Ads on Geekzone

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#1600352 28-Jul-2016 21:19

And that's my position this year, just bought a new house and my second child starting school with a once-in-15-years chance to see my childhood family all together and meet 2 new married in laws and a new nephew and niece I've never met... cash is tight at present (cos I'm doing too many things at once!)

Previously a subscriber, dedicated GZ'r but hard to take the ads when my main access being on my iPhone anyway... I have it whitelisted on the lappy and desktop, but CBF for adds on the phone!

gzt

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#1600367 28-Jul-2016 21:55

Testing through webpass could be useful:

http://m.geekzone.co.nz/Forums/4/Topic/181323/1

No mobile yet tho unless I'm mistaken.

michaelmurfy

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#1600373 28-Jul-2016 22:13

Geekzone is a site I always have open at work - by default all ads are blocked (banking environment) on their network so I've noticed that before I log in I get the full page "you're using an ad blocker".

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ethanbmnz

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#1601486 30-Jul-2016 23:51

JimmyH:

As a side issue, the quick reply box was working fine yesterday.

Today, I'm back to the message that I need to whitelist GZ in my ad blocker to enable quick reply. But GZ is still whitelisted in my blocker.

I'm experiencing the same here.

freitasm:

What is your browser and ad blocker software?

Chrome 52.0.2743.82m (also tested on Edge 25.10586.0.0 - same result). No ad blocker in either browser.

OT: supporting of posts seems to have disappeared.

PhantomNVD

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#1601500 31-Jul-2016 04:15

FWIW, I eventually found that when connecting via my vpn NF solution GZ seemed to think I was running and add blocker too... turns out the VPN is doing some funky ad locking for me automatically (and prolly saving thenselves the bandwidth while doing so?)

freitasm

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#1601507 31-Jul-2016 08:02

VPNs are evil in the sense that they themselves can and do funky things with your traffic. Worst case is Hola. I use VPNs when away for security reasons but some are really bad.

Even if you don't have an AdBlocker check that you don't have hosts file changes. Or malware that redirect ads to their own domain.

Batman

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#1601509 31-Jul-2016 08:23

On the other hand, I don't use adblockers, all the ads show, but GZ tells me to whitelist adblocker to show quick reply box. Using chrome.

freitasm

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#1601512 31-Jul-2016 08:27

Do you use script blockers, ghostery or similar? Do you have a CSS changer or anything else installed? Have you tried cleaning cookies and starting browser again?

Trying to find if it's a false positive or something else in your configuration.

geekiegeek

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#1601513 31-Jul-2016 08:27

I have Geekzone whitelisted but can no longer use quick reply. Everything has been working fine for months until now with no change at my end. Plus I am getting all the ads so it's definitely whitelisted. I would suggest the Geekzone is not picking up the whitelisting - using Adblock Chrome extension.

RunningMan

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#1601515 31-Jul-2016 08:46

This is partially covered over in this thread, but there seems to be a lot of overlap between the threads.

Using FFX 47.01, AdBlock Plus, I have had GZ whitelisted for years.

I am regularly seeing the full page Admiral banner requesting I whitelist (which I have), ads are clearly being displayed in the correct positions, and in the last day or so have now also lost the quick reply box and "+1" button.

Checking the ABP rules that come into play when seeing the full page Admiral banner, the only rule in play is the whitelisting of geekzone.co.nz - nothing is being blocked.

I'm doing what is being asked, GZ is whitelisted (and has been for years), yet the full page interruptions and now loss of functionality seem to be getting increasingly intrusive.

I don't think this is an issue at my end (but it could be!). No other plugins in play, no host file issues etc. If ABP is set to "disable everywhere" the issues stop, but why then doesn't something show up as blocked when the Admiral banner covers a page (which I presume a rule to whitelist could be set)? Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot? Based on the number of reports of similar issues, I'm guessing this is an issue that Admiral needs to resolve...

EDIT: and now a captcha check to post as well.

RunningMan

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#1601530 31-Jul-2016 09:02

RunningMan:

[snip]If ABP is set to "disable everywhere" the issues stop

Actually, even this is not currently the case. With ABP completely disabled, ads are shown as normal, no quick reply box or "+1"

Batman

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#1601531 31-Jul-2016 09:03

freitasm: Do you use script blockers, ghostery or similar? Do you have a CSS changer or anything else installed? Have you tried cleaning cookies and starting browser again?

Trying to find if it's a false positive or something else in your configuration.

I have nothing like that installed (that I'm aware of, and that I can see/find). However I realise that THIS THREAD shows NO Ads. But all other threads = full of Ads.

The only thing I have installed is Avast. But thing is Ads are showing (on all other threads but this).

Edit: links

freitasm

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#1601546 31-Jul-2016 09:43

Bear with me people, this is going to be a long reply.

We can individually set a page to not show ads. The reason ads are not shown in this thread is because we don't want ad networks to think this thread is "asking for clicks". Yes I know we aren't asking for clicks but from experience with some services they employ people that get paid very little to not interpret things. I will leave at that.

