Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by Lo
Editor, Dandelion Salad
February 13, 2018
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
When I first started on WP almost 11 years ago, WP said that there “may” be an ad sometimes for readers who are not logged into WP.
Over the years, it has become that there are ALWAYS ads and now the latest is using our sidebar for ad placement.
Most of us bloggers who must use the free blogs, do understand that WP needs to place an ad for those not logged into WP.
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Now, even those bloggers logged into WP are seeing ads!
Not one but two ads on our free blog on WordPress.com. Those are the ones at the end of the posts. There is also an ad on the sidebar in the top position pushing down all relevant info for our blog further down the screen.
WordPress.com is trying for different ad placement on our free blogs. However, a huge ad in our sidebar looks horrible and messes up the widgets with important info. on our blogs.
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Obviously, I use an Ad Blocker program on the browsers that I use, so the very large white space is where the ads are on the right-hand side (sidebar) of the blog. It’s very distracting to readers.
If you haven’t logged off lately, please do and go see your blog how it looks to the public viewing it. Also, try different browsers to see the various ads.
Please let WP know how you feel about their ad placement by commenting in the Forum post, Exploitative advertising. Other threads on this issue at these tags: ads, and/or ad placement.
To the readers: my suggestion is to use an Ad Block program on the browsers you use. I also suggest using Epic Privacy browser with built-in privacy and no ads ever.
Updated: Feb. 14, 2018
Staff responding on this thread, Exploitative advertising said that they are going to communicate with each of us privately and close the thread. If you have any objections to the new sidebar ads and multiple ads on your free blog, please start a new thread or look in the tags for another thread.
See also:
#WordPress – do you know what your blog really looks like to visitors?
From the archives:
Dandelion Salad 
It’s one of the reasons I decided to write elsewhere. WP earns big profits in the billionaire range from the basic fees they charge. Yes there is a free version without a domain name, even though all versions, except the Business one have WP ads. I was using the Premium one with my own domain name and I could not use Adsense even though they said I could. Then I was told I could as long as I paid more per month. After moving to Google I place the ads and customize them plus get paid for it. Much smaller than your calendar on the sidebar without complaints. WP pricing is out to lunch when compared to others https://wordpress.com/pricing/
Thanks for sharing your WP experience, Dennis.
Most of us bloggers using the free hosting at WP do so aware that WP would be placing an ad on our posts, like I mentioned above, it started out only occasionally, then progressed to 3 ads on every single post. That is what we are complaining about and also the ad placement in our sidebar or footer for those themes that don’t have sidebars.
Every blogger has their reason(s) for not buying an Ad-free plan. My reason is based on principle. I do this work and the writers submit their articles for publishing here all for free (volunteer).
When WP starts placing ads in the sidebar as well as the blog posts and increased the number (now 3 ads per post), some of us believe it’s because WP wants us to pay them to remove the ads. I find that close to coercion, so on principle I cannot abide.
A few years ago, WP placed ads on every Youtube video embedded in our blog posts. See the older post for a screenshot listed at the end of this post. Fortunately many of us spoke out and WP dropped those ads.
The reason I even made this blog post is to inform other bloggers using the free hosting because if they don’t by chance log out of WP and look at their blog posts, they are completely unaware of the new ad placement.
Thanks for posting this, dandelionsalad. The more bloggers who know about it the better. I’ve copied the URL for this post and I’ll include it in some Tweets later tonight.
cheers
Meeks
Thank you, acflory, for also posting about this and including screenshots with the actual ads. Rather tacky ones, too, which makes it even more outrageous that WP is using our sidebar for their ad placement.
Thanks for sharing the post, too. More WP bloggers need to know about these new ads and I’m positive that most are completely unaware.
To be honest I’m just glad to have the mystery solved because I was starting to go nuts with the on again/off again appearance of the ads. Now I’m just ticked off.
Hopefully we can get a lot of other people ticked off as well.
I hope so, too.
As they say in the classics, ‘the thick plottens’. I won’t ask what Liz wrote to you but I made my response public on my blog.
Hi Meeks, yes, she wrote to me saying almost the exact same thing.
I went to your blog on another browser so I wasn’t logged into WP, and didn’t see any ads at all. Don’t know if that will last or not.
The ads are still on my blog.
They want to sweep us all under the rug so it’s business as usual. I should have known a few people can’t change a juggernaut like WordPress but I guess I’m more Don Quixote than I thought.
Actually it has worked a few times in the past. WP put big bright blue ads on every Youtube video that was embedded on our blogs, fortunately enough of us complained and it stopped. And another time WP changed something and we spoke out and they changed it back. It’s more on the rare side, but sometimes it works.
-sigh- I wish it had worked this time. 😦
It’s too early to say yet. Most or all of the bloggers complaining are mentioning the big ads in the sidebar, so there is a possibility that WP will stop using the sidebar. It also depends on how much money they are making on those ads in that new placement. If they make more money, the ads will remain, I’m afraid.
