via Firefox. When I come via IE, I get pop ups by the dozens and the videos.
Parse
August 29, 2011 at 9:21 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed, try using proxies to view the site. I’ve heard of ad networks using IP addresses to determine which ads to show – and if it’s an address of an administrator, they don’t include the really obnoxious ads. (In this case, it’d be the autoplay ads).
Larry
August 29, 2011 at 9:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I haven’t seen one but then, I’m using Firefox with Adblock Plus
Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
August 29, 2011 at 9:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Just now saw one for Wonka. The screencap is here.
heathanderson
August 29, 2011 at 9:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I just saw the Wonka one too. The ‘Your Ad Here’ link goes to adBrite.
ogremk5
August 29, 2011 at 10:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I didn’t get a screen shot, but one autostart video was for Wonka candy.
anandine
August 29, 2011 at 11:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I haven’t seen any autostart videos, but yesterday I did have autostart audio that I couldn’t get rid of.
Chris from Europe
August 29, 2011 at 4:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I didn’t want to use Adblock for this site, so I also installed Flashblock. I haven’t seen any ads that use HTML5 elements.
P.S.: The FTB favicon doesn’t work with Firefox and the pages should contain the following in the head section:
<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://freethoughtblogs.com/favicon.ico” />
Chris from Europe
August 29, 2011 at 7:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Okay, the problem is that all release versions of Firefox don’t support the Vista ico format. If you save the favicon in an older version of the format (the XP variant should keep the transparency), it should display again.
Jason Thibeault
August 29, 2011 at 9:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chromium on Linux. I just saw an ad that asked me to download XVid to run the ad, and showed me one of those yellow bars like in IE when they want you to install a plugin — only it was inside the ad frame itself.
The culprit is definitely adBrite. It’s rather annoying that I tried to dig into the situation a bit further and it tried to make me download XVidSetup.exe — like that’ll do anything on Linux.
Trebuchet
August 30, 2011 at 3:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed, I don’t know if you’re still following this but I just heard one. Didn’t see it though, just “Congratulations, you’ve won!” coming out of the headphones on the table. I didn’t actually see any ads that looked as if they’d have been responsible.
Trebuchet
August 30, 2011 at 3:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And it just happened again, when the updated page with the previous comment loaded. The culprit seems to be something called LocalPromotions.info. It’s not a video, just an annoying flashing ad with a smiley face.