wholefoodnut's Journal, 22 October 2015

I don't seem to get those banner ads. I wonder why? 

Advertising dollars hard at work. Annoying, counter-productive, and in poor taste on Fat Secret's part. 

Interesting, I don't see any ads, other than an Amazon Prime one at the top. 

It's on the top and popping up in the boxes on the side  

Ok, I see ads now, but no McDonald's ones. If you refresh your browser page the ads usually change. 

Fat Secret very likely has very little control over the ads. I see one right now for a grocery store. The way it generally works is that the website gives an advertising service some keywords related to the site. The service then takes it's contracted advertisers and matches keywords to sites, feeding the matches it finds. Now, someone at McDonald's knows that a lot of us like their product, a whole lot, so "weight loss" could be a keyword they used. Or "diet" or even just "food". Not too much Fat Secret can do about that, possibly switch advertising service or contact theirs and try to ban certain advertisers. I don't know whether the services offer this as an option or if it's more like receiving junk mail, where the sender paid so the post office has to deliver it. It can also be based on the cookies in your browser. The service sees someone does a lot of online food shopping, so feeds ads for grocery stores, where someone else may have very few cookies because of privacy settings, so they get less perfectly tailored ads. 

I swear I had paragraphs and not a wall of text, no idea what happened there.... 

In many posts on here paragraphs will go away. The ads are often strange. Like lots latey for Harry's razors and Farmer's ins. Neither are something I have searched for. I also rarely do fast food, it's a last resort. If I'm on the run and there are no other fast options. I'm also currently on a large company's work computer.  

It sounds like you're getting default ads, not specifically tailored ones. I wouldn't blame fat secret for the content, although it is quite ironic. 

The ads no idea where they come no blame to the site. Just weird the ones that pop up here sometimes.  

I've seen advertisements for products I've looked at on Amazon on this site.  

The banner keeps putting TRX ads on it, am understand that I've looked at them and go to many of the TRX youtube videos. MMM fast food though..goofy.  

I have that, too. I try to click where it says you can alter it but it does not seem to work. 

I clicked on it and it explained that the ads were from Yahoo, I had figured that little arrow just took you to the next ad. MMMMM no way to opt out completely. The ones I'd really like to get rid of is that square box on the side of the screen that puts in those often disgusting slimy looking solutions for weight loss and gross photos for skin care. Some of those almost make me nauseous. The banner ones I just scroll down a bit and don't see them. I just though McDonald's ads were a bit much on a sit geared for healthy. ;)  

How about those ads with the toothy worms and the wonder plants? I hate ads!! 

Carol those are nasty. Stomach turning and gross.  

Carol those are nasty. Stomach turning and gross.  

I noticed just by chance the other day that the ads on FS only appeared when I briefly switched browsers from Google Chrome to Explorer . . . NO ads on Chrome!