I got the impression that the ads were staying no matter what. We few will get ‘special’ treatment until the heat dies down. I know it was naive to think we could make a difference but I still feel horribly let down.
Slowly, over time, more and more bloggers will find out about this and hopefully speak out. The fact that most bloggers are logged in when they are using WP makes it more difficult, hence our blog posts to let others know.
I believe if our blogs look good, so does WP, and more new people will choose WP for their own blogs. If WP thinks having giant ads as the first thing readers see when looking at our blogs is a good thing, they may be proven wrong.
-sigh- You’d think the effect of blatant, ugly ads would be a no-brainer, but apparently not. I feel sorry for Liz and the other ‘engineers’ but I think this latest money grab comes from on-high and they’re the ones stuck with us, dealing with the consequences.
I’m going to be shifting the bulk of my content to Medium. It’s not where I thought I’d be this time two weeks ago but sometimes a forced change can lead to better things.
Best of luck in the future and thanks for backing me up. Much appreciated. 🙂
I so agree with you.
The happiness engineers’ job is to deal with us bloggers and they report to others our concerns. They definitely do not make the changes, but have to deal with us when we complain about them.
I looked at Medium just last night. Hope it works out for you. Can you easily transfer your posts? You may want to keep this one here on WP in case it doesn’t work out for some reason or other.
Yes, I’ll be migrating my posts across as soon as I figure it all out, but I’ll keep this WP blog open in tandem, at least for a while, I just won’t add content to it.
Is “Medium” both free and advertisment-free? Maybe I’l move there too.
(One very minor disadvantage of “Medium” is that I feel compelled to put its name in quotes, because its name doesn’t sound to me like a name.)
lol – Yes! I have the same reaction. Always that slight hesitation before I type the word.
As I understand it, Medium provides a free social network for everyone. Within that social network [automatically connected to Twitter] people communicate via posts. There’s the original post that starts the discussion and then each reply counts as a post as well. To me it’s more like a forum than a blog.
Then, within the social media network you have a curated section that requires a paid membership of…$5 per month? Something like that. Writers who write for the curated section get paid a certain amount based on the number of ‘claps’ they receive? Claps are similar to Likes except that you can click the Clap button 50 times if you wish.
Outsiders who don’t pay the $5 membership get to see 3 of the curated articles for free. [can’t remember if that’s 3 per day or week or month].
There are other innovative or just plain weird things about Medium as well but I’m still feeling my way.
My suggestion? Sign up, try it out, see if it works for you /before/ you do anything with WP. 🙂
p.s. couldn’t find a Follow button.
Update: Liz removed the ads today! Yeah! I guess the saying “the squeaky wheel gets oiled” is true. I’m still very concerned about the many bloggers who have no idea about these “new” sidebar ads and multiple ads on every blog post.
I posted the response I received on my blog because essentially it says ‘some’ of us will have the ads removed but for everyone else the ads are where they’re ‘meant to be’.
I can’t accept that. It’s just not fair. 😦
Yes, I feel the same way, which is why I posted in the Forum threads and made this post. We have to speak up for those who are unaware!
In my response to Liz, I mentioned that WP needs to remove the inappropriate “Chat with Me” type ads from everywhere on WP. How did that ad get through to begin with? Someone in WP had to approve that ad.
I also posted again on the Forum thread you made stating that if our blogs look good, then WP looks good and then WP will get new users who may very well pay to upgrade. It doesn’t make sense to make the free WP blogs look so tacky.
Hi Lefty. Your idea about horizontal lines is a good idea. I’d suggest creating a simple graphic that you place at the bottom of every post. Sadly we can’t do anything about the sidebar ads. 😦
Thanks for the tipoff, Lo. I’m going to start using a bunch of horizontal rules at the bottom of my pages. See this one as an example:
https://leftymathprof.wordpress.com/awake/
p.s. Lucky for me, I’m using a format that doesn’t have any sidebars. I don’t know whether all such formats have been discontinued by WP.
Do you have footers? WP has been placing ads there, too.
I don’t have anything specifically designated as a footer, but apparently the only place WP is placing ads is =below= my content. So by putting a few hr’s at the bottom of my content, I can at least separate their ads visually from my content. In the middle of the hr’s I have a line of text that says “I am hoping the advertisements will stay below this line.” At some point I may experiment with making the hr’s a bigger visual wall — e.g., maybe some background color or something. I suppose one simpler way to do it would be with a horizontally graphic consisting of a big colored box, perhaps with a message in the middle of it disclaiming the ads below.
All good ideas, Lefty.
Do check out another blogger’s post on this issue, she shows screenshots with the actual ads.
https://acflory.wordpress.com/2018/02/14/wordpress-do-you-know-what-your-blog-really-looks-like-to-visitors/
It doesn’t look so bad on your blog, Lefty. I looked at it on another browser where I wasn’t logged in. Didn’t see the ads because I use an Ad Blocker, but the ads did fall below your horizontal lines.