It would appear that the Spiceworks app is now stalking me. (I just stayed at the Lubbock Hyatt about 2 or 3 weeks ago.)

2 Spice ups

Did you clear your cookies?

Yeah, I live in Scotland and have been getting emails from companies from Austin TX in my inbox that I have no recollection of ever contacting for anything. I “unsubscribe” (even though I never subscribed) then I block and delete.

I shouldn’t have to clear cookies. The promise from Spiceworks has always been “IT-related Ads only.”

I’m concerned that whatever advertising network they are hooking up with is not doing a very good job of filtering and that promise is not being honored.

The last thing I need is for those stupid ads about "the one thing car insurance companies don’t want you to know’ to start popping up on everyone’s screens. It seems that every website does that these days. I say that it cheapens the brand when they use those links, but nobody seems to listen to me.

1 Spice up

Question on this, does it make a difference that it was in the Water Cooler (one of the /fun areas)?

The reason I ask is I know we’re very much about IT ads in the technical areas but we open it up a little for the “fun” areas (such as Water Cooler). For example, I know we allow gaming ads and a few other things that we hear from IT pros as hobbies and things they enjoy and actively block a few areas such as Health, Apparel, Personal Care products, and Finance. Granted, this is something we’re always tweaking and it should not affect the technical areas.

To be clear, still bringing this up with the team, but also interested in hearing feedback on keeping the Water Cooler a little more open (and yet still relevant to our Community) when it comes to the discussion groups under /fun.

Sean,

That’s a good point. The Water Cooler certainly is a more relaxed setting, so perhaps a more relaxed Ad policy is understandable. I’ll have to scratch my head and ponder that one for a bit…

1 Spice up

For me, Spiceworks is one of the few places I disable my ad blocker because ads were always relevant to the community… Now that this has changed, even though it’s only for water cooler, I might reconsider that exclusion… If I want to buy something, I know where to look… I tolerated ads here but since the relevance is going down the drain, so is my tolerance…

Rather than start a new thread, I thought I’d just tag onto this one.

You may need to revisit the categorization thing again…

Edit: I didn’t see that this was cross posted to Spiceworks Advertising. I originally got to it through Spiceworks Community Support and then noticed there were other, more recent threads in the Advertising forum. Oh well. I’ll know to post in one of those messages next time.

1 Spice up

Not sure I’m thrilled to see this one next to one of my tickets in the help desk today.

Thanks! Sending that one to the team now.

Update: It has been removed/blocked so no one should see it anymore in Spiceworks.

Just saw these while looking at a ticket report in my local install of Spiceworks. There was one more that appeared to be selling workplace signage (the old fashioned kind - stop signs, hazardous material signs, etc) - but I didn’t catch a screen shot of it before it went away.

@sean-spiceworks ​ - it seems that ad filtering continues to slip.

1 Spice up

I think I’ll just avoid using anything Spiceworks related today. That will help me avoid getting irritated.

1 Spice up

Whoa! Thanks for pointing those out, Glenn. Yeah, none of those should be in our system so pinging our Ads team now about this.

Quick Update – Just heard from Tim and they are getting those removed. It looks like the issue was that some sites are not categorizing their ads correctly. We do have people who spot-check the ads but some do slip through.

These specific ones will be blocked momentarily and, as always, we’re talking about how to improve this so we’re stopping these before you’re noticing them.

I wonder if this works on printers that refuse to print…

1 Spice up

I am laughing and crying at the same time… We’ll get this yanked as soon as possible.

Just wanted to let you (all) know that ad has been blocked. Grr, sneaky advertisers mislabeling their stuff!

Sounds like a good opportunity to dust off the ban hammer.

1 Spice up

Today’s irrelevant ad comes to you courtesy of the Help Desk. Let’s keep it apolitical, folks.

Just FYI, there is a topic about this particular one: Ads containing political content