DON'T PANIC! COOKIES...

fastonebaz

Personally would prefer the shield on the right side of the screen (mobile) at the top, as currently it overlays the text im writing in comments and the text of thread titles as I'm scrolling which is quite an inferior experience.   And shrink it too as it is massive, its about the size of 4 keys on my virtual keyboard.   It's very intrusive. 

Majorscale

ICBM said:

How do you get rid of it?

This all day long! To add insult to injury it’s animated so your eye is drawn to it on every page you load. 

DefaultM

Why does the shield need to be there? Is there a reason someone would want to change their cookie preferences? Or often enough to warrant the option always being visible?

cj73

Yeah, shield pretty annoying, especially on mobile.  

Also, on my venerable High Sierra / Safari running Mac clicking on the shield brings up a blank screen 

photek

The shield is considerably more annoying than the ads were, if that can be removed without effecting revenue I’m all for that  

fastonebaz

Also, if I click Reject All, I see no ads at all.  

octatonic

The shield is very annoying and distracting, any way to get rid of it!

PC_Dave

digitalscream said:

thumpingrug said:

I do seem to have the constant shield in the corner now.  thats new.

It's meant to be reassuring

Seriously, though, click it and you can change your cookie preferences at any time.

It’s really annoying - is there a way to get rid of it?

boogieman

octatonic said:

The shield is very annoying and distracting, any way to get rid of it!

Isn’t it just, especially on mobile where it masks lots of things. However it does delete all the ads if you click on it to reject cookies, which is nice, but is it actually supposed to work like that? 

rze99

If you download and use the Brave browser all that crap goes away. I use it all the time.

The internet is being held hostage by Google and other intrusive bullies. You do have a choice, as a browser user.

TTony

I can't help feeling that the internet has moved on from this style of revenue generation.

Either with browsers such as Brave, or with the AdBlock add-ins, all pretty effective in suppressing ads.

Which means Lee will only ever be facing a diminishing returns challenge as he tries to find "ethical" services that will allow him to suppress that ads that are deemed inappropriate for one reason or another.

But that then begs the question ....

TimmyO

digitalscream said:

TimmyO said:

Did you look at Ezoic ?

Yes - I had a few concerns with them, not least that I was looking for a company that could provide an account manager and human support, and...nothing about them suggested that was going to be the case. Also, it's very difficult to get unbiased reviews of them, because they run an affiliate scheme with a fairly wide net.

Also, just about every site I've seen that runs Ezoic is a toxic swamp of ads compared with Monumetric. That's a flat "nope" from me, but it also implies something else - both providers pay per thousand impressions, rather than per click, and whenever you see sites that are festooned with ads it's because it's the only way they can make a decent return (more ads = more money, it's a direct relationship...at least, to begin with). That suggests to me that Ezoic's return simply isn't as good as Monumetric's.

I mean...money's really a secondary concern for me here. Monumetric set up a call with me straight away, and totally understood where I was coming from in terms of the user experience being the primary goal and not wanting to milk the site for all it's worth. The only interview criterion was "Did they try to persuade me to add more ads than I want to?", and they passed with flying colours

sounds fair enough - yes Ezoic's strength is in the automated optimisation - e.g. you specify multiple ad insertion points and formats, and it tests multiple variations based on the priority you set (revenue, impact on user behaviour etc) and it optimises, so you might set 10 possible ad placements and it decides to only use 3 of them - but I think that's more valuable to a blog/website rather than a forum.

One observation: if I choose to not select the non-essential cookies, no ads display (just grey boxes that can't be clicked) - but it doesn't seem from the cookie descriptions as though that should be the case. I don't use any ad blocker, this is on mobile and desktop Safari. 

thebreeze

The shield thing is 'kin annoying.  It's also annoying to have to download lots of "workarounds" such as TTony alludes to, in order to get to the place you want to be (how it was before).

rze99

A quick note for all those that don't like the shield. If you use Brave browser, the shield is not not there

digitalscream

Noted, guys - I'm working on getting rid of the shield.

octatonic

digitalscream said:

Noted, guys - I'm working on getting rid of the shield.

Thank you.

digitalscream

OK - how's that? It should've disappeared now (you may need to refresh).

(apologies for the delay, didn't fall asleep until 5am thanks to the plague)

octatonic

Yep, gone now.

bertie

where's the shield gone ? I liked it, I miss it......... it was like a little bit of tFB by my side.................


 only joking, glad its gone

PC_Dave

digitalscream said:

OK - how's that? It should've disappeared now (you may need to refresh).

(apologies for the delay, didn't fall asleep until 5am thanks to the plague)

Gone now, thank you for sorting