As for asking for whitelisting, we've seen up to 60% ad blocking on some days. This has severely impacted revenue and capacity to keep paying the bills (yes, again, people say we can run on a $5/day shared hosting but this is not possible when you serve millions of pages a month (direct client requests plus automatic refreshes, Geekzone live refreshes, etc), have to pay software licenses, maintain the system, pay colocation, buy SSL certificates (yes, I know of free certificates, and they aren't wildcard), pay for email services, expenses when receiving goods and shipping back, paying tax and GST, etc).

On top of that Geekzone was my full time job for almost ten years, and even now when I am working full time for another company Geekzone consumes a good amount of time - from myself and our moderators. Geekzone is great because of our community but we also have work being done here. Spammers being banned, expectations being managed, companies that ask us to help with some problem and so on.

And then when I got to the point of thinking "Damn, 60% ad blocking is killing it" and start using a service to ask people to consider whitelisting, the first that happens is someone goes and add the service to a block list. So we have to start all over again.

Because obviously there are different types of people that rationalise ad blocking in different ways. Some don't want ads because they think they eat into their bandwidth, some think it is a security risk (actually religious sites are more dangerous than porn sites and forums because they usually don't take security in consideration), some think it makes browsing slow (despite the fact I am constantly changing things to make Geekzone as fast as possible*), some don't think (they just have an ad blocker because a friend installed). In any case fewer ads means less revenue.

You don't have to click ads for us to make money. It helps in some cases. Reality is that most ads pay on a CPM basis - this means they pay just to have the ads appearing on the page, no other action required. Ads that pay on CPC (Cost per Click) or CPA (Cost per Action, such as our Amazon and MightyApe affiliate links) are responsible for a very small percentage of the revenue.

Also I really dislike the strategy some other sites use. For example you don't see "Suggested links" here - those clickbait boxes you see on Stuff, NZ Herald and even on decent sites such as NY Times. Those are a disgrace and more likely than not link directly to get rich schemes and spam. No, you don't see that crap here.

Also, unlike other publications you don't see pop-ups on Geekzone. You don't see page takeovers and you don't see those overlay ads common in other NZ tech publications. I can name and shame but you folks probably wouldn't know if you block ads. But I suggest you go to any co.nz IT publication with your shields down and see what I mean.

As for my current attempts at reminding people to please whitelist Geekzone, we are testing different services before we settle on something:

We use Admiral to identify ad blocking and present an overlay asking for you to whitelist Geekzone. The overlay is only shown once an hour. It does not prevent people from using the site. And yet someone who really thinks they know best decided to submit Admiral to a blacklist. To this person: you are an idiot.
We use a different service to identify ad blockers and adopt a different tactic: reduced functionality. As @RunningMan mentioned we have chosen to remove Quick Reply, +1 voting and the automatic refresh in our homepage for those using ad blockers. The problem is that without a clear message about why this functionality is removed I won't see much change. So the options would be to automatically email people if this happens to them
We used PageFair before but we currently paused it and may or may not come back to it.

As a result of using the full page overlay with Admiral I've seen a good number of people whitelisting the site - thank you for doing it.

We have two subscriptions options: Geekzone subscriptions ($25/year automatic renewal via PayPal or manual via direct deposit) and third-party service Webpass. We have only about 350 subscribers out of 93,000 registered users so you can see it's not the money making machine some think it is. Also many times I read people saying "I would pay for Geekzone if I had an option" and when pointed to the pages above there's another rationalisation "Oh, it's [too expensive] | [I don't use PayPal] | [I don't use banks] | ..."

As for troubleshooting we did identify a problem early on with how ad blockers on Firefox work for whitelisted sites. This was fixed on Admiral and PageFair, but will check with other services. Here are some things to consider when helping us finding problems with false positive:

Is it really a false positive?
Are you using another ad blocker on top of the adblocker?
Are you using privacy blockers such as Ghostery?
Do you have ad networks blocked in a hosts file?
Are you using a VPN that may be injecting their own ads or blocking ads?
Are you at work with ads blocked at their gateway?
Does your router (or firewall) have a capability to block ads and scripts?
Have you scanned your computer lately to make sure there's no malware hijacking your browsing traffic?

No solution is ever permanent and I really would like to not have to use any. I try to balance things and I am constantly looking at actual numbers to decide which way to go.

Sorry, this is a long post and I should probably make a link to it as a sticky for future reference. I might add a few more thoughts to this reply later so check back again in a day or so.

* I removed five scripts from our pages, optimised the Amazon redirection by only showing on pages where there's a mention of Amazon, have been using a CDN for years now (first MaxCDN then Cloudflare which now has an Auckland presence), have changed all our images to HTTPS to take advantage of parallel downloads with HTTP/2 on modern browsers, installed a new server (HP) a few months ago, colocate with an exceptionally well connected datacentre (Datacom's Orbit DC), etc.