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Forced to upgrade due to inappropriate "ads"

  1. deonneknill
    Member

    I run blog for a public elementary school, and have been using the free WordPress for a year. Today a parent informed me that our posts now had advertisements in them, and the one today was completely inappropriate. It was a VIDEO, and the content was at a minimum rated R and our parents were mortified! In order to make the ads disappear, we had to upgrade.

    I guess I wouldn't mind an ad, I know WordPress needs to make their $. I do enjoy WordPress and all the features. It would have been nice to have some control over the typs of ads, restrict/eliminate video ads from sites like ours, or at least have categories of ads to be placed on our blog. Our blog is for children and parents!

    So we can pay the $99/year. But we're a non-profit and living on a shoestring, charter school budget. Do you know how many books or desks we can buy for $99?!

    The blog I need help with is unitedbylanguage.wordpress.com.

  2. airodyssey
    Member

    That's not the price of the No-Ads upgrade.
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/no-ads/

  3. raincoaster
    Member

    You are also able to report inappropriate ads. WP has dropped some kinds of ads because of inappropriate content.

  4. deonneknill
    Member

    Thanks for the tip on the no-ads upgrade. On my blog, it had an "Upgrade" button that said it was $99/year and included no-ads among other things I doubt I need.

    Reporting the ad is fine, but it wouldn't get it removed immediately. I have a hundred or so families viewing each time I post (and did this morning), so the ad needed to be gone immediately. Since WordPress folks are away all week, I was feeling desperate. I was sure the phone would be ringing with angry parents who clicked to watch a video that I didn't post! Oy!

  5. raincoaster
    Member

    For organizations, I ALWAYS recommend the No Ads upgrade. For one thing, it makes you look awfully cheap to have ads of any sort on your blog. I think it's $30 or so, under Store on your Dashboard.

  6. wank
    Member

    The new 'upgrade to pro' button is deliberately misleading, I think, in that it only points to the $99 bundle and doesn't give any indication that the upgrades can be purchased individually.

    You should be able to get a refund on the bundle if you don't need it and then purchase the no-ads upgrade. It is also worth complaining to staff just to register your disappointment with the type of ads being shown: if they get enough complaints they might be forced to consider switching ad providers.

  7. auxclass
    Member

    I have seen some ad services dropped over the last 6 months or so - WordPress.COM seems to be trying different ad providers and methods of displaying ads - not all of them have worked well - my suspicions are that WordPress.COM is having growing pains having added many new users from other blogging places that closed up - so they have more staff to deal with things which mean they need to figure out how to pay for the new servers and staff as well as how to support the new users -

  8. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    You can purchase the No Ads upgrade separately from the Store section of your Dashboard.

    If you encounter an inappropriate ad, please do contact us via support@wordpress.com with a screenshot of the ad.

  9. foomandoonian
    Member

    I had a negative experience with these ads too. It's likely that if we raise our volume a little, WordPress.com will realise that this is a bigger problem than just a few bad ads and will do the right thing and switch to a better provider.

    I written up the problem on my own blog. I'd love to find more examples (screenshots) or bad ads, and get some more opinions and experiences.

  10. teamoyeniyi
    Member

    I'm another that supports the concern over the ads. The no-ads upgrade I bought right after, or maybe even before, I bought the premium theme.

    I'm so glad I did, as the complaints have only gotten louder in the last 12 months.

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