Does grm have to ban itself?

At worst I've had adds for cheap Chinese scooters and bikes.

Huckleberry wrote: I just see big blank spots. I guess ABP and Ghostery are doing their job.

As a guy paying for bandwidth and web development, that makes me sad.

This is a great excuse to beg you to subscribe, though.

I just saw a Crocs ad, so I'd say the algorithm is working 100% accurately.

Tom Suddard wrote:

Huckleberry wrote: I just see big blank spots. I guess ABP and Ghostery are doing their job.

As a guy paying for bandwidth and web development, that makes me sad. This is a great excuse to beg you to subscribe, though.

Don't be sad. I pay for the magazine and I buy it as a gift for my father every year. Since there was no option to turn off ads in exchange for my subscriptions I just turned them off for myself. I see plenty in the pages of the mag. If you can't allow for that... I get it, you have the delete key at your fingertips and no hard feelings... but I'm not turning them back on.

EDIT: I'm probably close to a re-up. There used to be a link where I could check. I'll go in for the 10yr plan so you don't feel your efforts are in vain :)

EDIT2: And for pete's sake ... develop some paypal integration will ya?

No problem–thanks for supporting us with your subscriptions. I don't need to turn you away, but I did see it as an opportunity to make a point about advertising.

People often forget that advertising is the reason that the cool stuff here can happen. Every ad blocked means something–or at least a piece of something–that we can no longer make happen. You can think of that something as the turbo for our V8 M3 project, the bill for our staff to host the free-to-all hospitality area at the Grassroots Motorsports Experience at the Rolex 24 At Daytona, or our web developers' time to implement new features like Paypal integration on our order forms.

We love you all, and we aren't going to turn anybody away for blocking ads the way our peers do. But know that those tools do have real consequences for us, and we try very hard to keep the advertisements on this website from being annoying sizes or in annoying spaces. If you want to support what we do (but block the 17 ads you'd see on any other homepage), please consider going into the settings in your ad blocker, and allowing ads on this domain.

Huckleberry, the link to check your subscription status is here.

In reply to Tom Suddard:

I get it... but I also pay $80 a month to connect to the internet so the last thing I want to be bombarded with is advertising. It's a broken model. But, I did just sign up for the next decade to alleviate my guilt so I'll glance at the ads in the mag as penance. I buy from a lot of vendors who advertise with you.

Also... what's the deal with the Android app? My order confirmation begged me to enjoy it... but when I put my email/zip in says I'm not entitled to digital content. Does it take time to update the database after an order or do I have a new problem now?

Hmmm, weird on the app front. It should work almost instantly, but maybe the server is having trouble or we forgot to feed that hamsters that power it or something like that.

Give it an hour to find itself, then if you still can't login send nancy an email at Nancy@grassrootsmotorsports.com and she'll get things straightened out.

it's funny. I do not use any sort of ad blocker.. all I have is a small bar of an ad at the top of the page and one at the bottom. Unless you scroll all the way up or down, I never notice them

My problem with the ads is that they are annoying and you don't have control over them. As shown by the presence of this thread; surely the screenshot shows there's a problem with your ads. Nobody has control over what ads are displayed. It's bots all the way down. For example: Forbes. They require you to whitelist them in your adblocker to see content then promptly serve you malware through their ad network - and that's happened more than once! If Forbes can't control their ad network then how can I trust anyone? As huckleberry says, it's a broken model, but for a myriad of reasons.

I understand websites and forums don't happen in a vacuum and need to be paid for somehow. A number of forums I've used offer a "pay" option that removes the ads. Granted, on those forums, the ads are much more intrusive than here, where you scroll through a thread and between every 4th or 5th post is an ad.

Our corporate provider must have whatever ad service GRM uses flagged, because I don't see any of them here. Under "Our Sponsors" just show up as three grey blocks.

All I ever get are ads for weird midget-animal porn

slefain wrote: The ads are based on your previous browsing habits.

oh...uh...forget I said anything...

Someone, may have been Tommy Suddard, asked politely once to whitelist GRM. I did it because I love GRM. Most of the time I don't even see the as anyway because I have to scroll down way past the thread to actually see them. Not hurting me but benefiting them so why not?

I don't know, I guess I've just trained myself to ignore them.

But, it's the internet, we have to find something to complain about.

Thank you, Nick. That means a lot.

In reply to Nick (Bo) Comstock:

Agreed. I've actually clicked a couple ads that were relevant...sadly(?) midget-animal-porn wasn't one of them. I also always plug GRM whenever I order from Tire Rack, Rockauto, etc. and they ask "How did you hear about us". By this point they might be tired of me telling them.

Let me know what I need to search for to get the midget animal porn ad. Thanks!

ultraclyde wrote: All I ever get are ads for weird midget-animal porn

slefain wrote: The ads are based on your previous browsing habits.

oh...uh...forget I said anything...

now is that midget-on-animal stuff or just a bunch of undersized animals going at it? asking for a friend...

In reply to edizzle89:

I think it's just little people riding ponies and such.

If it's not a pop-up I have no reason to block ads. The ads on GRM's banner are non-intrusive. Just like petegossett, if it's something I'm actually interested in I'll click on it just to give them their credit.

I have been using an ad-block extension in Chrome for so many years that I'm afraid if I turned it off I would never return to the internet again. Then I might actually get something done in the garage.

There's Ads???????

I don't generally notice them. But considering I actively avoid political discussion with pretty much everyone, it struck me as odd something like that would pop. Usually mine are for arcade crap or neat toys I can't afford.