Johanna Lundbäck (courtesy supermodelsgallery.com)

In our ongoing effort to generate income, TTAG recently added an ad on the bottom of the page that popped-up as you scrolled down. Despite much appreciated support from members of our Armed Intelligentsia, the ad proved as popular as Johanna Lundbäck [above] at a Weight Watchers meeting. So we asked the ad’s provider to add an X opt out. That did precisely nothing to soothe the savage beast(s). In the face of ongoing opposition (including a long campaign by TTAG Test and Evaluation Editor Nick Leghorn) the pop-up will soon be sleeping with the fishes. I apologize for the inconvenience and aggravation generated by this commercial experiment. Rest assured that TTAG is fully committed to our readers’ satisfaction. Thank you for your patience and patronage.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

53 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks! And will there be any action regarding the auto-starting video ads? Sometimes they will start playing after the page has been open a few minutes.

      • Just happened to me, about ten minutes ago. So, still here. It’s 3 Saturday afternoon, EST. Wet snow mixed with rain.

      • Have ya’ll considered a subscription based model with member perks? Like figure out how much an ad brings in, 3 bucks a month? charge that for a sub and then offer posting comments, emails @ttag.com, larger avatars, stickers (free adverts on the street), better RSS etc. to subscribers, then expand to swag, hell I’d buy a shirt if you had fatman sizes. But still keep the ad supported content available to people who prefer to use it that way, bottom line I’d rather pay a yearly fee (36 bucks which is 3×12) then deal with ads.

    • I emailed Dan about noon on Thursday, and he told me they should be gone, but to let him know if I saw/heard any more. I had 5-6 TTAG tabs open for the next 7 hours, and didn’t hear another one during that whole time.

      If you are still hearing them, see if you can identify what they’re for, and then report back.

    • I’m going to start clicking on some of the ads, especially the non-firearms related ads, assuming this both helps TTAG and also the companies who are good enough to choose to advertise on a firearms site.

  4. Doesn’t bother me, but glad to see you do keep on top of what I guess the pop-consensus was. How very democratic of you!?

    -R

  6. I like and promote this site. I also appreciate that you’ve decided to kill it(the assault ad that is). 🙂

    • I was just coming here to say that. I wouldn’t mind throwing you guys a few bucks, consider how much I use up your bandwidth through constant refreshing.

      I would also consider setting up an Amazon affiliate account.

    • +1 To the suggestion for the Paypal donate option. There are even small automatic monthly options ($1, 2, 10) that I bet many would opt for instead of the pop-up ad.

    • I would deffinatley consider making donations if you guys had a more mobile freindly site (see my comment below).

      Dont get me wrong, I would donate now even because you guys do a great job.

    • +1 Paypal, Google Wallet, etc. Whatever works for you guys

      I use AdBlock on Chrome and didn’t see these ads but I am definitely willing to support the site through a donation. While AdBlock is great for those websites that abuse the ads, it unfortunately makes it difficult to support sites like yours.

      Keep up the great work!

  9. Any way to make the site more mobile friendly? Regardless of using the mobile or full site, usualy any post with over 100+ comments is next to impossible for me to view. I have tried this on two different phones from two different providers, both in areas with max data speed with the same result.

    Also, I have no idea how to describe the other issue but I am often limited to short comments because the comment box, well is just tedious. If I exceed the size of the box, I cant scroll from one part of my message to the next. When I try to scroll it just scrolls the whole page. Again, no clue how to describe this issue. When I make longer comments like this I cant screw up otherwise I have to delete whole chunks to go back and fix a small mistake. I have been on mobile sites where on clicking the comment box it enters a text message like mode, no clue what else to call it, but it makes commenting a lot easier. That would be awesome. Oh and I have the same issue with the edit function.

    Thanks as always and keep up the good work.

    • Your description of the mobile comment box is adequate for anyone to understand who has ever used it for more than a couple sentences. My workaround is composing my comment in another notepad-like app, and then copying and pasting into the comment window.

      I also have noticed the slowdown on 100+ comment threads, and also on smaller threads (30-60) with YouTube videos inline. Perhaps the two things are related. The problem seems to be phone-side, not server-side.

      • Thanks Matt. Im glad its not just me and that someone gets what Im trying to describe. Ill try using the notepad ap and see how that works.

    • I’ve had pretty much nothing but good experiences with the mobile site on TTAG. Initially I used Opera, and now these days I use Chrome. I’ve been using Android, but upgrading from 2.3.4 on up to 4.1.1.

  10. Thanks (in advance). That is one of the most annoying I’ve seen. Even after X-ing it out it comes up anew on every visited page.

    Most of the targeted ads were for things I already bought or had decided not to buy.

  11. I totally get that you need to generate revenue, but the code in that banner ad blows chunks.

    Lastly, animated ads and pop ups do NOT work as intended. They annoy instead of attract. I can’t tell you how often I close a page entirely when they appear.

  12. I run adblock, so I never saw an ad, but if you guys drop in a donate button I could possible toss a few bucks your way

  13. I’m still being assaulted by these pain in the ass ads. Every time I click on something I have to x out the ad.

  14. Johanna Lundbäck would be popular anywhere. Her presence at a WW meeting would guarantee my attendance.

  15. Well, I didn’t mind it all that much. I’m reading your site for free, the x worked to kill the annoying ad, it wasn’t that hard to deal with.

    Then again, I work in a high-static environment and am used to tuning things out!

    On behalf of others, thanks for killing it. Now where is the donate button?

  16. full marks for trying something & yanking it when it didn’t work; i appreciate this centralized forum & hope something else comes up for you that’s a win-win. cheers.

  20. I felt the x was plenty to allow me to choose to shut it down if I didn’t want it there. Kudos to you for listening to your readers however! Hopefully you can find other revenue generating streams to cover what you would have lost with that ad.

  21. I have no problem with ads (that don’t make noise), but ones that interfere with my ability to actually read the site (such as the high-powered assault ad) are a problem.

  22. Robert, TTAG is not perfect, but I admire your willingness to change course when necessary. Thanks for your flexibility.

  24. I understand the need to make some $$$’s. Ads might have been acceptable if they were about half the size and would have dissolved in 10 seconds or so. I use ghostery and got a large black bar across the bottom of the screen.

  25. Much obliged! The auto start video ad was much worse than the bottom banner though…at least you could x the banner…the auto play ad had no controls!

  26. Thanks for killing the ad. I didn’t realize how annoying it was until I visited on a computer without ad-block enabled

  27. May of the Banners had no “Xs” and a new one would pop-up in second ( I have PU Blocker running)
    Theyabsolutely ruined my visits here.
    I’m glad someone realised that putting one’s wallet before the clientele is a one way ticket to failvill, just ask Recoil Mag and CTD

  28. Thanks for actually listening to your readers. It’s refreshing and I will continue to frequent your site and those of your unobtrusive advertisers in the sidebar.

  32. I found the ad an issue because of how it interfered with my reading of the articles. I think it may be a viable revenue generator if it would appear on the right hand side of the screen. There is a stretch of area that has little if any text that is would not bother me to see the ad in. Keep the “x” available to remove it in case it is in the way of the bit of text that is there or don’t let it travel that high up.

  33. The thing that really kills me is the page refresh that happens every few minutes, I assume to update the ads. It jumps back up to the top of the page, so you loose your place reading an article or comments.

Comments are closed.