PAC Electric Dog Collars - Mumsnet Banner Advert

[Lavenderice]

Hi everyone. I regularly post in AIBU but I thought I'd run this past you (hopefully) lovely lot before I go into full rangy mode.

I've noticed that one of the banner adverts on here is for an electric shock dog collar and I'm a bit incensed about it.

It's always been my opinion that these are really cruel. My (recently deceased) wonderful Border Collie was inadvertently shocked by one of these when he was playing with another dog and it made him fearful of all dogs for the rest of his life. I just think they are awful.

However I am willing to be told otherwise. Please let me know what you think before I craft a very strong email.

*ranty mode. Stupid auto correct.

I think the ads are done by your browsing history not mumsnet

They're very cruel and should never be used. I haven't seen the ad though. It's not one of those random ads is it where different stuff appears for different people depending on what the computer thinks you're interested in? Not sure how it works but MN might not be aware of it. Report your OP to bring this to MN attention.

Oh, well that's a bit embarrassing. The only thing is I've never searched for anything like that.

In fact none of the ads I see would have come from my browsing history.

Maybe if you've searched for dog stuff in general then that might come up?

The ads im currently seeing are for my home town uni. And also something to do with the Elephant and Castle where I was earlier this morning. And I have searched for public transport in roughly that area and have location thingy on my iPad.

Maybe, but I've certainly never searched for anything to do with feeding babies (never had any) and now I'm getting ads for Arla Big Milk.

Thanks Viva curiouser and curiouser.

I wonder if it's a mix? I'm getting ads for Fortitude dvd now and don't think I've searched for Fortitude.

I'm going to report this thread to MNHQ and see if they can shed any light on it. See I knew you lot would be lovely

What? That's awful! I thought they were illegal, anyway.

It doesn't sound like a normal mumsnet ad, (I believe they don't advertise formula, either) so it will be an adchoice one. Report your post to get MNHQ to see it, or post in site stuff. They like it if you can include a screenshot but if not the product name is enough.

TBH, I never used to use adblock on MN and I don't like doing it, but since they have started using Adchoice, I do use it, because I find adchoice ads awful. Are you by any chance outside of the UK or using e.g. a US VPN (to watch Netflix etc from the USA)? I live in Germany and I get some German but mostly US ads from here on adchoice. I think it "sees" the site is English and tries to match it as closely as possible. I've seen the UK users complain about adchoice ads and MN have had them removed, but with the international ones, they don't.

The adchoice ones are clear because they have a little blue triangle in the corner. They are automatic and based on your location and other online clues to your identity, e.g. search history and google+ profile information. Whereas the ads hosted directly by mumsnet are the same for everyone and often customised to the site.

I'm getting John Lewis ones now. The specific rug and oven ive been looking at online.

That's strange. I keep getting adverts for cars. I'm not looking for a car and haven't Googled anything car-related. If I were looking for a car it wouldn't be a Seat (ugh!), which is what repeatedly appears at the top of my MN page!

Sometimes it's demographic related - and sometimes they get your demographic wrong. This tells you what they think your demographics are! Mine are wrong. It thinks I'm male, for a start. Other times it comes from a keyword on the page, or it will come from other pages you've visited. Hence a dog advert on a dog page, and formula, car adverts because this is a parenting site.