I don’t use Protopage mobile either. But I know for mobile users (from experience) it can be an issue. Of course the alternative is to pay Protopage to have the ads removed. However, at $2.49, I am assuming that they presume they will make a similar amount from each person by displaying the ads. If they make less, which I suspect they will due to the number of users installing ad-blockers, then they are just causing frustration.

I agree about the ad not being seen if it is a widget below all other widgets, but there are two points to this,

- Not all of my pages fill an entire screen with widgets, so some of my tabs will still allow the ads to be seen. Its also very unlikely I will rearrange my widgets just to hide the advert off the bottom of the page.
- Does it really matter if I see the ad or not? Although it is an irritation, I’m hardly likely to click on it, regardless of where it appears on the page, so again Protopage will not earn money from me. I also suspect this will be the case for a lot of other regular users.

There’s only one thing an advertiser might bring to bear here: if the ad is at the bottom, or in any other way out of the user’s way, then who guarantees it will ever be seen? After all, that is the point of advertising: being seen! (Darn, what am I, the Devil’s advocate?)

Firstly, the page was redesigned so the config buttons (settings, add widgets, log on/off etc) appear at the top of the page. This upset a number of users (see previous comments elsewhere), as it messes up the layout of peoples’ pages. The Protopage team responded by giving users the option of hiding the buttons, but it doesn’t work properly, if you switch between another row of tabs, the config buttons forget to hide.
Secondly, adverts have been introduced, which appear in the most inconvenient position on the page - again messing up the layout. What is worse, visitors to you public tabs are also pestered by these adverts. The whole thing now looks unprofessional.
Thirdly, this makes the whole point of mobile Protopage flawed. A mobile user doesn’t keep a session open, so will be persistently pestered by the ads. Also, a mobile user will end up paying for the ad data to be downloaded every time, and when mobile tariffs charge by the data rate, its not fun.

I appreciate that one click will close the ads, but for me it is the positioning that has totally ruined the whole Protopage experience.

The ads also fail to achieve the purpose they were designed for. Presumably Protopage get money for each ad displayed or clicked on? Well, as I have ad blocking software installed, all I see is a blank white box. The ad is never downloaded. So for Protopage the revenue stream fails. All it manages to achieve is frustration. Perhaps the Protopage team like frustrating loyal users?

I don’t have a problem with adverts, but I think they could have been implemented better, some suggestions are below.

- Upon first visit to Protopage, an advert appears over the top of the page until it is manually closed.
- The config buttons are moved back to the bottom left corner and remain on top of all widgets (like they used to) and to the right of them, a floating non-closeable ad sits alongside the config buttons, the ads can stretch infinitely to the right, as required.
- A non removable ad-widget appears on every Protopage (every tab), below all other widgets. The ad-widget can be of any size, and any position below all user added widgets.
- Following on from the ad-widget theme, if a user chooses to have more ad-widgets on their page, say 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, then the ad-widgets are reduced in size.

Anyway, now I’m off topic. So I end this ‘discussion’.

I don’t use Protopage to watch banner ads and because I don’t want to, I’ll check for other websites.

What? You didn’t even install Greasemonkey and design a script to get rid of the banner? Yeah, one click per visit. So what? Ever tried to get rid of the “Nike” banners people wear on their clothes everyhere? Never asked for those, but no matter how hard I click, I can’t rid myself of them…

At least with Protopage I know they’re listening to their users. You don’t get that everywhere!

Now that’s weird. Just click the little “x” in either of the boxes, and you won’t see any more commercials for the entire session. Why would you leave, just because you have to click once?

Too bad, of all the start pages, Protopage was the one that appealed to me the most, but I guess I’m going to check out the other ones now in hope they don’t have banners.

So I hope you’re checking out the problem with the previews in GC? Thanks in advance!

Yikes! I know I’m one of the people who suggested an ID lock to block Blog-spamming some time ago, but I’m not happy about this particular one! With every post, I have to retry several times because of invalid entries.

Best regards,
FreeBee