[Added] Taboola ads

Inclusion proposals for "acceptable ads" list are discussed here. New topics cannot be created, constructive comments are welcome, flaming will be removed.

Moderators: greiner, ionyshchenko, Till, r.grygorczuk, ptraykova, Helle, j.mathai

pez

Re: [added] Taboola ads

Post by pez »

innerself wrote:So far Taboola has proven to be very cooperative to immensely change the positioning of their ads, their labeling, their separation from the content, their sizes and their grouping in order to qualify for Acceptable Ads. If you turn on and of ABP you will see the improvement of their ads.
Just two minutes ago I saw a giant Taboola-sponsored ad on NBC News showing a large, red pussy foot. So you've managed to get me to unclick the "allow unobtrusive advertising" box forever. Better that than installing a new ad blocker, right?

You have a black eye for allowing them to buy their way out of your blocker.
hahnchen

Re: [added] Taboola ads

Post by hahnchen »

I recently installed ABP on a new work machine, and forgot to untick the "acceptable ads" box. I was quickly reminded when I saw some awful Taboola links at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... court.html

Here is the picture.

http://imgur.com/7EomXJK

What the f? This is the hsit you let through, a picture of a girl that has nothing to do with the advert and is only there to grab attention, an advert for a penny auction gambling website, and an image that uses disgust to bait your clicks. Disgraceful.

Just refresh that page and see what other grotesques you get.
shabie
Posts: 771
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2015 5:59 pm

Re: [Under Review] Taboola ads

Post by shabie »

Under Review since valid concerns were raised about one or more whitelisted ad units.
spirituallyinsane
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2015 10:44 pm

Re: [Under Review] Taboola ads

Post by spirituallyinsane »

I concur, Taboola ads violate the letter and spirit of Acceptable Ads guidelines.

Violated guidelines include:
  • Preferably text only, no attention-grabbing images:
    Taboola ads always include a clickbait image unrelated to content
  • Advertising should be clearly marked as such with the word "advertising" or its equivalent, and it should be distinguishable from page content, for instance via a border and/or different a background color.:
    Taboola ads are positioned transparently at the bottom of the content in a way that presents as related content from the same website, despite the inclusion of "From the Web" and "Sponsored Content by Taboola"
I find the idea that this content is included as acceptable advertising disappointing and inappropriate. Please review Taboola's content, and remove it from the Whitelist.
ManuelC

Re: [Under Review] Taboola ads

Post by ManuelC »

Over the last few weeks we saw a few complaints on our forum related to Taboola ads and we wanted to address these in a timely manner as the user experience of Adblock Plus is our highest priority. In order to ensure that you have the highest quality experience, Taboola developed and implemented a capability to ensure that you see higher quality images going forward. This should result in improvement of the sponsored content you see on any given page of a website from our partner. If you have further complaints please send us the site name and screenshot and we will do our best to continue to improve your experience.

Second, all Taboola ads on our whitelist should have an (additional) clear label such as "Sponsored Links by Taboola", "Promoted Content" etc providing clear labeling and disclosure to our users. Again, please let us know if you find a website where this isn't the case."

Finally, it is important to us to address this common misconception: not all Taboola ads are whitelisted. Only a few selected reduced units on selected publishers are whitelisted.
User avatar
greiner
ABP Developer
Posts: 899
Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2012 5:29 pm
Location: Cologne, Germany

Re: [Added] Taboola ads

Post by greiner »

As seen in the linked screenshot (left: with Acceptable Ads enabled; right: without Acceptable Ads enabled) Taboola's ads are violating the following criteria on independent.co.uk:

- Ads should not occupy more than one third of the screen height
- Ads should be distinguishable from page content (the ads in green are indistinguishable from the organic content in blue)

This issue may also occur on other domains that are currently on the whitelist.
ManuelC

