New, obnoxious, autoplaying, video ad

First topic message reminder :

I decided to test some things on my forum as a guest. Words cannot describe my horror when I saw this thing in the bottom right of my screen:

A very obnoxious video ad, that autoplays, and follows the user around the page, covering the actual content. A quick google search will clearly show that users hate these ads.

We already have sponsored content(an euphemism for what is, in fact, spam) in the topics, was this seriously necessary? Were we even announced of this change? What is the point of having a forumotion forum, if what I show to a potential user is an obnoxious ad, that wastes their internet bandwidth, and makes them not want to have anything to do with my site?

While this ad is autoplaying itself, the ads that used to show up at the bottom of the forum have stopped displaying properly, leaving an ugly white space where they used to be.

If I continue with my forum, I will urge my users to install an adblocker, until ads like this are gone. And that is a fairly huge "if".

I forced the default templates and css on the main forum(https://fmagic.forumotion.com/). Do the ads show up now?

Occultist wrote:
I forced the default templates and css on the main forum(https://fmagic.forumotion.com/). Do the ads show up now?

I do not see them.

The mistery deepens

Hello

I dont see them either

How did you modify the cookie banner?

Hello,

Occultist wrote:What these 2 forums have in common is the following 2 errors displayed in the console:

This problem should be fixed now, can you test again please? Thank you for the report

Regarding video advertising, this format has been in place for many months already (over a year) and the number of impressions is very limited (less than 1% of total impressions).

Regarding Google Adsense ads, this is a recent change from Google: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-adsense-anchor-ads-wider-screens-31701.html ! We try to intervene but it is complicated because it would be necessary to manually modify thousands of websites in the configuration of Google Adsense as Google had the good idea to activate this change automatically.

Instead of using an Adblocker, you can also refuse cookies via the cookie banner.

@The Godfather The errors have indeed been fixed, but I still don't see any ads. I have a bunch of warnings in the console now:

I think the the script from "long link" was loaded even though its MIME type is not a valid javascript type warnings come from the code that produced those 2 errors.

@SLGray You want a tutorial? Here you go!
I have been working on that forum on and off ever since ~2019. An year or 2 ago, there was a similar cookie banner on our forums, added by forumotion. I don't think it exists anymore, but you can reminisce about it by reading this tutorial:https://help.forumotion.com/t147313-how-to-change-the-cookies-bar-information. The first picture in that tutorial is how the default cookie banner used to look.

I didn't actually follow the tutorial. What I did was, I removed the default cookie banner from the templates. This step is probably not necessary today since I don't think forumotion uses that cookie banner anymore. @The Godfather, can you confirm that the old banner is not a thing anymore?

Then I added this HTML in my overallfooter_end template, just about at the end of the template:

Code:

<div class="cookie">
    <div class="cookie-info">We and our partners use Cookies and non-sensitive data to personalize your experience, measure audience and provide personalized advertising. You can consent to the use of this technology or manage your settings to fully control the data collected
        and processed.</div>
    <div class="cookie-buttons">
        <span class="cookie-g">Accept</span>
        <a href="/privacy#cmp" class="cookie-manage">Manage your options</a>
    </div>
</div>

Do note that my overallfooter_end and overallfooter_begin templates are heavily modified, so just adding that code at the end of your overallfooter_end may not work perfectly.

Then I added this css code:

Code:

.cookie {
    display: none;
    position: fixed;
    bottom: 0;
    margin: 20px;
    background: white;
    color: blak;
    box-shadow: 0px 0px 10px -1px #2f2f2f;
    width: 400px;
    right: 0px;
    z-index: 999;
    border: 10px solid #063e40;
    padding: 10px;
}

.cookie.showb {
    display: table;
}

.cookie>div {
    padding: 5px;
}

.cookie-buttons * {
    padding: 5px;
    display: inline-table;
}

.cookie-buttons {
    padding-top: 0px !important;
}

.cookie-g {
    background: green;
    cursor: pointer;
    color: white;
    box-shadow: var(--shadow);
}

.cookie-manage {
    color: black;
    margin-left: 5px;
    background: cadetblue;
    text-decoration: none;
    color: white;
    box-shadow: var(--shadow);
}

