Forum Home
Press F1
 
Thread ID: 48434 2004-08-23 00:03:00 NZ Herald ads driving my CPU 100% nzStan (440) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
264487 2004-08-23 02:00:00 Yes, most of the ads seem to be created or served from creative.whi.co.nz I had to put the * wilcard in to kill them off completely as they seem to change from time to time possibly to get around adblockers.

Still a pain to have to fiddle around to view a major mainstream new site without it's pupose being all but destroyed.

Cheers Murray P
Murray P (44)
264488 2004-08-23 02:38:00 There is a firefox extension called adblock,it puts a tab on offending adds so you can block specific trouble makers,or alternativly as i think already mentioned add a wildcard tag to kill off all ads from a specific host. metla (154)
264489 2004-08-23 03:27:00 > There is a firefox extension called adblock,it puts a
> tab on offending adds so you can block specific
> trouble makers,or alternativly as i think already
> mentioned add a wildcard tag to kill off all ads from
> a specific host.


Ahhhh thank you metla... peace has returned to my browser again.
nzStan (440)
264490 2004-08-23 03:32:00 My CPU usage sat around 4% with flash disabled, it only rose up when I scrolled down the page and as soon as I stopped scrolling useage droped to around 2-4% Rob99 (151)
264491 2004-08-23 23:17:00 Got an email reply back from their product manager



Hi Stan

Thanks for your feedback .

We are approaching the advertiser and asking for "CPU friendly" version .

Thank you for taking the time to draw this to our attention .

Product Manager
NZ Herald
nzStan (440)
264492 2004-08-23 23:22:00 one thing you might want to check if you havn't done so is what ver of flash you are useing. i had a family members pc crashing on some sites (eg tvnz) with IE. after removing flash and letting it redownload everything went ok. sorry i'm not sure if firefox has inbuilt flash support or uses plugins. tweak'e (174)
264493 2004-08-23 23:31:00 My flash version is up to date apparently :) .

I just visited the NZ Herald website again and it looks like they have fixed the problem as my CPU is not maxing to 100% anymore .

From what I can see they have changed the Kingsman Investment advert from Flash to GIF .
nzStan (440)
264494 2004-08-23 23:47:00 > I sent complaint email to the Herald last week
> regarding their advertising particularly when it
> refreshes it has a tendency to open in a new window
> if you don't have the right elements blocked. I left
> it open and unblocked to see what would happen, the
> result was about 20 ad windows open in 10 minutes.
>
> Needless to say I have not received a reply from the
> Herald or the irresponsible webmaster.

Some time ago I quizzed the herald about leaving red sheriff tracking cookies behind on my pc every time i visited their website (especially the stockwatch page). They denied they did so until I presented them with evidence to the contrary. Their response after that was essentially "too bad - we have to do it for ad ratings". There is a simple solution to such arrogance - I now get my news from the BBC.
andrew93 (249)
264495 2004-08-23 23:48:00 BBC news here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/) :D andrew93 (249)
264496 2004-08-24 00:04:00 The dumb thing about the Herald ads or more specificaly their strategy, is that they do not have alternative text for browsers that don't support animated type content or block ads/images. They have all their eggs in one annoying basket.

Good to hear you got a reply Stan, maybe my technique is slipping as it's the 2nd time I have emailed the Herald for a 0 return on reply or action.

Cheers Murray P
Murray P (44)
1 2