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Infopackets Reader Richard A. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am so glad I found your website! I have a major problem with my Samsung S6 Edge (with Android Marshmallow). Recently I started receiving full screen pop up advertisements on my phone - these ads ... are appearing even when my phone is idle! At first they appeared every few days but now these full screen advertisements are popping up every few hours. I have NO idea where they are coming from. I searched google for 'block popup ads android' and came across an article suggesting it is possible to disable notifications from apps by adjusting the ... (view more)

The content of video ads you see on YouTube could be personalized based on your online history, thanks to new advertiser tools. The video clips could automatically adjust based on sites you've visited, apps you've downloaded and even the places ... you've been. It's all possible thanks to Google offering a series of new tools for advertisers. One is known as "Custom Affinity Audiences," which means ads aren't simply placed next to (or before) relevant videos. Instead they are specifically targeted at users who are likely to find the content relevant. While the tool has already been ... (view more)

Facebook is to ban ads from sites that habitually share bogus 'news' stories. The ban will apply even if the ads themselves don't point to the false stories. It's no secret that Facebook is one of the biggest sources of traffic for news sites, both ... legitimate outlets and those which deliberately run tantalizing but misleading, or outright false stories. The latter sites thrive on people sharing the bogus stories on social media sites, thus bringing more visitor and bumping up ad revenue. However, some sites also buy Facebook advertising as a way to attract visitors who will then share the ... (view more)

Google is testing a built-in ad blocker for the Chrome browser. It's prompted a mixed response with some fears of a conflict of interest. The company had previously talked about adding an ad blocker as a built-in feature in Chrome, rather than the ... optional extensions that are already available from third-parties. Now the feature is being tested in the Dev and Canary version of Chrome. These are special versions where user get early access to features but with the knowledge that they may have performance flaws at this stage. It would be extremely unusual for Google not to later go ahead ... (view more)

Facebook says it will no longer accept advertisements that link to "low-quality" web pages. It's also going to reduce the likelihood that people see user-posted links to such pages. The system Facebook uses for identifying such pages will be ... automated but is based on guidelines developed from manually reviewing "hundreds of thousands" of pages that Facebook had linked to. After staff decided which of these sites were low quality, its computers looked through those pages to spot patterns of common characteristics. (Source: fb.com ) Toenail Fungus Unwelcome Facebook isn ... (view more)

Google has apologized to businesses whose ads appeared next to extremist videos on YouTube. It follows several major brands and the British government dropping Google advertising over the affair. The Times newspaper reported that videos from ... extremist groups had appeared beside advertising from many a host of big businesses and government agencies. That not only meant embarrassment but could mean that the advertisers were unwittingly -- if indirectly -- contributing to extremist groups. Content Classification Confusing Google's Matt Brittin told a conference that he wanted to " ... (view more)

An independent study found 91 percent of Google searches for physical products brought up a Google product as the top ad result. Google says it plays fair and the practice doesn't mean other companies have to spend more on advertising. The Wall ... Street Journal study wasn't about the search results themselves, but rather the ads that appear on the results page. It took 25 tech hardware products from carbon monoxide detectors to WiFi routers and carried out 1,000 searches for each on a computer, having first blocked its past search history to avoid distortion. On all but two of the ... (view more)

Facebook has denied claims that it allows racial discrimination in advertisements based on houses and jobs. A lawsuit may come down to interpretation of anti-discrimination laws. The lawsuit is filed against Facebook and "up to 9,999" unnamed ... co-defendants, though that appears to be a legal procedural move. It says Facebook has violated both the Fair Housing Act and Civil Rights Act. The legal action follows an investigation by "public interest journalism" group ProPublica, which bought an advertisement aimed at house buyers to check out claims of racial bias. Test Ad ... (view more)

Facebook users in the US may be able to find out if the site thinks they are conservative- or liberal-leaning. It's a side-effect of a new tool that makes it easier to influence advertisements which appear on the users' newsfeed. As reported ... recently, Facebook recently added new options which allow users to indicate that they don't want to see advertisements in the news feed related to specific topics. The new changes come as Facebook also prepares to roll out additional measures to prevent ad-blocking software from working on the site. To view the settings, users can visit their ... (view more)

Facebook says it will stop ad-blocking software from working on its website. It says ads are a core part of using Facebook, but will give users more control over which ads they see. Andrew Bosworth, who heads up Facebook's advertising division, ... announced the move in a blog post and followed up with comments to the Wall Street Journal. In the post, he accused the makers of ad-blocking tools of accepting money from advertisers to let their ads through, rather than block them. According to Bosworth, that's a sign ad-blocker makers don't always have the user's best interests at ... (view more)