Advert auto playing annoying fanfare sound

This topic was created by GBL Initialiser .

  1. GBL Initialiser
    Stop

    Advert auto playing annoying fanfare sound

    One of the adverts displayed on your site is an obnoxious flash concoction that automatically plays an annoying fanfare without any user interaction. The flash video URL in question is http://www.aldaniti.net:8080/imagenes/creatividades/20130228112406.swf (The audio seems to only play once in a while). The URL it takes you to is http://www.aldaniti.net/wingames/apple_dk/index.php

    I hope that you find chaps over at El Reg will agree that automatically playing sound is a no-no and will euthanise this particular advert.

    Oh and to pre-empt the standard web user reply to posts like these, no I wont use adblock because I'm not a parasite.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Advert auto playing annoying fanfare sound

      Thanks for the catch. No ad should autoplay music.

      What country are you in / browser/ OS?

      1. GBL Initialiser

        Re: Advert auto playing annoying fanfare sound

        Denmark, IE10, Win8.

        Going to the advert URL directly in Firefox also plays the music instantly though I haven't run in to it normally in FF yet.

        1. GBL Initialiser

          Re: Advert auto playing annoying fanfare sound

          There is also a banner version of the advert that takes you to the same URL and seems to play the audio automatically too, can't be 100% sure as both the original and the banner showed up at the same time.

          URL of the banner advert is http://www.aldaniti.net:8080/imagenes/creatividades/20130228112334.swf

          Any update on this annoyance?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Advert auto playing annoying fanfare sound

            So it is a badly behaved ad served through Google AdSense. Our ops people block it on our site today. Let us know if you see it again.

            Thanks.

  2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    Suggestion

    Dear El Reg,

    I presume you doen't host your own adverts - or at least not the banners and inserts. I believe you're using a third party.

    Could you not implement a process where we could directly complain about shit adverts to both you and them. Some of them are badly coded, and start opening all over the screen - some auto-play music (though I've not seen one of those myself). When I've complained in the past the ads have hung around quite a while, and make the site quite unpleasant to use. At some point I'm going to get pissed off and just put on adblock, and then I'm harming your revenue.

    The problem is that the excuse of "it's not our advert" starts to wear thin after a while. As far as the user is concerned it's your site, so it is your advert. So you should care about the harm it does to your reputation more than some random ad-slinger will. Because, obviously, it matters more to you. I've been a forum mod on a non-techy site, who had exactly this problem, and people simply would not accept that it wasn't the site's fault.

    I can see both sides of the argument, but the problem is that the rogue adverts work, as well as really pissing people off. So in the short term, the advertisers have an incentive to do it. Even though in the long term it harms them just as much as El Reg. The best way I can think of to deal with this is to allow the users a method to complain that lets the advertisers know directly that they're pissing off the customers (in this case both the readers and El Reg). That would also be useful info to have in contract negotiations, or as an excuse to allow you to directly block adverts until they're fixed.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      Re: Suggestion

      I've said it before and I'll say it again.

      The way the ad-pushing industry works at the moment is fundamentally fucked. The correct way is to take the ad from the owner, check it to see that it meets standards and host it themselves.

      The current method of flogging the slot and fetching the content from the advertiser is an open invitation to advertisers to fill their boots when it comes to bending the rules and also one of the most prevalent attack vector for malware.

      I doubt we'll see any change though. It seems that no major behavioural change in the way that the internet is used occurs these days unless it is championed by Google. In this case the status quo probably suits Google as much, if not more than, anyone else.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Suggestion

      They are not our ads - but we don't use that as an excuse.

      We do pass on all complaints to our ops team, who then pursue cases of malformed ads with their counterparts at the ad agencies.

  3. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

    TeeCee,

    Ads aren't as bad as they used to be. I don't even have a pop-up blocker set up, because I get so few of them. Which wasn't the case 5 years ago. I think sites have realised the danger. There's a lot less flashy-flashy boxes with buttons in now too, except the obvious scams. I'd guess that's because that design is so associated with scams.

    Of course it only takes a small outbreak of them to suddenly change user behaviour, and it wouldn't surprise me if a lot more people are now capable of installing some sort of version of Adblock. There's also the 'danger' of tablets and phones. Apple set the base permissions on Safari on the iPad tighter than I do on my desktops. I'm sure Google aren't quite that careful on Android, given where they make their cash. But screen space on phones (and to a lesser extent tablets) being smaller, and browsing increasing on those devices, means that advertisers are going to lose out. If they respond with more obnoxious ads, they may find themselves blocked by default by someone like MS or Apple.

    I guess one reason that people don't host their own advertising content is that this would make tracking much harder, so the ad slingers won't let them. I do think sites underestimate the damage that it does to their reputations though, as they see the advertisers as third parties, but most users don't.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      I guess one reason that people don't host their own advertising content is that this would make tracking much harder, so the ad slingers won't let them.

      I wasn't suggesting that they did. I was suggesting that the ad-slingers should rather than just flogging the slot to the actual advertiser and fetching their content, as seems to be the case now. As things stand, you do not have control over what's in an ad, Google/Doubleclick/${other_bunch_of_bastards} do not have control over what's in an ad (or even give a shit as far as I can see), but some advertising weasel or scammer who's bought the slot? He has....

      The current way of doing things is like flogging souvenir chunks of semtex on eBay. Some of your purchasers may not be planning to leave theirs on a shelf as an ornament....

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