A Little Help: Hunt for Rogue Ad on Neatorama

We noticed a few comments complaining about ads with sound on Neatorama. We'd like to apologize for that and we want you to know that it's not cool - we don't purposely run ads with self-playing audio on the blog

Unfortunately, it's kind of hard to find that one rogue ad (I haven't run across it myself), so we need your help: please let us know which ad is the culprit - and if you could, please include the result of this cookie dump, so we can really track down and ban the bugger: http://ad.yieldmanager.com/cookie (you can email both to alex AT neatorama DOT com, if you don't want to put that in the comment)

Thank you!


This is just one of the many reasons I love Neatorama. While I haven't come across the ad myself, I love that you care about your readers and are trying to fix the problem. Hoorah Neatorama and hoorah to Alex! :D
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it sounded more like an interview or an audience Q and A. from the voice and what i could hear it sounded like the actor Steve Karel (sp?) since he was talking about the american version of the Office vs the British version and the announcement of an upcoming Candian version. i had other audio going so only caught the last bit but that was definitely what was going on. i looked all over the page to try and pause or disable it but never found anything active that looked like the culprit. it played through once and stopped. it had weird swoops and pauses like someone hitting the stop button on a tape recorder during play back.
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"You've been selected to win a free apple iphone". Yieldmanager is the domain if I recall correctly. It's insulting to Neatorama. It's a blatant scam.

I can find it tomorrow if I have time.
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I never got ads with sound but today I got a pop-up (never happened to me before visiting your site) and I was preparing an email to send you guys (I will send it to Alex) with a warning I've got from Chrome about one of your ads possible containing malware...
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It looks like its coming from that google ad bar up top. It doesn't seem like its only one ad, but a bunch of ads that are rotating.

Sort of ironic that I'm getting it presently on this page.
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The problem is that, for some reason, one of the ads in the iframe autoforwarded itself to a web site (still in the iframe, unclicked) that plays a video. I saw it earlier today and it drove me nuts as I searched through all thirty-something browser tabs open on my machine to find where the sound was coming from, but I eventually isolated it to that iframe. Wish I could remember what
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Okay, it just started playing a new audio ad. "What is Cobra, and how does it work?" an ad for health insurance. The iframe displays this web page:

http://eas.apm.emediate.eu/eas?camp=30813;cu=9545;cre=mu;target=_blank;ord=1243419788;EASClick=

This is a different audio ad than the one I heard earlier, which was a conversation with Steve Carell.
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I don't think a single rogue ad is responsible for this, I think you're the victim of a scripting attack. I'm not sure what blog app you are using but there are a number of ways for a malicious person to sneak a script into part of your site and do a number of nasty things.

In your case I think you are being hijacked by an advertising script that is simply putting the ads it wants onto your site, taking advantage of your traffic. During a visit to your site last night I got a security warning from a security app I run that detected that a known domain that hosts malware was being called from your site.
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Something for the 'Adblock' fanbois to think about.

Adblock is 'not' a sustainable solution, because if everybody does that Neatorama loses it's revenue stream, and, although you've got rid of the irritating adverts, you've got rid of Neatorama too...
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I've been only using MSIE lately and I hear that Firefox has been under assault by a lot of scripting, either allowed by the user or even getting in on its own. Usually when a web browser reaches a pinnacle of popularity, it also makes itself the largest target for attacks.
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Just got two of them finally-
"The website at www.neatorama.com contains elements from the site platinumtvonline.com, which appears to host malware – software that can hurt your computer or otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting a site that contains malware can infect your computer.
For detailed information about the problems with these elements, visit the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for platinumtvonline.com.
Learn more about how to protect yourself from harmful software online."
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It's in the top banner ads

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I just got a really annoying message saying "are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" I hit the x, but then it wouldnt let me get away from this page or even close firefox. I had to control alt delete it.
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At the adblock haters: Each ad only generates a teeny tiny bit of revenue. There have been suggestions that sites be set up to charge micro amounts of money (less than a penny per pageview) via some paypal equivalent. I would support this if it meant no stupid ads.
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If Firefox is giving you problems, try a different browser like MSIE, Chrome or Safari. I also use AVG and Spybot Search & Destroy to pick up random crap that manages to get past the browser.
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I see one ad that buggers up the page loading and it is for Auto Trader. It has a click to "Hear Kelly's story".
The ad that I hear (but have not seen it) is for NBC/TV Guide and upcoming shows.

