We’ve recently noticed a few people posting
"complaints" or irregular items about the site in the STRIKE
BACK sections below our news articles and wanted to clarify how things
work on this site. If you have a "complaint" about any
advertising on the website or notice any bugs in your browser (pages not
showing up properly, things looking misaligned, etc…), please either
email Mike Sampson or myself directly via email,
or just post your items in our SITE
SUGGESTIONS/QUESTIONS forum. That’s precisely why we started that
forum back in 2001, and we like to deal with all issues asap, so please
follow that proper process. To that end, here’s a short FAQ to give
everyone a better understanding of how this site operates:
Why do you have advertisements on your site?
Simply put, we need advertisements on our site in order to
survive as a website. The site is free in every way
possible, so the only way that we can generate revenues to cover our
growing monthly expenses is by running ads. The site currently receives
over 3,000,000 visitors every single month, hence requires tons of
bandwidth, not to mention that we also have to pay the 30-40 writers on
our site, along with everything else to keep the site running in tip-top
shape. If you want to support our site in any way, please try to
appreciate the ads for what they are bringing to the site (i.e. our
continuing existence), try to "share" our news articles with as
many people as possible, and if you purchase items via Amazon.com
online, please do so by using our links. See shopping
section here.
Why do you have so many ads on your site?
Well, we actually don’t have that many ads on our
site. From time to time, our site will be "taken over" by a
specific ad campaign that lasts a "few days" and then goes away,
in which you’ll notice that most of the site is "branded" by a
particular advertiser. That’s a "good thing" for us because that
means that advertisers believe our site is worth advertising on, i.e. our
target audience is important to them. These ads are generally
non-invasive, and unless you click on something specific, should NOT
disturb your experience on the site. If they do….please report them
accordingly.
Whenever I click something on the site, it takes me to
the advertiser’s site!
That’s a mistake, an error, a BUG that you need to report.
We’d never knowingly include "re-direct ads" on our site
to purposely fool you into clicking to another site…EVER! If you
notice this happening, please email us or post your notice in our SITE
SUGGESTIONS/QUESTIONS forum and we will look into the problem asap.
When I report something, what do I need to include?
When you’re reporting something, don’t just email us and
say "Your site sucks, too many ads" or something useless as
such, try and be constructive and provide us with as much information as
possible including: 1) your browser type 2) what specific ad was causing
the problem 3) what sections of the site were affected 4) screenshots of
the issue, if need be. Basically, the more information that you can
provide, the better! With so many different ways of surfing the web these
days and different browsers and different screen resolutions…what you
see is not necessarily what others see as well.
JoBlo.com recent summer party… 😉
What’s with the toolbar at the bottom of your site?
This is also in relation to generating additional revenues
required to keep this site running, but you can easily "remove
it" (for a few days) from your view by simply clicking on the
"minimize" arrow on the right hand side of the toolbar. It will
return every few days, but one click of the button and it’s gone, if you
prefer.
Why do I see an video pre-roll ad before every video I
watch on this site?
This is also a mistake, error or "bug", if you
will. Video advertising is still very much in its infancy on the Web (as
you may have noticed, YouTube has also started showing ads before their
videos as well recently), so we’re still working through our "trial
and error" period as well. The bottom line is that you should NOT be
seeing an ad before every video you watch on the site, in fact, we have
now placed a "cap" on all videos on the site, so you should only
be shown "video ads" sporadically. That said, if you notice a
specific ad going "gonzo", please report it to us asap. Ideally,
you could all live with some of these new sorts of ads as a way to
"support" our site as well.
Part of your site is being "pushed"
to the side, what’s the deal?
This was another error, bug, that was affecting two
sections of our site over the past few weeks, but only for people with
specific browsers (in this case, I believe it was the Chrome browser).
While we’re always testing all of our ads on all browsers and sections of
our site, things may "fall through the cracks" from time to
time, which is why it’s very important that you help us identify these
issues asap, so that we can resolve them. Ideally, in cases like this,
we’d appreciate screen-shots of the issue at hand, along with the browser
you’re using, the URL of the page on which it’s happening, etc…
We do NOT have any pop-ups on our site!
Every few months, someone will email me to say that we
have pop-ups on our site, when in fact….we do NOT! The only time
we’ll run pop-ups from time to time is for "traffic exchanges"
in which you’ll notice the JOBLO logo at the top of the pop-up, along with
a bunch of image links below it (this generally doesn’t last longer than
24-48 hours). Otherwise, if you notice pop-ups, it might be on your end,
so you should probably run a Spy-Ware check on your own system, to make
sure that you haven’t been infected.
Dang, these chicks were hot, eh?
The bottom line is that despite us requiring advertising
to keep our site operational (since 1998), I am personally against
all invasive ads, pop-ups or anything that causes our visitors to want to
leave the site. I don’t think those tactics work for the advertisers
either, by the way. That said, from time to time, shit will slip through
the cracks so we appreciate you letting us know about them, so that we can
fix them asap instead of "assuming" that we are purposely trying
to nail our audience with tricks and shit. Help
me, help you….help me, help you… 😉