Re: [Added] Taboola ads

Post by ManuelC »

greiner wrote:As seen in the linked screenshot (left: with Acceptable Ads enabled; right: without Acceptable Ads enabled) Taboola's ads are violating the following criteria on independent.co.uk:

- Ads should not occupy more than one third of the screen height
- Ads should be distinguishable from page content (the ads in green are indistinguishable from the organic content in blue)

This issue may also occur on other domains that are currently on the whitelist.
I would agree with the first criteria violtion. The different labeling make the sponsored and the organic content distinguishable IMO.
gksa
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2015 8:46 pm

Re: [Added] Taboola ads

Post by gksa »

Registered just to tell you that I am removing AdBlock Plus and installing AdBlock instead, because of this.

Yes, I could just disable Acceptable Ads. But I would prefer to support responsible advertising.

Yes, I could just add filters to block Taboola specifically, but I've tried, and it has proven too challenging. Clearly Taboola is intent on making it as difficult as possible. It looks like it will be easier when using AdBlock.

So... Goodbye.
User avatar
greiner
ABP Developer
Posts: 899
Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2012 5:29 pm
Location: Cologne, Germany

Re: [Added] Taboola ads

Post by greiner »

gksa wrote:Yes, I could just add filters to block Taboola specifically, but I've tried, and it has proven too challenging. Clearly Taboola is intent on making it as difficult as possible. It looks like it will be easier when using AdBlock.
Which filters did you try? Presumably the following filters should be more than sufficient to hide all of Taboola's content:

Code: Select all

##[id^="taboola"]
##[class^="trc_"]
keith99
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2015 2:51 pm

Re: [Added] Taboola ads

Post by keith99 »

I fail to see how Taboola are complying with the acceptable ads criteria. Their ads break it on so many levels.

1. They clearly use attention grabbing images. Images of pretty girls and picture of suggestive bare legs.
2. On the independant.co.uk example you can see 75% of the page is taken over Taboola ads.
3. On 247wallst.com you can see 100% of the page is taken over by ads. 70% of that is Taboola with attention grabbing images. Even looks like a dead rat in one of them, disgusting!
4. Very poorly labeled. Very tiny text stating "Sponsored Links by Taboola".

Quotes i have taken from the acceptable ads criteria...

"Preferably text only, no attention-grabbing images"

"Advertising should be clearly marked as such with the word "advertising" or its equivalent, and it should be distinguishable from page content, for instance via a border and/or different a background color."

"Ads should not occupy more than one third of the screen height."

Examples:
Independant.co.uk: http://postimg.org/image/ody1m55vb/
247wallst.com: http://postimg.org/image/xvxsm6rjr/

Please tell me how this meets the acceptable ads criteria?

I have read that Taboola are paying you guys substantial amounts of money to let their ads through as "acceptable" which they clearly arent based on my findings. This is pathetic, you have literally sold out. For a company with such strong goals and morals this is an embarrassment. Proof money really does talk!
ManuelC

Re: [Added] Taboola ads

Post by ManuelC »

keith99 wrote:I fail to see how Taboola are complying with the acceptable ads criteria. Their ads break it on so many levels.

1. They clearly use attention grabbing images. Images of pretty girls and picture of suggestive bare legs.
2. On the independant.co.uk example you can see 75% of the page is taken over Taboola ads.
3. On 247wallst.com you can see 100% of the page is taken over by ads. 70% of that is Taboola with attention grabbing images. Even looks like a dead rat in one of them, disgusting!
4. Very poorly labeled. Very tiny text stating "Sponsored Links by Taboola".

Quotes i have taken from the acceptable ads criteria...

"Preferably text only, no attention-grabbing images"

"Advertising should be clearly marked as such with the word "advertising" or its equivalent, and it should be distinguishable from page content, for instance via a border and/or different a background color."

"Ads should not occupy more than one third of the screen height."

Examples:
Independant.co.uk: http://postimg.org/image/ody1m55vb/
247wallst.com: http://postimg.org/image/xvxsm6rjr/

Please tell me how this meets the acceptable ads criteria?

