My Animated Ads in IE7

By Shamus Posted Monday Feb 11, 2008

Filed under: Random 44 comments

Here is an interesting problem:

In IE7, some of the ads here on my site don’t show up for me. Specifically, the animated ones show up as a blank white rectangle. They work just peachy in Firefox.

The odd thing is that the same ads work just fine on other sites. I use the same advertising service as the Webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del, and over there I can see animated ads just fine in IE7.

So the problem only arises for:

  1. Animated ads
  2. On this site
  3. Using IE7.

All other ads work fine.

This makes no sense to me. For those of you using IE, can you look at the ads in the sidebar (I’m not trolling for free clicks, I just need you to look) and tell me if you see blank white boxes showing up? Or if you see ads playing which have animations?

If this is only a problem for me, then it’s no big deal. If the problem is more widespread then I need to figure out where things are going wrong. Either way, it’s one of those oddball mysteries that bugs me.

 


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44 thoughts on “My Animated Ads in IE7

  1. ocd says:

    i can see it just fine (im using ie)

  2. GEBIV says:

    You have ads?

    Actually, on the main page, the only ad that shows up is way down at the bottom of the page.

    On the comment page here, they are showing up just fine.

    I’m running whatever version of IE comes with Vista.

  3. SkeevetheImpossible says:

    All is good on my end. You must just suck as a human being

  4. Simulated Knave says:

    Using Firefox, but if you have sidebar ads on the main page, I’ve never seen them. :P

  5. wildweasel says:

    Sidebar ad shows up just fine for me, but I’m not sure if I’m using IE7 because I’m actually using the Firefox IE Tab extension.

    (Off-topic, I keep noticing that you headline your posts with icons of anime characters…Radical Edward is oddly fitting for this kind of “technical problem” post.)

  6. Jeremiah says:

    I’ve got IE7 on Windows Vista and I can see animated ads just fine. I checked it on my other PC, running IE7 on XP (with service pack 2) and they show up just fine there, too.

  7. Doug Brown says:

    I can see them fine, as well.

    XP Pro SP2
    IE 7.0.5730.11

  8. william says:

    got firefox and i see them fine… why do people brag about not seeing them? they don’t distract one from reading, and they provide your livlihood ( or detract from the cost of this NPWS)

  9. Fuloydo says:

    I’m using Firefox/2.0.0.12 and I only see one, non-animated, ad on the main page, extreme bottom right. The animated ads do show up on this comments page. (Well, one does. I see two ads on this page with quite a bit of space between them one of which is the same ad as on the main page.)

  10. EKKM says:

    IE7 and I see them fine

  11. Robert says:

    They show up fine for me in both IE7 and Firefox. Sounds like a problem at your PC.

  12. food4worms says:

    Maybe you have Flash turned off for this site in IE7?

  13. Joe says:

    Highly unlikely, nigh impossible, but is there any fathomable way your Wavatar code might be conflicting?

  14. Mari says:

    Only marginally related but certain of your animated ads cause my browser (Firefox) to freeze up solidly until the only option is to end program through the task manager.

    I don’t know if it’s the ad persay, honestly. I’m using process of elimination here. I have ads blocked on all other sites so I can’t swear if it’s the same on other sites such as CAD. But I never had problems with your site until after I unblocked your ads.

    Not that I’m demanding you fix it or anything. I can and will just reblock if it comes down to it, but I thought you might want to know in case other users might be having problems too. It’s entirely possible, though, that it’s just my crummy video card that’s the problem.

  15. gottasing says:

    Not that you probably care, because I don’t imagine it affects a large number of your readers, but the ads also appear just fine in Safari on the comments page.

  16. Allerun says:

    Running IE7 and the animated ad at the bottom of the main site is working fine. Both ads on the comments page working fine as well.

  17. Joe says:

    No problmes here, using XP Pro SP2, IE 7.0.5730.11…

    Although, I’m running that just to see whether there’s a problem. Normally, I use FF with NoScript, which lets me see normal ads, but not animated ones. It looks like the current animated ads on this page come from game-advertising-online.com. Do you know if there are others that you get? ‘cuz, I generally don’t really mind the ads on your site, and even might be interested in them now and then… I’ve permitted that domain, are there others you pull animated ads from?

  18. Taellosse says:

    They show up for me when I load the page in IE Tab. Must just be you, for whatever odd reason, since I don’t see anyone else saying they can’t see them.

  19. Cadamar says:

    Shamus, check your flash version.
    It sounds likely that it is just a security setting or flash version problem with your client.
    They work fine for me on WinXp Sp2:
    IE 6 and IE 7
    Firefox 2.0.0.11
    Safari 3 (still a POS browser, hangs all of the time…)

    And on Mac OSX:
    Safari 1.3.2
    Safari 3.0.4
    Firefox 1.0.4 (wow, I should really update this one…)

    I do have a Vista machine I could try, but I don’t like you that much. :p

    Does your ad provider check that the request isn’t coming directly from a client via IP address or something to prevent people from artificially inflating their view numbers? Or do you only get paid for click-throughs?

