The Jailhouse

[Burpzilla]

Matt, you may be aware of this, but there's a chance your ad server is failing to deliver ads to the readers at an alarming rate.

To be constructive, I availed myself of my new-found ability to study the ads here. Often, they don't appear. So, I did a little research.

First, I logged out, cleared my cache & cookies, and came back during trading hours as an unlogged-in "guest" using Opera. I clicked through 100 posts in a row, to see how often the ad in the message failed to load. I did it twice, on different boards, and then did it again as a logged-in, "free" member.

The results were consistent:

1) 84% failed
2) 81% failed
3) 84% failed
4) 77% failed

So, using Opera on a DSL connection, the ad is failing to load about 80% of the time.

I did the same thing using IE. The results were better, but still alarming: the ad is failing to load about 50% of the time.

It's possible the problem is unique to me & my computer, so you'll definitely want to get other opinions. Hopefully it's just me.

Assuming it's site-wide, though, I doubt it would cause much of a problem with the advertisers, because they'd never know about it. The problem IMO is that instead of an ad, a lot of the lurkers & free members are seeing:

"Action canceled
Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested. The page might be temporarily unavailable."

...which makes iHub look bad because they would assume it's iHub's fault. Again, my apologies if this is already known by you or if it's affecting just me.

Here's another, FYI. There's a spot on your site to view the advertisers (Other --> Our Advertisers). It appears to be broken at this time, as all it shows for a banner is:

tf.asp
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/adlist.asp

Good luck! Oh, while I was at it, I clicked on all the ads, and even deep-clicked through their sites, hoping to give iHub some positive stats! It gave me a cool idea. When torturing inmates, maybe you should send them on "scavenger hunts." Ask them to find out the model number of the AT&T wireless phone and how many minutes you get per month, etc. Make the inmates earn their keep as it were.