Have CAG gone up market with their adverts ?

I was getting adverts for dating sites with pictures of beautiful Russian and Chinese ladies.

Now i am seeing adverts on Pensions with a picture of Tracy Solomon, sensible expensive jumpers and Volvo cars.

Not complaining, just missing those pictures of those nice young Russian ladies !

I put a block on the dating advertisements a couple of months ago. In fact I hadn't realised that they were appearing and I thought that they weren't at all in keeping with the CAG – but we are, what we do. I'm rather sorry that they appeared at all.

The dating sites appeared yesterday and only today have they changed.

 

I was getting adverts for dating sites with pictures of beautiful Russian and Chinese ladies.

 

Now i am seeing adverts on Pensions with a picture of Tracy Solomon, sensible expensive jumpers and Volvo cars.

 

Not complaining, just missing those pictures of those nice young Russian ladies !

you must have cleared your browsing history

I realise the ads are required to cover the site's running costs but they do slow down the site and earlier today, I had to crash out of Firefox because it became non-responsive while attempting to load the ads. It said something about a script running, I clicked on stop script but FF remained frozen. Some ads are worse than others.

Indeed we are shown adds that are relevant to our previous search history so clearing the browser can help but that are also ways in which these advertisers can track us regardless of browser history, I use a host list which stops 99% of adds entirely, saves bandwidth and makes for a much cleaner experience, while on the subject when I access cag from my mobile phone its like an assault course for the thumbs to avoid clicking them as they seem to take up 50% of screen space,well annoying, I can also edit my hosts file on my phone just not got round to it yet as I am forever trying out customised ROMs.

I'm sorry that the ads give you such a hard time. Personally I would like not to be displaying ads forum or anywhere else. However, we depend on the income we get from them to survive. I can tell you that they don't make us a huge amount of money – but the amount of donations that we get are even less.

Then we would have stopped existing several years ago. We have a huge number of visitors and we help a huge number of people and some of those people are very decent because they try to give us something in return. However, the vast majority of people give us nothing at all – and not even a thank you on the forum.

The donations we do receive are normally very modest amounts and very rarely in proportion to the amount of money that we have saved them or the amount of money they have managed to recover. To give you a particularly extreme example – although it is a one-off, a couple of years ago we help somebody get back about £43,000 in PPI money. We received a donation of £50. At the time, I was over the moon to receive such a huge sum of money and it was only a week or two later that one of the site team pointed out to me that it related to this huge PPI payout, that my sense of gratitude rather soured.

Advertisements are extremely annoying but you should bear in mind that the only kind of companies which can afford to host websites without advertisements, are people such as the banks, the utility companies, the big retailers et cetera. All of the little hobby groups and protest groups and other interest groups need advertising in order to have a voice on the Internet.

I'm afraid that it is true to say that if you block the advertising, then you are probably blocking the source of real help for ordinary people and also inadvertently blocking the exercise of free speech.

If you have blocked ads from this site, have you made any donations to us? (This doesn't need an answer, I just ask people who read this to reflect.)

I'm sorry that the ads give you such a hard time. Personally I would like not to be displaying ads forum or anywhere else. However, we depend on the income we get from them to survive. I can tell you that they don't make us a huge amount of money – but the amount of donations that we get are even less.

 

That must be frustrating. How are the sales of your new book going? I would have thought very well?

That must be frustrating. How are the sales of your new book going? I would have thought very well?

Slow.