Top bar advertising

Try the Dolphin browser. It has built-in add blocking and a choice of desktop or mobile layouts. If you select mobile it will remove that header bar altogether.

I have the app but don't like it as there's a limit to how many pages it will load.

I much prefer the laptop site.

Or did.

Not sure if this has been mentioned but my main issue is not just the annoying ads but also the fact the MN logo permanently remains fixed, however small you make your window- i.e. at work, don’t really fancy the whole world knowing I’m on the MN forums, so used to shrink window and the logo disappeared, now it insist on remaining fixed, however small I make my window, it simply readjusts and sits there staring out at everyone...impossible to use the site at work now (where I 90% log on).

The sheer brass neck
The blatant hypocrisy
Mumsnet accuses adblock users of free riding, whilst making a big fat profit from free-riding on the network effect and the content provided for free by people on the forum

My mobile screen can be completely covered by the MN topbar which keeps lowering and then (most of the time) gradually jumps up again to the top. Yesterday, I tried to log in on my mobile and every time I got the text box up to input my details, it would close as soon as I tapped a single letter. Today, I tried to comment on a thread and the gap between the screen keyboard and the topbar was only about half a cm wide meaning I could only see - at most - a single line that I was typing. I've only noticed this in the past few - every since the ads at the top of the page became more dominant - but it's driving me insane. YY to whoever suggested an ad-free subscription service - I've been driven to it.

More than half the screen covered now and the remove header does not work on either laptop or pc. This is getting worse.
Looking on the bright side it is getting rid of my MN habit.

I've just logged on via my laptop for the first time since the changes. On my phone, with adblocker, I just have a vaguely annoying line across the page that I've now got used to. On here? Unusable. Jumping screen, loading problems, obtrusive advertising that makes, um, subtle use of MN impossible. I've been on leave for the last two weeks, but this new innovation means I won't be using MN much as I cannot face the laptop interface.

Either that or tell us when the contract with these demanding advertisers expires and we'll check back in with mnet when it does and normal service resumes.

Why is this still an issue?

Bin an advertiser that makes ridiculous demands of taking up screen space if it's annoying your market consumers - i.e. us.

Get rid of the insight panel advert
Or the reviews bit
Or the blog of the day
Or the jobs panel

Or any bloody thing else that means you can give the cashcows advertisers their demanded 12 5 seconds advert space.

Or, you know, just keep the adverts to the limit of the space at the top of the page like you used to.

FFS. Enough already

I don't have ad blocker, but I still get an inch wide header every time I load a new post that says ADVERTISEMENT and then turns into an irrelevant advert after about 5 seconds

These intrusive adverts have forced me to do what no other site has done; install an ad blocker. So whilst you claim to be playing catchup with other sites, the way you've done it leaves a lot to be desired.

When 50% of the page is covered by an annoying advert that animates and scrolls content your implementation sucks. At least have the advert proportional to the screen size, not a standard size that alienates consumers on smaller screens.

Well I thought I would give it a go and whitelist since the loading issue was meant to be fixed.

Erm - nope. Lasted about 30 seconds. I don't want the header to follow me down the page, ad or not. And I don't want to have to click it off once a day. What is the point of that?

I don't particularly mind adverts but I don't like intrusive features. MN looks lovely and streamlined without these.

I think the skim links have been gone for a while Visions.

I've got an adblocker on now. I really didn't mind seeing the ads and occasionally clicked on them, but I can't be doing with stopping in my tracks for five seconds every time I open a thread.

I've had an adblocker in place since the skim links (the underlined links in people's posts, is that what they're called?) started, it made reading posts very difficult, and the site look like a spammy mcspam site. Have they stopped now?

I've installed the adblocker bratsy but still have the issue where the screen gets covered in a band of white and it jumps up and down.

MN, in common with virtually all commercial organisations, really don't care, difference is that they pretend that they do in order that people will continue to post and they can sell the advertising for more.

We are as much of the problem as they are tbh. If we just stopped using the site, they'd have to think of a different business model.

Just install an ad blocker. Nothing is going to change

On Android Chrome the stupid ads are causing the bottom buttons to increase in size and only three become visible on screen.
The add is also cut in half.

Any progress? Or are we supposed to just put up with it?

Like I said, it's become a business.
In simple terms...

Let X be the money earned from users seeing the adverts
Let Y be the money lost from those who use adblockers.

If (X - Y) is increasing then the adverts are doing their job and will be maintained or even extended.
If (X - Y) is decreasing then the adverts are counter-productive and will be reduced.

That's how it works with every commercial website. Why should MN to be any different?

Yes, but to blunt, who is analysing the data, and how?

I'm being targeted with a right load of shit lately.

And I really, really resent the gambling site adverts. I'm not interested - but how awful if I were, on a parenting website iykwim?

But I would advise MNHQ that it might be worth analysing what proportion of users are using adblockers now, and compare it to the proportion before these problems started.
You may be sure that they have those figures on a daily basis, as a matter of course. And such numbers will be of far greater significance than the number of users complaining on here.
It's a hard business decision.

Just to reply to comments above, yes MN can ignore comments, of course they can. But I would advise MNHQ that it might be worth analysing what proportion of users are using adblockers now, and compare it to the proportion before these problems started.

I've just installed an ad blocker because of the screen being 3/4 filled with ads for a Bryan Adams concert / nissan juke for the majority of the time I'm trying to use the site.
Those ads in themselves suggest someone's algorithm is really f*cked.

It is incredibly annoying to use the desktop site now as an ad covers over half the screen for ages, often obscuring something you had just started to read. It means you frequently end up clicking on the ad because it appears just when you were about to click on a thread. The screen also shifts when this is happening so I keep opening threads I'm not interested in because the screen has 'jumped'. The trouble is that we are making second-long decisions when browsing and a 5-second add is unbelieveably irritating. I don't know what any of the ads are for as they take ages to load too so I basically just have half my computer screen blank obscuring what I was reading.

'Oh dear, you're so very invested it's almost alarming. You're Mumsnet's volunteer attack dog. Your devotion is almost touching.'

And yet here you are, 'very invested' in me. Let's all be 'so very invested' together shall we .

Of course I'm 'mn volunteer attack dog' < or, just not a halfwit>.