I have read that Taboola are paying you guys substantial amounts of money to let their ads through as "acceptable" which they clearly arent based on my findings. This is pathetic, you have literally sold out. For a company with such strong goals and morals this is an embarrassment. Proof money really does talk!
Thanks for spotting those cases. You're right, in these two particular cases those ads shouldn't show the way they do. Every Acceptable Ads partner is regularly being monitored to ensure the quality and compliance of the ads they serve.
In the case of Taboola, all their images must go through a filtering process before they can be whitelisted, so there seems to be a coding issue involved that made those images show on the independent.co.uk.
As per 247wallst.com, those Taboola ads shouldn't even show because they were never unblocked in the first place. Apparently, the unblocking rules we added for media.net ads on this domain made also the Taboola ad unit to show. We will tackle both issues ASAP.

Our apologies for these two issues and thanks again for spotting them.
ManuelC

Re: [Added] Taboola ads

Post by ManuelC »

For clarification, the bug on independent.co.uk has been fixed now.
keith99
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2015 2:51 pm

Re: [Added] Taboola ads

Post by keith99 »

Also the same for their other property: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/s ... 96506.html

Huge Taboola unit with grotesque images.

Do you even check these sites or only fix them after there has been a complaint? How do these sites get approved in the first place... oh wait i know... cash bribes!!
ManuelC

Re: [Added] Taboola ads

Post by ManuelC »

keith99 wrote:Also the same for their other property: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/s ... 96506.html

Huge Taboola unit with grotesque images.

Do you even check these sites or only fix them after there has been a complaint?
We do have a regular monitoring process in place, although any change in the code from the publisher's end can result in unwanted images showing up again. We will tackle this ASAP.

Thanks for spotting this.
keith99 wrote: How do these sites get approved in the first place... oh wait i know... cash bribes!!
As stated on our website:
Every entity on the whitelist - paying participant or non-paying participant - MUST maintain the same strict criteria that our users accepted as part of the Acceptable Ads initiative. We will never accept any ad that doesn't meet these criteria. There is no way to buy a spot on the Acceptable Ads exception list
Source: en/about
KJ_Jose
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2015 10:50 pm

Re: [Added] Taboola ads

Post by KJ_Jose »

keith99 wrote:I fail to see how Taboola are complying with the acceptable ads criteria. Their ads break it on so many levels.

1. They clearly use attention grabbing images. Images of pretty girls and picture of suggestive bare legs.
2. On the independant.co.uk example you can see 75% of the page is taken over Taboola ads.
3. On 247wallst.com you can see 100% of the page is taken over by ads. 70% of that is Taboola with attention grabbing images. Even looks like a dead rat in one of them, disgusting!
4. Very poorly labeled. Very tiny text stating "Sponsored Links by Taboola".

Quotes i have taken from the acceptable ads criteria...

"Preferably text only, no attention-grabbing images"

"Advertising should be clearly marked as such with the word "advertising" or its equivalent, and it should be distinguishable from page content, for instance via a border and/or different a background color."

"Ads should not occupy more than one third of the screen height."

Examples:
Independant.co.uk: http://postimg.org/image/ody1m55vb/
247wallst.com: http://postimg.org/image/xvxsm6rjr/

Please tell me how this meets the acceptable ads criteria?

I have read that Taboola are paying you guys substantial amounts of money to let their ads through as "acceptable" which they clearly arent based on my findings. This is pathetic, you have literally sold out. For a company with such strong goals and morals this is an embarrassment. Proof money really does talk!
Yes. Taboola ads violate the Acceptable Ads criteria for those reasons.

P.S. I mark ALL ads as annoying which is why I always turn Acceptable Ads off even since the first time I used ABP.

And as by sensitive images used in the ads,

"This program is rated SPG. It contains scenes with themes, language, violence, sex, horror, or drugs, which may not be suitable for children. Strong parental guidance is advised."

Image
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