.cookie-g,
.cookie-manage {
    transition-duration: 0s;
}

.cookie-g:hover, .cookie-manage:hover {
    box-shadow: inset var(--shadow);
}


And finally, this javascript code(which looks a bit different on my forum, since I have a few helper functions already defined):

Code:

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", ()=>{
    if (_userdata.user_id === 1 || _userdata.user_posts) return false; /* the founder, as well as members that have already posted won't see the banner */
    var con = document.querySelector(".cookie");
    var button = document.querySelector(".cookie-g");
    if (!localStorage.getItem("cbanner")) {
        con.classList.add("showb");
        button.addEventListener("click", function () {
            localStorage.setItem("cbanner", 1);
            con.classList.remove("showb");
        })
    }
})

You can probably add these codes to any forum and it would work. Old browsers that don't support the localStorage API will cause an erorr and stop things from working. I could've added a check to prevent that, but I wasn't interested in supporting internet explorer 5


Edit:@The Godfather. The Tracking Protection from Firefox seems to disable ads on its own. An adblocker isn't even needed. That being said, I like to keep that option off, because I want to see how a user sees my forum.
Browserling doesn't display the ads either:https://www.browserling.com/browse/win7/chrome92/https://otesting.forumgratuit.ro/. I thought maybe I refused some cookies and the advertiser saved my ip, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I still only see the top ad's the bottom ones are still missing.

I can see an ad at the bottom of the forum. Is this problem still occurring or has it been resolved?

-Brandon

I still don't see anything.

This is what I see via Firefox:

Have you tried clearing the cache in your browser to see if that helps? Also you are sure you do not have any ad blocker installed right?

This problem is still marked as In-progress  on my tools so I guess they are looking in to why this is a problem and in the pile of to do list's Sorry it is taking so long.

@brandon_g, I tried with adblocker on, adblocker off, adblocked disabled, even removed, Firefox, Chrome, incognito window, normal window, laptop, phone, just about anything I could think of.

@Ape, no worries mate!

Could you give the link to the forum with this issue, again please?

You are not the only one having this problem when you go on your site links so it looks like a problem some where.

Can't see it being your codes or changes as your default where you made no change is also doing it and I can't see the ad's also and I have tested it on Firefox. Chrome, Edge, and still can't see the bottom ad's but see the top ones. so something is wrong some place for some to see it and other not.

@SLGray, main forum:https://fmagic.forumotion.com/
And testing forum:https://otesting.forumgratuit.ro/
The testing forum is basically a default awesomebb forum(or modernbb, can't remember rn). There's only a custom widget and some javascript that can t possibly interfere with the ads. Yet, they don't show up.

Now I can see the ads on both forums.

Did you update your Firefox?  It is now 92.0.

Occulist what is your location? What country do you live? I am wondering if location somehow plays a role, as both SLGray and I see the ads and we are in the USA, if your outside the USA maybe there is a different ad provider or something having issues?

i still dont see them 

@Skouliki do you know if the ad code is showing up in the inspector or not? I am curious if it is there but hidden, or if it isn't even being called by the browser or something. Here is the code I see for the ad in Firefox:

@SLGray, yep.

@brandon_g, I've looked into the inspector, and there's no ads there. Just empty iframes, or iframes with empty iframes. Some of the iframes in the iframes have display:none on them, but removing it does nothing.

Are in you the USA Occulist?

Nope. Europe, Romania. Didn't know my english was good enough for me to pass for an american

Your English is pretty good. But I think there is something to my theory about location then, because everyone who can see them is in the USA, and everyone in Europe can't see it. But seeing as the ad codes are blank, it definitely seems to be a problem on our end rather than something you did.

That could be it. Me, Skouliki and Ape are from Europe and we don't see the ads. I'll see tomorrow if using a vpn does anything

Yes the inspector is clean

If that was the case then France would not see them but as you will see The Godfather and Luzz is in France and and I think they could see them. 

The ad's should be there if not then the boxes should be removed by the system as it don't need to be there to show ad's

One way or the other there is some sort of bug.

Just updating you so this topic don't auto lock.
The ticket made by me is still in progress this means the team have still got this to do and have not yet found why you are having this problem.

I will reply back when I get more news.

To stop this going to be locked we will need to bump the topic at least once a week.