Google AdSense Advertisements Information
On our websites and/or platforms we (might) show advertisements, either via Google AdSense or through our own Direct Sponsor Banners. You are currently viewing the page which are solely with regard to the Google AdSense information and how we are using/showing these to you.
Q: I get some ‘red error box’ saying that Advertisements are blocked “Due to my cookie settings”
A: That can be correct, we require you to manually allow Externally Provided Advertisements (by Google AdSense) by allowing it to use cookies before we will allow them to be displayed. To enable these advertisements you can: Click on the Manage Cookies label on the bottom of the page, then click on the Cookie Settings and then enable the (Externally Provided) Advertisements setting
Q: Let me guess: If I disable/block these advertisements you guys will block/lock content right??
A: No, we will not block any content based on whether you allow us to show ad’s or not. We do have certain content which is limited to certain Patreon membership levels, but this has nothing to do with Advertisements being blocked or not. We will never force you to show advertisements in order to view certain content (that is in my/our opinion just a ‘hidden form’ of blackmailing!)
Q: But Ad’s are so freaking annoying! why??
A: Well advertisements provide (a bit of) funding for our platform, the content, projects, 3D Models, blog posts and more of the alike.
Q: Besides just blocking them, can I also get rid of the Advertisements and still support the platform and it’s content?
A: Yes, how mighty awesome of you to ask! 😀 , By becoming a Patreon member (any tier), you can actually choose in your account settings whether you want to allow these AdSense advertisements to be displayed or not, and it will also get rid of the ‘Red Advertisement Blocked Message box‘ 🙂
Q: But these ads are creepy and privacy invading, because they always show stuff from previous website I’ve visited!
A: Well luckily you should not have to worry about that on our website/platform! 😀 Because we’ve decided to turn off personalized ad’s all together, no matter if you give full consent (even for personalized ads). We just do not allow Google AdSense to “use your personal information/internet tracking history” to show ad’s on our website(s). To even go a step further, we tell Google AdSense to only show ad’s which are “Tagged for Under the Age of Consent“.
Meaning that tracking is even further disabled (according to Google AdSense and to comply to the maximum extend with the GDPR).
Q: What does this TFUA / “Tag For Under the Age of Consent” mean?
A: Well to litterally quote from Google’s AdSense informational website:
“When using this feature, a TFUA parameter will be included in the ad request. This parameter disables personalized advertising, including remarketing, for that specific ad request. It also disables requests to third-party ad vendors, such as ad measurement pixels and third-party ad servers.”
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9009582?hl=en&ref_topic=7670012
Q: Yeah nice and technical all this, but what does this mean?
A: Well this basically it means that they will not show ad’s based on your past internet (search and surf) behavior.
https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9007336?hl=en&ref_topic=7670012
“Non-personalized ads are ads that are not based on a user’s past behavior. They are targeted using contextual information, including coarse (such as city-level) geo-targeting based on current location, and content on the current site or app or current query terms. Google disallows all personalized targeting, including demographic targeting and user list targeting.
Although non-personalized ads don’t use cookies or mobile ad identifiers for ad targeting, they do still use cookies or mobile ad identifiers for frequency capping, aggregated ad reporting, and to combat fraud and abuse.“
Q: I’m no specialist or so, but I’m guessing that these non personalized ad’s will reduce the revenue right?
A: Honestly? We don’t know. Really we don’t know. And to be completely honest here: We don’t care if they produce less revenue or not. For us the privacy of our visitors and members is much more important than (possibly) a few extra cents per thousand ad views. Plus we have other means which also support our content, publications and more, which include direct sponsors and our patreon.
Q: Well okay, if they are non personalized and don’t track me, then I don’t mind, but I’m still seeing a message which says that Google AdSense ads are disabled due to me not giving consent for marketing cookies/ads?
A: Yes that is correct. Even given the fact that they are non personalized we still require you (by law) to consent to these ad’s and their cookies using our cookie consent system. Due to the fact that they are for (Google AdSense) advertisements we decided to put them under the “Advertisement Check” in our cookie consent popup.
Q: I’m using an ad-blocker and seeing a ‘box’ with some text about that you guys are using non personalized ads, and if i would like to consider to turn off my ad-blocker so you guys can continue to make content etc bla bla bla.. Well I don’t care about all that, and don’t want to turn off my ad-blocker. What I do want to know though: How do I get rid of that ‘annoying box’?
A: Well it’s completely your right if you don’t want to turn off your ad-blocker, we won’t be mad at you :), won’t hold a grudge 🙂 and won’t even try to force you to do so 🙂 . You can however decide to help us make more content and such by supporting us directly via patreon. When you’re a patreon you can disable these ‘annoying empty ad boxes’ in your profile 🙂
Q: Well I’ve either disabled the ad’s, blocked them or turned them off in my account, but I’m still seeing Ad’s which say “XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisement”!
A: Yes that is correct, those are not bound to any cookie laws, GDPR (privacy) laws or anything like that, you can read more about that on the XNL Direct Sponsor Advertisements page. However If you are a Tier 2 patron you are also able to turn off these ad’s for your account 🙂
Q: You said that these advertisements would be non personalized and even suitable for the ‘Under the Age of Consent” demographic, well to be honest I just got some nasty/adult/inappropriate etc advertisement!??!
A: If this is the case, then our sincere apologies. But please realize that besides enabling the privacy options, that we have little to no control over which advertisements are shown by Google AdSense. So if for some reason Google/AdSense decided to show ‘wrong advertisements’ anyway, it (unfortunately) is due to them providing the incorrect advertisements. However on those ads there SHOULD be a blue icon/button/x/info icon when you hover over it. If you click on that you should be able to file a report at Google if the ad is indeed inappropriate. And if the shown advertisement is indeed “extremely” in appropriate, please consider doing the following for us:
1. Take a screenshot and save it on your computer.
2. RIGHT CLICK on the advertisement and click on ‘Copy Link’, ‘Copy Shortcut’ or however it’s called in your browser. And then also store this shortcut in a text (.txt) document on your computer.
3. Contact us through the contact form and exactly describe what happened and on which page of us.
4. Upon further contact we will let you know (per email) if we would need the screenshot and link (we do need both if we need them!) to take further actions against this advertisement and/or it’s provider(s).
Q: What if the ‘automated AdSense Advertisements’ do show ‘inappropriate’ or ‘cookie placing’ advertisements suddenly while you guys stated/setup that they would not?
A: Obviously we take your and our privacy very seriously (maybe even to extremes according to some), but if such ‘maximum privacy settings’ suddenly fail due to an error (or an unannounced system change) on the behalf of the advertisement supplier (Google AdSense in this case), then please make us aware of this as soon as possible and we will take action against this as soon as possible. We then at first temporarily disable all ‘externally supplied’ advertisements and contact our advertisement supplier to get this situation clarified. Of course we will also keep an eye on these advertisements and check regularly to make sure that they are complying with our privacy policy and rules, but it is always possible that such a system can malfunction at our or the suppliers side. Yet again: Please make sure that we get notified about such situations at your earliest convenience.
Legal disclaimer: This informational article will in no way ‘override’ our privacy policy, our Terms and Conditions, our Community Guidelines, our Refund and Returns Policy or any other document of legal information on our website(s). The information and policy’s in those legal documents will always supersede (and thus overrule) possible conflicting sections of this article.
Last update: 20-02-2022