Skimlinks ads are FAR from unobtrusive
Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 4:03 pm
I've noticed on several forums over the past several months that text link ads are being inserted into forum content and it's very far from what I'd call unobtrusive.
The specific issue is that a person will make a post on a forum, for example:
The biggest problem is it makes it impossible to tell at first look if there is a link being inserted by the person making the post, which might possibly be of interest to me, the reader or one of these ads. You can tell when you hover over the links and looking at the target location but 95% of the time you see these the links are the ads and not something the person making the post wants you to see.
I tried several times to block these by blocking:
*.skimresources.com
*.skimwords-link
But nothing worked until I realized the "unobtrusive ads" whitelist was overriding my custom filters. Unchecking the option to Allow some non-intrusive advertising finally banished the ads but I feel bad for having to resort to that.
In looking at your acceptable ads criteria it appears that the ads are trying to exploit the last section giving more leeway for affiliate links, though IMO it still easily fails Hyperlinks should not be misleading, in either content or placement. in that section as it it certainly misleads you into thinking that the forum poster is the one who wants you to look at the link in their post.
The specific issue is that a person will make a post on a forum, for example:
Then a script running on the page will pick some random words in the post and put in a link to some e-commerce site (sometimes Amazon, sometimes others) so you end up with:The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
.The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The biggest problem is it makes it impossible to tell at first look if there is a link being inserted by the person making the post, which might possibly be of interest to me, the reader or one of these ads. You can tell when you hover over the links and looking at the target location but 95% of the time you see these the links are the ads and not something the person making the post wants you to see.
I tried several times to block these by blocking:
*.skimresources.com
*.skimwords-link
But nothing worked until I realized the "unobtrusive ads" whitelist was overriding my custom filters. Unchecking the option to Allow some non-intrusive advertising finally banished the ads but I feel bad for having to resort to that.
In looking at your acceptable ads criteria it appears that the ads are trying to exploit the last section giving more leeway for affiliate links, though IMO it still easily fails Hyperlinks should not be misleading, in either content or placement. in that section as it it certainly misleads you into thinking that the forum poster is the one who wants you to look at the link in their post.