Advertisements Reporting Update

UPDATE: Some changes have happened for the game boards and forums. If you notice complications be sure to use the "ad feedback" links throughout the site.

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As a free user or a Plus subscriber you're bound to notice advertisements on the site. This thread provides tips primarily about how you can report content that falls under mature and illegal avtiivties. We have two ways you can report the problem to have it removed from rotation.

The following content is not intended for GameSpot.com.

1) Mature content
- nudity
- adults only content

2) Illegal activities
- illegal copies of software*
- circumventing copyright protection*
- hacks or any other methods related to this content
- illegal copies of copyrighted music, movies and videos or other types of media
- Illegal drugs or controlled substances
- Any sorts of plagiarism services

*Discussion of mod chips, copying games, playing copied games, cracking games, No-CD patches, piracy releases, homebrew, copyrighted ROMs, copyrighted ISOs, and basically anything related to game, movie, TV, or music piracy is not permitted.

3) Mispells or inaccurate information
We never hope to have errors or inaccuracy but if it happens, you can click the Ad Feedback url on the advertisement to report the problem.

Here are two basic ways you can report these ads.

How to advertisements found under sponsored Links

Sponored links are often found on the bottom of the forum and gamespaces.

EXAMPLE
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How to report:

1) Write down or copy the www url in smaller text below the advertisement sentence.
2) Click on the Sponsored Links url as displayed in the example below.

3) You will be taken to a Third-Party Online Advertising page.
4) Click on the CONTACT US tab on top. While on this page fill out the fields it requests, but be absolutely clear about why this ad falls under the categories listed above and mention where you found the url. For instance. if the content contains nudity, here is an example message.

EXAMPLE
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Subject: Advertisement contains adult website
Question: www.websiteurl.com is a website that contains adult oriented images and it is being advertised on GameSpot's forums page http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_topics.php?board_id=314159277.

Subject: Advertisement contains illegal activities
Question: www.websiteurl.com is a website that contains illegal activities such as warez and hacking computers under your sponors' links. You can view this advertisement in the rotation found on the GameSpot's gamespace http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/halo3/index.html
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Note: Because you are contacting CBS Interactive about this issue be sure to share that you found it on GameSpot.com.

How to report ads that have feedback links

These advertisements are much easier to contact the appropriate staff.

EXAMPLE
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1) Click on the Ad Feedback url
2) Fill out the form[Note, the url of that particular ad is already linked so it's easy to report an issue]

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Still having an issue?

If you are still having problems a couple of days after you already took one of the approaches above, feel free to report the problem here and a staff member will forward the concern to the appropriate staff. If you want to post anything about a concern make sure to keep track of what kind of issue it is (categories listed above), a screenshot and get that url. Here are some steps.

1) Provide GS URL (copy/paste): [browser display the GameSpot url]
2) Provide URL of where the ad links to[The ad links to a advertiser's webpage that is important for us to investigate. If you do not want to visit the site, right click on the image and copy the webpage link location]
3) Describe the content: [Describing helps us investigate the content further]
4) Screenshot: [Take a screenshot and link to it in this thread. If the content contains nudity, take the screenshot and email community@ gamespot.com with the subject title Advertisement contains nudity].
5) Was it a java, pop-up or skin? YES or NO
6)Also indicate if the advertisement had SPONSORED LINKS above it.

Putting the responsibiliy on users to manage pirate advertising on this web site is inappropriate in my opinion.

As a web developer and with 15 seconds allocated time into processes you can use, they include:

1) Advertising tools you can use to filter this sort of content.

2) Internal measures that can be taken, such as logging ad keywords and manually checking them on intervals, this would yield response time of as little as 15 minutes to remove culprit advertisements after they are flagged by an evolving mechanism that would become more sophisticated over time.

3) Other 100% automated manual methods.

It is not the responisbility of the consumers of this site to ensure Gamespot is being ethical about its advertising strategy, nor is it reasonable that ads remain on this site for the duration that they do.

Here is a copy of my discussion post that lead me to check here.

http://au.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=27457053&msg_id=325363550#325363550

After X duration I may consider contacting game companies who paying you for advertising similataneously to you advertising pirating to see what they think of the matter.

Well I was told to mention some LiveVoice (or it could be VoiceLive, forgot which :P ) pop-up ads Ive gotten in the past few days. Its a small box that appears in the middle of the screen and Ive done virus scans and they're clean so I guess its on GS. Reason I brought it up is because I never get pop-up ads on this site so I found it strange.

Ive gotten it twice in 2 days. It doesnt happen very often but still...I didnt get any today (Sept 23) so thats good.

[QUOTE="IceBlazerX"]Hello there Jody. :) When I come here there always seems to be an ad for 'the last exorcism' and displays dead headless people, blood and gore, Satanic rituals and crification. Can you please deal with it? Cheers.Dracula68

Yes, and there is no 'ad feedback' url that I can see.

Look for yourself.

Wanted to report an incorrect GameSpot ad I found browsing GameFAQs, with a pretty large goof-up.

The banner has the box art of Uncharted 2, but the side ad here has the box art for Vanquish. Just wanted to point this out directly to you guys. I also filled out an ad feedback. :)

This is the problem on the Homefront (X360) message boards, please fix this

This still hasn't been fixed^^^DeX2010

I use AdBlock Plus and have NoScript handy as well. I guess this isn't very much of use to me but it's a nice touch.

I keep wondering why the hell I have to sit through the same god damn advert everytime I want to watch a video, please for godsake put different ads in or make it so i only have to watch it one time a day, your putting me off buying games that I normally would love to buy, by shoving the same damn advert down my throat every minute.

The Gamespot front-page ad of Battlefield 3 implies that the site MSNBC.com has somewhere stated Battlefield 3 being the winner against Modern Warfare 3. This seemed strange to me since neither of the games are even out yet, so I looked into it. By search at msnbc.com with the phrase "Battlefield 3" I only found one article about it: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41196567/#.ToWESNSXeSo

Here's the image used in the ad:

I already used the "ad info" link that I found over it and input feedback on the site it took me to, but it did not seem to be meant for feedback about the information contained in the ad. The ad info link is http://www.cbsinteractive.com/adfeedback/?REDIRECT=TRUE&RGROUP=19761&SEGMENTID=545325&LINEID=437795&SP=242&ADVERTISERID=369 (I do not know how to copy the link from the ad itself because it's in flash format and the only options a right-click brings up are "Settings", "Global settings" and "About Adobe Flash Player ")

Your Street Fighter x Tekken ad is creating a pop up to their site. The "Click Here" to go to your intended page is acceptable, but if I leave gamespot open in a TAB it will auto pop up every so often distracting me from my work etc. Why are pop ups from ads even permitted? I seriously don't know any other legit site that uses them, because it forces the user to open a web pages that is not controlled by the site itself.

Managed to grab a screenshot of it. This only shows how it makes the layout go haywire however, it doesn't show how it completely cripples your browser down to 56k speeds. I wont be visiting gamespot for a while until it is gone, it's too infuriating.