I cleared my "junks" and reloaded the page and the second time I did not hear the ad, but the auto ad still showed up.
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I blame the uber-annoying moving Buzzfeed Ad. Besides the animation, I wouldn't put it past the weasels to pipe in audio (and maybe mind controlling tinfoil waves as well).
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The trouble I've seen lately is that the whole site gets hijacked by an ad. Like this weekend, the whole site redirected to Wal-Mart.com. Today it was to another site.
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While I am glad you are addressing this, it is frustrating. I have been a reader for over a year now, have posted anon. up til now, but am also getting some spam from you ads. I hope you can get this straightened. Also you had an ad last week that was pure scam. "Lose Weight".
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Thanks guys! We're definitely looking into it - in the meanwhile, please add your (bad) experiences to the comment. They all help our ad server guys track the rogue ads.
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"thelandlord
May 27th, 2009 at 8:13 am

Something for the ‘Adblock’ fanbois to think about.

Adblock is ‘not’ a sustainable solution, because if everybody does that Neatorama loses it’s revenue stream, and, although you’ve got rid of the irritating adverts, you’ve got rid of Neatorama too…"

I hate to do this, but I guess I'm going to have to.

Every site, unless it starts for the intent of being a commercial site, essentially is a hobby. I remember the older days of Neatorama when (not much different than it is now) it was just a blog of neat things. Except now, they have some promotional bits that I don't mind and occasionally offer things for sale or prize giveaway. That's all fine by me.

However, if you're running a site expecting to subsist purely on ad revenue, then you've got your head up your arse. The simple fact of the matter is that one bad apple (or in this case, many bad apples) spoils the whole bunch and well... Adblock didn't begin to exist out of a pathological need to deprive sites of revenue. It came to exist because of a need to control the flood of popping, abusive, site hijacking and browser crashing ads that were all the rage not much more than 5 years ago.

Who remembers the days when Doubleclick flooded the internet with tracking bug images? Who remembers the X-11 wireless camera popunders? Who remembers the spank the monkey ads? Who remembers Bonzai Buddy? It goes on and on and on. Even as well as a site can be maintained... (Sorry, Alex, I know you're trying, but this is a prime example right here, right now) There is ALWAYS going to be the risk of devious practices being done by the -third party- advertising resellers that are used to generate revenue for a site. Otherwise this problem and this thread that I'm posting in wouldn't even exist right now.

Do I think Neatorama would magically vanish along with half the internet if everyone blocked ads? No. But the sites that exist only to make money and not out of the labor of love that most tend to start out as... yeah, they would disappear, and I wouldn't miss them.

You see, I've run a site to host various projects and such... have helped to run others that reached a marked degree of recognition for the effort put into it. The temptation to put adboxes up was always there though the hosting costs actually weren't all that bad. It was out of pocketable for someone in his 20's.

One site that I had a 50% stake in was erasure.org. It was, at the time of it being shut down, the longest maintained erasure fansite on the internet. (It started in 1997) What killed it for us? Ads. One adbox that had those free iPod ponzi scheme offers ended up loading malware from another compromised thirdparty site and put us in a state where we were asking if it was worth it to continue the effort we put in for a few cents on clickthroughs. It wasn't. Restoring the site from backups took weeks and by that point... David and myself were both ready to move on. (Backing up a site you made at home is simple. Backing up a site that relies on multiple MySQL instances and a patchwork of php scripts and blog interfaces? Not so much. Things broke.)

Other circumstances led to the ultimate death of the site, which aren't really relevant to the issue at hand. But yes, the ads certainly caused more problems than it was worth for the amount of money that was coming in. To give you an idea of the distinction we had for being a fansite: Mute Records North America used us as their official press release source URL. (Mute Records UK had not yet bothered to give NA a discrete site) After EMI Records bought out Mute Records, the official url for Erasure releases continued to be our old erasure.org fansite... despite the site having been taken offline a few years before. (It simply redirects to my project site domains now.)

A bit of a tangent, but regardless. It was a hobby. We tried the expected thing of making money off of it, or in the least, covering our own expenses... and in doing so, it ended up being one of the many straws that lead to breaking the camel's back.

If your site cannot survive without adbox or banner impressions, then your business model is bullshit and site is not worth visiting. Alex and others have the right idea by integrating prize giveaways as a form of advertising (one of the many things we did at Erasure.org when other labels were getting in touch with us) and setting up a store to sell items featured on the site before. I'm pretty sure erasure.org would still be around if not for the problems we encountered because of attempting to do ads in the first place. So, I understand what Alex might be feeling right now. Losing control over your site because of some stupid ads is a pretty scary feeling.

I have my own projects that I host on my domains. I use a Donate button. I will not do ads. Period. If someone appreciates my site so much, then I hope they will donate... but I will not hold visitors accountable for my site's existence. It wouldn't continue to be the hobby that it started as if I did. That was the lesson I learned with erasure.org and the eventual toll it took upon myself and my friend in trying to do everything we thought we should have done for what we had.

