WTF, Entrecard Pt.II

This is a continuation of this post.

Someone took great pains to explain to me that because my settings prevented me from seeing the ads on my dashboard and so that’s why they were running unapproved. Silly me for not understanding before (after all those people took the time to explain the hoops I must jump through). What really happened is that my settings hid the ads from me, so I couldn’t reject them (or approve them). Isn’t that nice to know?

So, what have we learned through this latest fiasco?

• Entrecard will run paid ads on your site automatically if you don’t reject them within their set time frame (I believe it’s 24 hours).
• If you don’t want that to happen, then set your ad settings to “Allow ads if only explicitly approved by you”.
• Once you do that, then the ads already running/just sitting in your ad queue will hide in your dashboard, but continue to run on your widget.
• Set your settings to “Allow paid ads only if the ad is for a blog”
• All non-blog ads will hide on your dashboard, then be automatically approved without your knowledge
• You only think you have control.
• By adjusting your setting all you’re really doing is hiding ads that you don’t want.

The explanation that finally penetrated my dense skull: [Emphasis added by me.]

Simply Stating,
I am not justifying or excusing at all, I think it is stupid that we have to do this, BUT, several people have given the same advice in this thread that you have ignored. If the ads snuck in before you changed your settings, they won’t appear on your dashboard because they are being filtered out. So, follow the following steps, and you should be good:

1. Uncheck all of your ad-filtering settings.
2. Go to your dashboard.
3. Cancel/reject all the paid ads which you don’t want to run.
4. Recheck the desired ad settings.

After this, you should be fine.

For clarification, this was not written by Graham or any of the mods (that i’m aware of).
My answer:

Ok, I get it now. Because I changed my ad settings I can’t see the ads on my dashboard to reject them. Because I can’t see them, they can’t be rejected and so will just appear on my widget anyway.

Is that right?

The ad (I only really objected to the one ad, but was astonished that more than one was appearing without my knowledge) was showing on my widget even though I adjusted my settings, but isn’t appearing on my dashboard because it’s being hidden via my settings. So, once I change my settings again (jump through hoops, so to speak) then I will see the ad, be able to cancel it and voila all is well.

Yes?

How can I know that? Because the way it was (the way you’re explaining it to me) my settings prevented me from seeing certain ads (hiding them)- which led me to believe they weren’t getting on my dashboard (they were hiding)- so how do I know this isn’t going to happen again unless I jump through these hoops every day?

My settings prevented me from seeing these ads before, yes? Which means my settings will prevent me from seeing more of these ads, yes? How exactly is that not just a bit sneaky?

Again, I had no problem running paid ads. But I only wanted blog ads and ads I could personally approve (no auto-running). Now I understand that if I want that then I just won’t see the objectionable/unapproved ads- but they will still run.

Gotcha.

Thanks so much for your clarification. You have been extremely helpful. Have a wonderful day.

So, to the Entrecarders who don’t want paid ads on your widget at all and to anyone who wants control of what appears on your widget and when, make sure that when you log in every day you jump through hoops to reject ads that are hiding on your dashboard. And if you don’t do it every day, by golly those ads are going to run whether you want them to or not! What are you going to do? You probably don’t even know they’re there because your settings simply hid them from you. Or something.

No doubt that explanation will be changed too.

Good luck.

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