For the love of the wee man please do something about the ads

AmIAWeed, it's not my area but would accessibility problems also be a potential legal issue?

I'm rural and often work in remote places. I need my data in case of emergencies when out and about, so I had no choice but to download an adblocker for safety.

I've got adblocker for the sake of my sanity, so I just get blank pages instead

The ads on Mumsnet are a problem, not just because they are annoying and using data but they cause genuine accessibility issues for people with disabilities, potentially excluding them from the website.
Fixing the ads is both a usability and accessibility issue.
1 - People with some cognitive disabilities struggle with moving objects on a page. The ads scrolling down as you scroll down, the videos and sound starting if the focus drifts to the side.
2 - Assistive technology like screen readers are very expensive, mobile devices have these built in in the form of TalkBack and VoiceOver as well as nagnification this is great because it means people can get online affordably, something that wasn't true 10 years ago when I started working in the accessibility field, but it means more people with disabilities are on touch screen devices and these ads and preventing them from viewing the site.
3 - The video ads auto starting also causes issues with grabbing focus as well as eating peoples data.

I don't come on here to advertise my services but if MNHQ want to send me a message I am happy to provide them with more information, alternatively I implore you to check out the WCAG 2.0 guidelines and the BBC mobile guidelines. Last week was Global Accessibility Awareness Day and there are some great YouTube videos getting promoted via twitter and the #GAAD that will give you an idea of what to look for

Lots of people will be accidentally clicking on them as they are so fucking huge. Cost per click advertising for UK people is on average 20p a click. That's thousands a week they must make from them.

That's true, but accidental clicking is going to lead to crap conversion rates and would still raise red flags for me.

Oh my goodness, I wondered why the last few months I have been running out of mobile data a week or so before it renews where before that never used to happen. That is really annoying Mumsnet and impacts on me because I need to be able to check my email for work when out and about, and I can't if I have run out of data, or else I have to buy more. I shall not be looking at Mumsnet on my mobile again.

It's killing my battery too. Just writing the last posts and loading this page has made it drop 3 %

Yes this all explains alot.

I've had so much trouble posting. I'm constantly having to delete my text because it lags behind when I type and doesn't catch up properly. Every time I try and use the tool bar at the bottom or intact navigate the page at all I end up clicking on adverts. Especially the moving ones which suddenly just appear in what was a blank space and wasn't even there a second ago.

Please for the love of god sort it outs it's a joke

Me too. The site was just getting unusable.

Ive installed AdBlock now - I dislike doing it but its now a readable site again.

Chat is really quiet this morning, I'm betting it'll be in part to the ads putting people off.

Lots of people will be accidentally clicking on them as they are so fucking huge. Cost per click advertising for UK people is on average 20p a click. That's thousands a week they must make from them.

I'm not entirely sure how it works with AdChoices but I administer the AdWords account for my company, and the red flags go up when I see ads with a high number of impressions and a low click-through rate, meaning that lots of people are seeing them (and that costs us) but they're not clicking on them.

I wonder how many people actually click on these ads as opposed to muttering "fuck off" and scrolling past / pondering AdBlock?

The vertical ones are so irritating. I just click straight off the thread now, often if I go back in its not there. Also hate the ones in middle of threads, on a mobile device sometimes it's impossible to scroll past without clicking on the bloody thing which irritates me further and turns me right off whatever is being advertised. I too would happily pay a small amount for an ad-free site. It just doesn't seem at all user friendly anymore. I don't like the app so stuck to mobile site, looks like desktop site is much worse too with the horrible scrolling ads.

I intermittently get half the vertical screen taken with ads and then they're scattered horizontal too.
Vertical is the killer. The others take a bit longer for me to give up. I can cope with top & bottom of the screen but I'd rather pay a little to be ad free.

The ones that annoy me the most are right in the middle of the thread, and as others have said can be insensitive to the topic. Also when there are so many adds the site keeps crashing, and I have to re load it.

This is why the mobile site went tits up last week, isn't it?

I remember that the adverts were blaring away, even when the shortcut buttons stopped working and the bottom tool bar disappeared, and no-one could post for 24 hours via the mobile site. It was as though the main architecture of the mobile site was now the coded advertising space, and everything else was being bolted back on.

Since yesterday 9am ish.

Agree the moving ones are worst. Give me motion sickness and the top one keeps refreshing and getting a new advert!

I get that rates on message boards are low but ramming a shit load of adverts is short term thinking.

Out of interest, what level of complaint do you have to receive to act?
I suspect each person who writes a complaint equals 100's if not 1000s who are pissed off - so this thread alone could easily represent 250,000 very pissed off users.

Agree about annoying ads. They suddenly seem to have got worse.

Flashing battery
Adverts in the middle of a thread
Top of page
Side of page

I will look into ad blocking as others have suggested.

I've had to download Opera Mini as my browser recently - my data usage was becoming ridiculous, and as this is the main site I use in a day for browsing at work, I had a feeling I knew who the culprit was! Besides, the site was becoming so slow due to all the ads that I just couldn't use it.

My data usage is now one fifth of what it was last month!

Ads on top and bottom.
Large moving ones.
The flashing low battery one .Aagh.
Stopped going on Mumsnet as often because of them

Far too much on my s7 screen (android, Chrome).

I will pay for ad free.

That explains my mobile data too.

HQ, do you see that it's not just a question of ads covering most of the screen (although that's annoying enough) but of finances? If it's costing us more to look at MN because of all the ads, you're going to lose people, and a lot of them will be the people who have been around for a long time, visit regularly and are already pissed off about the lack of action re user123 names and zombie threads.