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road.cc on an iPhone

by brooksby
Wed, Jan 20, 2016 16:43
7

Hi! I recently put Adblock onto my iPhone (sorry, guys, but I found the ads on this site waay too intrusive when I was reading it on my phone).  My bookmark takes me to .../news - I can read the site, and see all the comments, but the hamburger button at the top of the mobile site page (for navigation) no longer works.  Is this a coincidence, or do I have to put up with ads if I want to navigate properly?

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

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7 comments

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Fish_n_Chips | 8 years ago
0 likes

Hadn't noticed a problem with my iPhone.  Except this box is huge and makes scrolling a bit awkward.  A website I help design relies on the adverts to keep it going and pay for the wages etc.   Its only adverts that redirect the pages of sone sites like STW that is a pain in the rear when you're reading.

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Tony Farrelly | 8 years ago
1 like

@brooksby - we don't - as yet, but we'd definitely consider offering an ad-free option. But then you shouldn't be getting any auto-play ads or stuff like the SUV ad jumping out at you. We don't accept them - definitely not for UK users and increasingly not for anybody else either - although they do try to get in. If we spot them we get rid of them, ditto if people tell us about them too.

As for apps like AdBlock Plus that don't have a white list - if they got too prevalent we'd either charge or shut the site which is basically the choice for a lot of independent sites and even some of the bigger publishers. Everyone will have fabulous download speeds - they just won't have very much to download 1 And what they do download for 'free' will be full of sponsored content and advertising by other means. It's interesting to note that just as The Sun and The Times have taken their paywalls down their competitors at the Guardian and the Telegraph seem to be in the early stages of putting them up - rationing content, asking free users to take part in surveys, suggesting you take out a digital subscription etc, etc

 

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rogermerriman replied to Tony Farrelly | 8 years ago
0 likes

Tony Farrelly wrote:

@brooksby - we don't - as yet, but we'd definitely consider offering an ad-free option. But then you shouldn't be getting any auto-play ads or stuff like the SUV ad jumping out at you. We don't accept them - definitely not for UK users and increasingly not for anybody else either - although they do try to get in. If we spot them we get rid of them, ditto if people tell us about them too.

As for apps like AdBlock Plus that don't have a white list - if they got too prevalent we'd either charge or shut the site which is basically the choice for a lot of independent sites and even some of the bigger publishers. Everyone will have fabulous download speeds - they just won't have very much to download 1 And what they do download for 'free' will be full of sponsored content and advertising by other means. It's interesting to note that just as The Sun and The Times have taken their paywalls down their competitors at the Guardian and the Telegraph seem to be in the early stages of putting them up - rationing content, asking free users to take part in surveys, suggesting you take out a digital subscription etc, etc

 

 

to be fair AdBlock Plus as a browser plug in does have a white list, but the IOS app doesn't hopefully it will in time.  realisticly while road.cc may not have auto play/block the site with the advert others do. and that will drive folks to advert blockers. it wouldn't be so bad if the stuff was a) targeted and b) no auto play

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Tony Farrelly | 8 years ago
2 likes

If you use an adblocker to view the site don't expect us to be too bothered if the site doesn't work properly for you - I'd actually like it not to be viewable at all unless you made some sort of payment to access an ad-free version of road.cc. Otherwise from our point of view you want a free lunch at the expense of us being able to pay for our lunch – which doesn't seem very fair.

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brooksby replied to Tony Farrelly | 8 years ago
0 likes

Tony Farrelly wrote:

If you use an adblocker to view the site don't expect us to be too bothered if the site doesn't work properly for you - I'd actually like it not to be viewable at all unless you made some sort of payment to access an ad-free version of road.cc. Otherwise from our point of view you want a free lunch at the expense of us being able to pay for our lunch – which doesn't seem very fair.

I guess I'd been thinking it more of reading my favourite cycling news site without having to waste so much bandwidth on adverts which *always* open up slowly over my mobile connection meaning I have to wait until everything has definitely opened and displayed before I can try tapping a link (otherwise something else opens that I didn't want to read, or I accidentally click through an advert).

What actually pushed me to get an adblocker was that for a few days I couldn't see the site at all - there was a huge ad for some SUV which appeared once I had tapped any link and for the life of me I couldn't get rid of the thing!

And I've tested it by turning my adblocker off and CXR94Di2 above is right - with adblock running, you can view the - in my case - road.cc/news page and can go back to just road.cc but cannot use the hamburger to navigate or (as I discovered when I cleared my cache) to log back into the site.

All of that said, Mr Farrelly, I do understand what you're saying - that if the site is free, then the readers thereof are the product (because we are getting exposed to the adverts).  Do you offer an ad-free version of the site?  I'll be honest, that if it was reasonable then I'd probably spring for it and then everybody wins 1

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rogermerriman replied to Tony Farrelly | 8 years ago
0 likes

Tony Farrelly wrote:

If you use an adblocker to view the site don't expect us to be too bothered if the site doesn't work properly for you - I'd actually like it not to be viewable at all unless you made some sort of payment to access an ad-free version of road.cc. Otherwise from our point of view you want a free lunch at the expense of us being able to pay for our lunch – which doesn't seem very fair.

 

If I was you i'd be more worried that people are being driven to adblockers, I do have them on laptop and iphone, the laptop I disable on this site and other sites that genrally play nice, ie no jumping, auto play videos etc.

and at least on my iphone road.cc works fine with AdBlock Plus it doesn't seem to have a white list but due to other sites not playing nice I'm unlikely to remove it.

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CXR94Di2 | 8 years ago
0 likes

Yes probably. You lose some functionality for a cleaner page. Adblockers don't discriminate between ads and certain links. My adblocker shows google ads but blocks the link when clicked on it. Small price to pay

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