I am so sick of seeing this ad. How do I ban it?

[jomaxx]

This is a Flash ad that I can't make appear in my AdSense preview tools. It's irrelevant and unwanted. How do I determine the domain, in order to ban it? Short of clicking on it, obviously. I've already banned a couple of domains that I thought might be responsible, but the ad just showed up again.

Yes, I know I can show text-only ads, but I don't necessarily want to do this. I just want to ban this ad in particular, although I have to say I'm not too happy about advertisers using Flash in general.

[celgins]

I feel your pain. This happened to me about 3 months ago and I informed Google about the inability to locate the URL's of certain Flash-based ads.

In a later email, they admitted that Flash ads were a problem for the Preview tool and that 'engineers would look into it'.

In the meantime, you can locate the domain name of a Flash ad by using Firefox:

1. With the page containing the Flash ad visible in Firefox, go to: Tools > Page Info

2. Click the Media tab and look for the Flash ad.

3. This displays all media (i.e. images, Flash, etc.) on a page.

4. To try and locate the Flash ad, look for objects of Type "Embed". The Type attribute is listed to the right.

Good luck!

[jomaxx]

Thanks, I'll try that.

In re this problem, I saw a recommendation to use a Firefox tool called httpGuideDog to track what specific browser requests are being made. Unfortunately, Google serves the Flash ad itself, so the only way I can follow the ad to its origin is to actually click on the ad. I don't hate it enough to do that, yet.

[celgins]

I had the problem a few months ago with several Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios movie ads. They were all Flash-based and I was adamant about not clicking them in order to find the URL.

Never heard of httpGuideDog and like you mentioned, it probably wouldn't work in this case.

[jomaxx]

Actually the method you mentioned didn't work for me, for the same basic reason. Firefox did show the address of the Flash ad, but it was a URL on the googlesyndication.com domain.

[amznVibe]

Flashblock is your friend. Puts a "play" button instead of the Flash so you can choose to start the flash objects you want.
[flashblock.mozdev.org...]

screenshot of it in action:
[flashblock.mozdev.org...]

[edited by: amznVibe at 3:41 pm (utc) on Sep. 16, 2007]