"Congratulations" Mobile Redirect Popup ad on iPhones

[1164mgc]

A few of my readers are reporting there is been an ad popping up on their iPhones recently that blocks them from reading the site further and forwards them away from my site when they try to click out of it. I recently enabled Adsense auto ads, but I'm not sure if that has anything to do with this. I myself have seen this same annoying ad pop up on my iPhone, however it wasn't on my site, it was a major US city newspaper site as well as the weatherunderground. If you click anywhere it redirects you and the only way to get back to the site you were originally reading is to close the tab, open a new one and try again. Has anyone had complaints from their readers about these ads and were you able to do anything about it?

The ad usually says something along the lines of...

Congratulations!

Amazon.com User!

You've been selected for a chance to get the $1000 Amazon Gift Card, Apple iPhone X256G or Samsung Galaxy S8!

Please click OK to claim your reward before it expires.

Thanks everyone for your assistance.

[Subby]

Sal, any word on what ad units you are finding the redirects hidden in? My hitlist includes:

w4-tracking.com
samsung-galaxy-giveaway.today
amazon-giftcard-giveaway.today
samsung-2018-win.club
walmartwin2018.club


Any insight as to what specific campaigns are hosting them so I can attempt to block in the ad review center too?

[Sal Collaziano]

I didn't get any relief from blocking domains. The ads kept at it for me. What worked was blocking the ads themselves. This is what I've blocked:

- All Kohl's Clearance and 15% off
- Anything from Zalando
- Anything from C&B (Christopher and Banks)
- Anything from Sunasya

[Subby]

Thanks for that, it seems like Google is leaving us to our own devices here.

[CommandDork]

So emailed Adsense support and it doesn't look like this will be solved anytime soon. Basically "thanks for reaching out, sorry for you and your users, difficult to troubleshoot this issue, we'll need more information".

Unfortunately there's no reliable way to recreate the issue and I'm not going to involve my users in having to track this stuff down. Some of what's been requested:

- Charles / Fiddler / HAR log
- Screenshots and any intermediate url’s captured during an auto-redirect
- The time, location, device, and webpage/app where the bad ad was seen
- Tracking URL of the ad

Message ended with:

"Our AdWords team reviews and inspects most ads to make sure they're in line with our policies, but some do go through without full inspection (which is what you're seeing here)."

I appreciate the response but I feel this shouldn't really be an issue that publishers/visitors should have to deal with. This needs to be caught waaaay before the ad ever rolls out to the public.

[keyplyr]

I didn't get any relief from blocking domains. The ads kept at it for me.

After you block an ad or a domain, it can take up to 24 hours for the ads to stop being served to your site. This is one of my major complaints with the platform.