The FastDay Forum

[Moogie]

I think we all feel much the same way about diet products and 'miracle cures' - we don't believe in them or want to see them advertised here.

Here at FastDay we stand against the diet industry, encouraging people to find ways to help themselves with our support, not by selling meal replacements, magical pills or surgery!

We've done our best to block diet ads from the Google ad system but apparently some are still getting through. We've specifically blocked ads for the big diet companies as well as the dieting & weight loss category on the ad filters. I've just been through the filters some more and found some other sneaky categories they'd been hiding diet ads and have disabled those too. Hopefully that will help!

We totally agree that these are not the sort of ads we want to see here on FastDay and with a little help from you we hope to get rid of them.

I was just chatting with @fast_jason and he spotted an ad from a company called Fussy Eaters which didn't seem appropriate. Bam! Whacked them with my ban-stick as quick as I could

So, if you see an ad which really isn't appropriate to the site please do let us know. It would be most helpful to know the site the ad was promoting so we can block all ads for that domain but also it's useful if you can send us a screenshot (or post it here on the forum) so we can get rid of it as quick as we can.

We've also had some discussions about the number of ads and have decided to scrap the text ads along the top of the site to tidy things up. This will be sorted ASAP although please do bear with us as it's a long weekend and with how busy this week has been I think we all need a bit of a break



Thanks for all your help and patience. We'll get there!

You are doing a great job so keep it up

Ballerina x

@moogie I think you can rely on people here to not let any suspect ad see the light of day more than once - it will be pulled up instantly, like a weed in a garden of gorgeous and beautiful plants! (You can tell I'm watching the Chelsea Flower Show on tv, can't you?? )

I've got TotalRecipeSearch.com coming up

Well, just above Moogie's title AdBusting! Let's get rid of the diet ads...

I see this :
AdChoices -
► Diet Weight Loss ► Belly Fat Diet ► Healthy Food Diet ► Fasting Diet Plan

as if I am supposed to choose one !!!!!!!

Reading this very thread I saw ads for:

perfectorigens.com
alkalinefoods.net

and and ad for some kind of magical water that unfortunately dissappeared when I responded to this post so I couldn't get the link.

I would suggest that you have your web person put a border around the ads and underneath the box holding the ads put in some kind of text like "FastDay does not control which products appear in Google Ads or endorse these products." This is rather like those "Advertisement" headings that run over drug ads in U.S. magazines to make it clear to readers that they aren't editorial content even though they are often formatted to look like articles.

I would also shrink the size of the ads you display. Go look at some of the big commercial news sites and you will see that their ads aren't all that big. I think they are actually more likely to attract clicks when they are smaller because they aren't quite as annoying.

Meanwhile I will click merrily on all the dreadful ads because a) it costs the advertisers money and b) it supports you folks.

[Moogie]

Well, just above Moogie's title AdBusting! Let's get rid of the diet ads...

I see this :
AdChoices -
► Diet Weight Loss ► Belly Fat Diet ► Healthy Food Diet ► Fasting Diet Plan

as if I am supposed to choose one !!!!!!!

Thanks, this entire ad 'slot' is actually going to be scrapped just a soon as my access is sorted out on the new server Meanwhile I've put in a request with the tech team to see if they can scrap it any sooner.

I suspect that the category/filter changes made yesterday on the ad system may take up to 24 hours to kick in, as I'd be surprised if they continued to include these sort of ads when we have disabled every diet category we can find!

[Moogie]

Reading this very thread I saw ads for:

perfectorigens.com
alkalinefoods.net

and and ad for some kind of magical water that unfortunately dissappeared when I responded to this post so I couldn't get the link.

I would suggest that you have your web person put a border around the ads and underneath the box holding the ads put in some kind of text like "FastDay does not control which products appear in Google Ads or endorse these products." This is rather like those "Advertisement" headings that run over drug ads in U.S. magazines to make it clear to readers that they aren't editorial content even though they are often formatted to look like articles.

I would also shrink the size of the ads you display. Go look at some of the big commercial news sites and you will see that their ads aren't all that big. I think they are actually more likely to attract clicks when they are smaller because they aren't quite as annoying.

Meanwhile I will click merrily on all the dreadful ads because a) it costs the advertisers money and b) it supports you folks.

Thanks for those. I'd like to think they would cease to be displayed within 24 hours of the filter changes I made on the ad system yesterday but just to be sure I've had a look at the sites and agree they're not the sort of thing we want promoted here and have now added them manually to the excluded ad sites list.

The concerns about distinctions between ads and contents have been raised with the team and will hopefully be discussed further next week, being a holiday weekend and having had such a busy few days I'm sure you'll understand that we need a little bit of time to relax now the main bugs are fixed

In terms of ad sizes I know from experience with my experiments on the old site which ones seem to 'work' best and the ad system also suggests that these sizes will be the most productive. We will of course be looking at the stats as time goes on and see which ones we may be able to swap out or scrap depending on how they're doing. We've already decided to get rid of the link unit along the top of the page just because we really don't like it!

It's probably been fixed - I hope! But a day or so ago I got an ad offering lap banding - I find that completely offensive and I'm still recovering. Still having heaps of trouble on my iPhone, and I'm developing a very short tolerance interval for being on the forum, sorry, it's really heart-breaking this end too. Could I put in another plug for the old sweet and encouraging language on the tracker - the current one just makes me want to cry, it's so cold & factual. Sorry to have a little nervy.

Just flagging to fasters that one of the ads contains malware. I spent a whole day yesterday trying to remove it. It's for a media player and a big green button that says free download with a big white arrow. I first got it when I installed an adblocker and it found its way in. Just in case you might have it - it's called Genieo (you don't know that until it takes over) and it takes over your search engine. Do not download the uninstall app as it is just a scam. I'm pretty IT savvy and managed to get rid of it finally yesterday after spending hours on an Apple forum.

Those live video chat/flirty singles ads are getting right on my wotsits!

I only see 2 adds per page on my tablet - one after the first post and one after the posts before the Forum Menu. I blank all adds and have for many years so I could not even tell you what they were for. I certainly do not take them personally (My husband shares my Amazon login so I have long got used to bizarre book recommendations.)

[Moogie]

Those live video chat/flirty singles ads are getting right on my wotsits!

Goodness me are dating ads coming up? I blocked those categories! I'll have another nosey through and see if they have been hidden away elsewhere in the complex tree of categories! Sorry about that.


EDIT:
Okay, I found another category for 'singles' in the Family/Community branch of the ad tree and have disabled that. Do let me know if you see any more of this nature. I thought the primary 'dating' category would have it all covered.

[Moogie]

Just flagging to fasters that one of the ads contains malware. I spent a whole day yesterday trying to remove it. It's for a media player and a big green button that says free download with a big white arrow. I first got it when I installed an adblocker and it found its way in. Just in case you might have it - it's called Genieo (you don't know that until it takes over) and it takes over your search engine. Do not download the uninstall app as it is just a scam. I'm pretty IT savvy and managed to get rid of it finally yesterday after spending hours on an Apple forum.

Hi, sorry to hear about this - I understand Jason has looked into this issue for you and even gone so far as to take it up with someone at Google! I've been doing a bit of reading about this myself and will let you know when we have anything further to report. Looking at Google's info they seem to say that they do have 'defence systems' to check the ads for things like this but sometimes things do fall through the net - and as soon as they know about it, the ads are blocked from their system.