KoreanDates adverts?

[SidewaysOtter]

I've had an ad across the top of a MN page - in Feminism no less - advertising 'Korean Dates" with a woman wriggling about. Is this really the sort of advertising MN endorses?

This has been mentioned repeatedly. All those advertising banners you see are determined by your OWN online browsing history or those who share an IP address (eg your husband). MN don't actually go out signing contracts with shady Korean dating companies. They have a contract with Google Adsense or another ad provider to "rent" out the banner space. That provider serves ads based on individual factors like cookies, browsing history, age, profiling etc.

The ads are also site-wide which means they definitely can't control if one banner pops up Feminism or AIBU or whatever. It's been at least 25 years since adverts were limited to specific pages of a website. I haven't seen a single Korean dating ad on my version of MN. It's mostly ads from online stores I've visited in the past.

So all the people getting their knickers in a twist should be more concerned with what sites people in their own house have been viewing. Ad providers often jump between devices sharing the same IP address and they have no morals, Eg. if someone has been searching up or reading threads on infidelity, the ad providers will immediately target other members of that household with dating sites. Or it's sometimes just age profiling, eg there might be statistics that the most common time for men to get divorced are between ages 40-50 (not real numbers, just guessing), so everyone in that age range start getting those ads "just in case".

I can absolutely promise you I'm not looking at Korean Dates and since I don't have a partner, or indeed anyone else who uses my internet or devices, that's clearly not the cause so I don't need be "concerned about what sites people in [my] house have been viewing" before I "get my knickers in a twist" about advertising for sites which are degrading to women

Hi OP

Thanks for flagging this.

We're trying to locate the advert now. We'll need to see it to confirm, but it doesn't sound like something we'd endorse.

Can we ask if you have seen it again, and are you able to get a screenshot of the advert at all? Also, if you can let us know where on the site you were when you saw it - it'd be a huge help.

Thanks so much and we'll do our best to locate it with any extra info you can provide.

Hi Lily,

Will do, thank you. It was a banner across the top of the page, if that helps, and it was in the gender subforum of the Feminsim board (ironically!)

@SidewaysOtter I have started using DuckDuckGo as a browser for mumsnet, recommended by another poster. No adverts at all.