Oblivion

Change of Ad Provider

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While I wouldn’t normally divulge such information publically in a news post due to the “unsexy” nature of talking about advertising, and because most of it happens behind the scenes anyway, I thought I would be remiss if I didn’t update people on this topic.

A little under two months ago we announced and released our new ad reporting functionality. The idea was to provide a very easy method to report bad ads that might come up on the site. Most importantly, for us, it was a way of gauging just how bad a problem bad ads were on our provider. Bad ads being defined as ads with auto playing sound, redirects, pop-ups or, worst of all, malware or viruses. I had an inkling, but I had no official figures to back it up.

Over 8,500 reports later on 115 specific ad placements (in under 2 months)...I have a very, very good idea. I was abso-bloody-lutely livid when the extent of the problem was revealed and sent regular emails expressing my disgust to my provider. Here’s just a snippet:

We're a part of the problem! We're the reason more and more people are turning to adblockers to secure themselves against this crap. And I think what annoys me most is it's taken me having to waste my coder's time creating an ad reporting system...to even know there was a problem in the first place! It's diabolically bad, and I'm ashamed I'm serving these ads to my users and ashamed I've let it go on for so long.


While I won’t go into the internal politics that happened behind the scenes that involved me exerting pressure to try and improve the situation, I’m writing this news post today to let people know that as of this Saturday, we will be moving to a new provider. It is my hope that moving to this new provider should provide higher quality, more targeted advertising that is far more reliable and safe for users of the Nexus.

We’ll rework our reporting system to work with the new provider’s system and I will continue to monitor the situation closely. If it doesn’t work out, we will move again (and again, and again, if necessary) until we find a provider we can truly rely on. Even if it means taking a hit on our ad revenue to ensure the security is correct.

I wanted you to know that this stuff is important to me and I take it extremely seriously. We work hard to secure our site as much as we possibly can, and it frustrates us that our work is undermined by external attack vectors outside of our direct control that we rely on in order to survive.

So, from this Saturday, it is my utmost hope that the advertising situation improves considerably. I will update you accordingly, especially in regards to the new “tiered membership” incentivised system I mentioned in the earlier news post linked at the beginning of this article.

Once we’ve gauged the reliability of the new ad provider we’ll be in a position to launch that system and provide some benefits to those of our users who help to support the Nexus by turning their ad blockers off (or not using adblockers at all) on the Nexus.

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  1. Shinkoku
    Shinkoku
    • supporter
    • 18 kudos
    I've started (like, just today) having problems with ads auto redirecting. Have adblock disabled. Not sure which ad is causing it. Last time got auto-redirected to some "like chinese women?" spam page
  2. jmababa
    jmababa
    • member
    • 0 kudos
    Site is broken I think by the new adds its displaying twext only with white background can't even read text in new version of google chrome remember this was yesterday when they changed version
  3. TakezoDunmer2005
    TakezoDunmer2005
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    Pay $2 to be a supporter, never see another ad again.  


    Heh, I already tried to, but the damnable page will only handle non-USD currency, effectively locking my CC out...And no, I don't do paypal!
  4. Sulhir
    Sulhir
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    • 71 kudos
    Pay $2 to be a supporter, never see another ad again.  That was my solution when I didn't want to hassle with ad blockers accidentally blocking site functionality.  It's a major problem with vendor supplied materials in any business be it a grocery store or a website.  I know of one example with event cards like birthday, holidays, graduations... they had to get a vendor that stocks overall lower quality cards to keep obscene ones off the shelf and got an employee to design a whole custom selection for the options the newer, cleaner, but extremely limited vendor doesn't stock.  Basically the Nexus can spend all the money they make from ad revenue policing the ads or struggle from supplier to supplier never finding that joyous place where users can browse and generate revenue for the site at the same time.  The options that ad suppliers give their customers is stupidly limited and I know of some ad blockers now rewarding those that supply overall unobtrusive sources of revenue, ads that you still see with an ad blocker active because they are confirmed benign by the user base.  Without the cooperation of all the parties involved, users turning off ad blockers, vendors supplying safe and reasonable ads, websites refusing to deal with ad suppliers who cannot conform, ect... this task is insurmountable even with all the resources of the internet at our fingertips.
  5. tango31
    tango31
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    I concur with a lot of people here,that most of the ads just crap out my browsing here. The big green WOW one is the worst, it covers half the page then disappears but if you click anywhere on that page it redirects you to another site. Nexus is near unusable for me these days. And are the Nexus people reading these post? Sure doesn't seem like it.
  6. TakezoDunmer2005
    TakezoDunmer2005
    • member
    • 4 kudos
    Three words...Auto-playing Videos...For some stupid yoga crap no less!
     
    I want to destroy all belongings/assets of the guy who invented this concept, then send him to Baghdad buck-naked with a Daesh (ISisn't) are dung gargle'rs tattoo'd on his forehead...
     
    Nahhh, that's a bit harsh, I'll skip the tattoo.   
     
    BTW, I reported the vids, however, I have to keep my defenses up as the vids slowed down my page load with unnecessary bandwidth usage! I'll disable my Ad blocks as soon as the videos are no longer here.
  7. DoctorKaizeld
    DoctorKaizeld
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    • 53 kudos
    yeah i occasionally have some weird redirects on my phone when i am not logged in. the other day there was a pop-up ad about refrigerators that required me to exit it to search the site... man i miss my PC and its adblocker (i am a supporter here so dont get after me about that i already dont see them ads!)
     
    i mean seriously these ad companies are ridiculous i dont want to block ads on websites all the time but i am tired of clickbait ads and pop ups everywhere that bog down my computer or force me to wait 10 seconds to continue on the website (looking at you Wikia and theSimsresource!) lets not forget many of them are scams and packed with viruses. why cant we just have some decent side of the screen ads that dont have animations or top banner ones? they arent bad and i have no issue with those... usually... stupid dating sites always showing up because they arent as successful as they try to let on and only want your information and money.
  8. ghastley
    ghastley
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    I have seen a number of ads that overlay the entire background image, and the "pub728x90" div with an iframe that exceeds the box it was loaded into. Since these sit on top of the reporting link, they're also defeating your attempts to police them. Is there another way to report these?
  9. ideaspy
    ideaspy
    • supporter
    • 0 kudos
    Hello, I just got a redirecting ad that sent me here :

    http://owizz.exclusiverewards.7112897.com/?sov=2766120248&hid=htnttxnlxjxhv&utm_source=Unknown&utm_campaign=579215748a2fd90f640f5b47&redid=33477&gsid=68&campaign_id=29&id=XNSX.s1%3A%3As2%3A%3As3-r33477-t68

    I could not report it as it redirected the page.
    1. DarkBladerXs
      DarkBladerXs
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      • 0 kudos
      Same problem here, with these domains date-for-adults.com and bestsingleslocator.com
  10. bben46
    bben46
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    • 781 kudos
    If you are a supporter or premium and are still seeing ads. They are NOT from Nexus. You have been hijacked by an ad stealing application.
    Many of these can be cleaned using the FREE JRT program from Malwarebytes. It runs fast and is from a well respected and ligit anti-malware company.
     
    Be sure to get it from the official site here: https://www.malwarebytes.com/junkwareremovaltool/
     
    It does not replace your anti virus and does not run in background or stay in memory.
    1. CeticDragon
      CeticDragon
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      Uh...malwarebytes is a dot ORG, not a dot COM (At least I've never seen it as such)
    2. WightMage
      WightMage
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      Good old MB, best antivirus ever. ^^