If you are able to find a way to fund your time and expenses with what you do on your site... great. But you cannot do it with the expectation that the internet is a safe place and shit like this doesn't happen. Clearly, as you can see... it does. That is why I use Adblock and a 1/2 megabyte sized HOSTS file. If Alex were to sell adspace himself, uploading the images or scripts to be hosted locally... I would not block them. All bets are off when it's third party.
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Hello everybody - our ad server guys are still hard at work in trying to track down the ads. They've tracked down a few, and have banned those - but we don't know how many of these rogue ads are there to begin with, so if you still see them in the next few hours, please give us the location URL (landing page). That will speed things up a bit.

@Nat - I don't think the blog is victim to a scripting attack. If so, most of you would've seen the ads and we would've been deluged with angry emails (instead, I get less than a dozen - but it's still something we pay very close attention to, because I'm sure many more saw them but didn't say anything). Nevertheless, we'll continue to upgrade our servers' security protocols.

@JamesM - thank you for your thoughts. You're absolutely right about the perils of third party ads - it's a source of constant frustration for bloggers like me who have to rely on such services because we don't have internal sales team.

One of the reasons we have the online shop is that I want another source of revenue for the blog that is independent of advertisements. Ad revenues on a per impression basis have been declining for many years. Because more people ignore ads, the ads themselves have become more intrusive.

If something catastrophic happen with the ad business, at least we'll still have the shop to help support the expenses of the blog.

We've debated ad blocking on Neatorama a while ago. It was an interesting and frank discussion, and as far as I can tell, nobody's point of views were changed.

I'd like to point out that hosting cost for websites vary very differently based on the amount of bandwidth involved. Neatorama's hosting and bandwidth costs certainly aren't "pocketable" - it's in the tens of thousands of dollars annually - if not for ad and shop revenues, we won't be able to afford having the blog, period.
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"Alex
May 27th, 2009 at 4:14 pm

One of the reasons we have the online shop is that I want another source of revenue for the blog that is independent of advertisements. Ad revenues on a per impression basis have been declining for many years. Because more people ignore ads, the ads themselves have become more intrusive."

I think you've gone the right way about all of it. I make no apologies for using plugins to block third party ads... but absolutely would not begrudge you of any revenue if it was selfhosted. The problem is that it really is a logistics nightmare unless you're a huge megasite (like Digg, et al) and can rely on your own name or connections to sell space and have a departmental staff to deal with all of it.

When it comes to intrusiveness... A well designed layout also helps. (In other words: Don't do anything Myspace does when it comes to placing ads.) But then you deal with third party stuff that results in situations like these. It's not pretty, nor fun. It's a sad irony... People ignore ads because they were getting quite intrusive, so the ads become more intrusive because people are blocking what was 'bad enough' before. The point of no return (I used to whitelist some sites that I visited often) was when Flash overlay and keyword inlinking ads started showing up. The unfortunate thing was that some of these changes in behaviour were pushed to sites using the third party ad services without them knowing... resulting in a LOT of pissed off users.

But after you mention your share of the costs, I shudder to think how much myself and David may have "wasted" on erasure.org in hosting. (Ahhh. Youthful disposable income. Those were the days...) The Amazon referral links certainly did help, though.
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Welp - now it is an interview from The Late Show with David Letterman about some actress talking about Darrell Hammond. But there is another ad or interview that is running behind it??
I still cannot see whatever - but I can hear it.
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I was just complaining about ads with sound to my co-worker today! I told him how when one comes up, I close the window automatically and won't visit the site. I'm so glad neatorama doesn't tolerate these nuisances. Thanks for being awesome! I'm going to peruse the shop to see if I can find something to buy, as a sort of thank you for keeping the ads tolerable.
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The NoScript Firefox add-on (free, of course) will stop all of this nonsense. I don't see any ads on any web page that I don't put on a whitelist. NoScript is transparent and stops all sorts of nastiness.

I am in no way affiliated with NoScript or its creators. It is just a darned good little app.

I'm just sayin'
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Occasionally I get an effect here where Neatorama, or one of the pages, will start to load, then suddenly switch to Google, with a note like, "Can't find..." and then an long link of somekind. So I'm being taken from the website altogether.

Will cut-and-paste that URL for you next time it happens.
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@Kalel - that's weird! I'd appreciate a screenshot of that the next time it happens (hopefully it will never happen again, but that may be wishful thinking).

Right now, we've turned off most of the banner ads on the blog while we track down the culprit. Thank you everyone for your patience and please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.
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