timed popup ad - Was it for a survey?

Question

I think what I perceived to be a timed popup ad was an invitation to take a survey. I am only a beginner in Spanish, and it unexpectedly blanketed my screen. I spent the 10 seconds before it disappeared trying to translate it. It didn't have a similar appearance to the rest of the site and the easiest thing to identify was a large $1,000.00 in the middle of a mostly deep maroon colored page. I have seen these sort of things before on other sites, typically right when the page loads. I am suspicious of any unexpected events on my screen, so if this is the way a user is invited to take a Spanishdict.com survey, I apologize for my reaction. I would not have been nearly as suspicious of an e-mail from this domain name. Also, if it were clearly and immediately identifiable as connected to this site through similar color scheme, clear logo branding, and English for those of us who are not yet fluent in Spanish it would be helpful. If that was all it was, it's fine to delete this post.

• Hi Ciscocaja -- Thanks for reporting this. We disallow these ads on our site, but sometimes they slip through. If you see it again and can send a screenshot in through the Feedback tab, we will track down who served it and take it down. - Christopher Feb 13, 2012

Answer 1

Cisco,

I am not an admin or anything...I just wanted to say...

Try to see if the "timed ads" have a yellow plus sign in the upper right hand corner. If they do, then understand that hovering your mouse over them for several second will activate them (you will generally hear a warm up tone that gives you a chance to get your mouse off the ad before it starts playing fully).

I have inadvertently put my mouse over these several times (just moving my mouse over to the side of the page or whatnot) and been shocked to have a video start playing. It confused the heck out of me until I realized what was happening.

Cheers, --Will

• Confused and annoyed me too. - ian-hill Feb 13, 2012
• Scared the ever-lovin' out of me a few times, too. - webdunce Feb 13, 2012
• Webdunce, the ads you're talking about come from one of our advertising networks. They require the user to mouse over the ad to activate (we don't allow automatic sound/automatically opening ads on the site), so thanks for clarifying that! - StuartSD Feb 13, 2012
• Those got me before too. This was different. - ciscocaja Feb 13, 2012
• Yes, they just started automatically - Gregory84 Feb 13, 2012

Answer 2

Psst. Firefox + AdBlock Plus.

Answer 3

Hi Cisco, please submit a support request and we will reach out to identify and remove the ad from the site. Thank you for pointing this out to us!

• Hi Stuart - who is the "we" in your answer above? :) - ian-hill Feb 13, 2012
• Ian, I believe the "we" are the management's IT guys. - Eddy Feb 13, 2012
• Our support team. We'll give you instructions to identify the source of the ad so we can contact the correct partner and remove it. Thanks Ian! - StuartSD Feb 13, 2012
• I guess Stuart is speaking on behalf of Admin. - MaryMcc Feb 13, 2012
• Instead of admin - I guess - how sad. - ian-hill Feb 13, 2012
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