Just started getting an unbearable amount of ads. Is this intentional or an issue somewhere? I really hope the later.


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...9a7ac4fcb6.png

To be clear, you were logged in and more ads than usual were displayed on the site? And you were automatically redirected without clicking on anything?

Omni PR Sponsored Ads In non-Omni Forum
 

Do we really need this outside of Omni? If that were a user generated post it would have been removed.



https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...056686997.jpeg

That ad should disappear within an hour or so and we've reached out to the company that generates them.

I'm still regularly seeing different "Sponsored" ones in the same position (third from top) on both AS and DL boards

I'm getting the "sponsored thread" advertisements in almost every forum for the past week. They are getting more numerous.

Same here. Very annoying :mad:

Sponsored threads have been active for about a year. Are you still seeing political ads?

The sponsored threads have spread from a select few fora, to nearly every one. This is new in 2021. They are clearly deceptive to appear to be user threads, but are actually advertisements. The "user" that is identified with the posts is "chatflights".

I completely disagree. The fact that so many people are bringing them to our attention is indicative that they are clearly advertisements. Sponsored Posts are a pretty standard advertising avenue for forum sites.

the issue isn't the ad itself, it's that it masquerades as a legitimate thread ... yes I understand the advertisers' business model, but that doesn't mean I have to like the sleazy instantiation

I used to subscribe to newspaper sites that started using ads that deceptively appeared to be news stories. They stopped getting my subscription money.

I had never seen one before today. I read every thread in the AC forum, and I saw my first today. I clicked it, assuming it was related to AC. "Top Business Class Destinations Right Now For Under ..." was a thread title that:

1. Needed to be reported for being too click-baity, in violation of the forum rules.
2. Might have been potentially interesting, depending on what the "..." meant
3. Actually contained nothing useful, which would have been clear if the title were descriptive

This was very clearly in violation of FT rule number 4 (https://www.flyertalk.com/help/rules.php#threadtitles), and would have been edited if there were a button to report it. And it had nothing to do with AC, which would result in its deletion from the AC forum.

The first thing I did when I saw it was actually send it to an AC forum moderator.

But this sounds like off-topic threads with click-bait titles are allowed now?

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...c826945b23.png

Now that you've seen one, do you think you could glance at a thread index and notice the ones that are ads?

the blue "Sponsored" (circled in screenshot above) is a pretty good clue :/

checking random airline boards a few minutes ago, I saw that same ad in **ALL** of them; also a "Top Credit Card Redemptions" ad on the AmEx and Chase boards


again, I understand the advertising business model, but this implementation really detracts from the value of the site as a whole