  20. Ingvar says:

    Opera under Linux, the ad on this page is a black rectangle, with the text “advertise here” at the bottom. I do believe I have animated GIFs turned off, though.

  21. asterismW says:

    Totally off-topic, but may I just shout a big “THANK YOU!” for this post, and especially wildweasel’s comment, which led me to find the IE extension for Firefox. I’ve always hated having to use IE for my company’s webpages, and now I can just use Firefox!

  22. Ryan says:

    Have never had a problem with your ads.

  23. BVB says:

    The question is not why the ads do or do not show up.

    The question is why the hell anybody would be using Internet Exploder.

    Seriously, though. I never knew your site had ads. Firefox 2 + Adblock Plus for me… not like this is very helpful, sorry ;)

  24. Phlux says:

    They’ve always worked just fine for me.

    I would expand your list of symptoms to include:

    4. On this computer

    Do you have any IE toolbars installed? Sometimes they are installed but suppressed until you right-click in the general toolbar area and see which ones are selected to view. I’ve seen issues with toolbars interfering with page rendering before.

  25. Zukhramm says:

    Since I don’t use it, I have some older version of IE on the computer, but, the ads shows up fine when using it.

  26. Kobyov says:

    All ads work fine on WinXP SP2 with Firefox 2.0.0.12 and IE 7.0.5730.13 – at least until nuke anything enhanced gets to the annoying ones – I have no objection to ads until they start flashing and suchlike, then I hide them.

  27. Plasma says:

    I’ve got IE6, and I can see the animated ad, though like others, it only shows up at the bottom of the sidebar.

  28. ArchU says:

    Shamus, if you have (inadvertently?) turned on the IE7 phishing filter you might want to check what has been caught in there…
    Tools – Phishing Filter – Turn Off Automatic Website Checking…
    Then force-refresh the page with Ctrl+F5. If the ads load you have your answer.

  29. RedHillian says:

    Firefox 2 (as Mozarella FireKitten), adblock plus blocking one ad under filter game-advertising-online.

    Disabling it and refreshing shows an unresponsive script, so it’s gone back on. Sorry – no help available from this quarter.

  30. Dwaggi says:

    I’m using IE, and I can see the ads, even the animation ones. I have no idea what version I’m using, though.

  31. Davesnot says:

    I dunno.. BiteFight is an animated ad.. I have IE7.. the werewolf is movin’.. the blood is dripping.. the bat is flying.. seem ta’ be workin’

  32. Davesnot says:

    since you have us looking.. I notice the snowman is still up there in the logo.. and I thought to myself, “why’s he still got a chrismas thing up there..” ..

    then I remembered I live in Oceanside, CA.. where it was at least 75-degrees today… sorry..

  33. Binks says:

    Running ie 7 (a sacrifice I’m willing to make :P) I saw the ads just fine. Running ie tab in firefox was the same deal. Thanks for the reminder, however, to whitelist your site in adblock. I’d forgotten to do that and so wasn’t seeing the ads until now.

    Sounds like a problem on your end dude.

  34. Ravs says:

    I’m using ie6 and the animated ads work fine.

  35. Jen says:

    I didn’t know you had ads on the left. I have IE 7.0.6000.16575 – update version 0 – on Vista, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those ads here.

  36. Althanis says:

    Microsoft is the devil! Let ’em suffer!

  37. lplimac says:

    I see no ads, just a “Access Denied” box, a feature of the policy settings of the proxy server at work. I’m using OSX 10.4.9 and Safari.

  38. Alpha Lupi says:

    Just so you know, running Opera 9.24 on Vista, I see one ad on the main page (at the bottom) and two ads on the full article page.

  39. running firefox, some advertisements show up, some don’t.

  40. sineWAVE says:

    I’m running IE7 on XP pro and ads are showing fine…

  41. Thom says:

    I can always see one nice, animated add at the bottom of your page, and I’m using IE7, so no problems here.

  42. Cutahlion says:

    One of the two sidebar ads for me is a blank, black box (actually clear with a black background) with the little x-on-a-sheet-of-paper logo telling me that it didn’t load right. The other ad is animated and works.

  43. Lee Davis says:

    I dunno, Shamus. Sounds like a feature to me.

  44. Ed says:

    Same problem here! Was happining in IE6, I upgraded to 7, same problem. So far, after searching everywhere for an answer, the only thing I can think of is I had tried Firefox and paint.net, didn’t like and removed. That’s when the problem started. Any ideas how to fix this? Cleaned the registry, checked services, nothing running on services to be concerned about, reloaded java, flash player, etc. Help! lol

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