1.21.2020

Out-of-Control Ads (Problem Hopefully Fixed)




Dear Readers,

I hope you are all doing well and are having a lovely week. We spent the weekend in Catalina celebrating my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. It was a beautiful weekend and I filmed an outfits of the weekend video, which is now on YouTube.

Something has been happening on my blog for awhile now that has bothered me and I'm sure you probably noticed it... Google Ads. And lots of them! I noticed this a few weeks ago, but to be very honest, I am so busy with the kids and work I didn't have the time to figure out how to fix it. I found myself very frustrated with the large banner ads on the blog because I never placed them there.

I put it on my to-do list to look into it (did I enable some strange ad feature without knowing it?) but I never got around to investigating it. (Anything technical or to do with websites really confounds me. It's actually amazing that I run a blog in the first place.) It wasn't until I received an email of complaint from a reader tonight that prompted me to look into it again.

My chief frustration was this: I completely disabled Google ads on my blog, but they were still popping up. After much research, I found out that Google implemented a new feature called "Auto Ads" that I was automatically enrolled in (I did not opt for this) where they place ads where they like. It is explained in this article here. I went to check, and sure enough, I was enrolled in Auto Ads, even though I never opted for this and did not know what it was. So I have since disabled that feature and things should go back to normal.

I apologize for the inconvenience and aggravation this may have caused.

I appreciate your understanding and, for my long-time readers, sticking with me through it all. As I am homeschooling with four children (including a baby), I find myself in the busiest time of my life. My work is also very meaningful to me, so I make time to fit it in as well and make it a priority. The joy with my work continues to be found in you, the reader, and I appreciate you very much.

Another change you might notice is that I now approve comments before they are published. I was receiving a lot of spam comments in the past and my monitoring of the comments has completely eliminated that problem. So if you write a comment, it will be sent to me for review, and I will publish it.

I have taken away the ability to comment anonymously as I found that the only people who did so, had negative things to say :)

Thank you, as always, for your support of my work. You make it all worthwhile.

With gratitude,

Jennifer

**Update** It's the next day and I am still seeing the large banner ads, even though I disabled Auto-ads and even demonetized the entire blog. I am still getting to the bottom of it. Thank you for your patience.

6 comments:

Gigi said...

Well, this is bizarre. I haven't really noticed any banner ads on the site lately; and I made a point of looking for them after reading this. The only ad I noticed was on the right side bar near the bottom of the page and I didn't find it intrusive at all.

Heather said...

I'm impressed with your integrity that you even care what the reader view looks like. When I click through to other blog posts, usually for a recipe I found on Pinterest, it is obvious that there are a LOT of bloggers who do not care that the reader view is downright unpleasant.

The Daily Connoisseur said...

Hi ladies, Thank you! You know, it is such a mystery. When I look at my blog from my computer, it is littered with banner ads. When I look at it from Ben's computer, there are no ads at all, except one in the side bar. I have no idea why. Le sigh! Thank you for your patience with this!

Love,

Jennifer

Heather Merry said...

Perhaps this may have something to do with his own browser’s or account’s settings re how ads appear? I have a recollection you can change that as a google user... Thanks for your thoughtful perspectives on everything - always! I review your first book every year!

Unknown said...

Thank you for looking into this! Your site is Wayyyy better now. I used to read a lot of blogs, but the ads that run through them now made me lose my inerest for the blog and made the blogs seem cheap. Who looks at these ads as anything more than an annoying distraction? I cannot believe Google thinks these are even a good idea or why anyone would want thier company featured in them, because I am sure 99.9% of people just scroll past them as fast as they can.

chris said...

I use adblock so I get no ads, just your lovely banner photo!