Can't See Banners Using Int Explorer

[Elaine Currie]

I discovered today that several of my banners are invisible when viewing my website with Internet Explorer (version 6).

Some banners are perfectly visible but others are not there at all - no little red x and the space they should occupy is closed up. The same effect occurs on some other websites as well. It makes no difference whether the banners are hosted on my website or elsewhere, it seems random.

I never realised this was happening before. What is the cause and is there a cure?

[Susan Jennerjohn]

Good morning elainecurrie,

I don't see any missing images on my browser.

You have a very good looking site. I like the colors and your header. Sharp!

Susan

[Skyrocket]

Hi,

yep have to agree, just checked it and it all looks OK to me, using IE at work.

Must have just been a glich with your IE browsing session, could have been an internet connection fault. Anyway, it's working fine so don't worry about it.

[Sandi Moses]

Elaine, can you get specific? What banners do you think are not showing up? Jim and Susan don't see any gaping holes, and neither do I.
Sandi

[Elaine Currie]

Hi,

This morning (stone cold sober - promise), I was working on my son-in-law's pc I decided to work on another site where I have five banners in a "top 5 picks" type of thing. I noticed that only one banner was visible. When I did "view source" it revealed code for just that single banner and I assumed I had messed the page up. When I actually went into the edit page, the codes for all the other banners were there.

That prompted me to look at my 3 Phase index page. What I saw then was that not one of the horizontal banners was visible, the big Mom Execs banner on the right hand column was absent and the right column had an empty space at the bottom. I'm not sure if anything else was missing. I do know that the Dotcomology button was there as was the "My Mom" banner at the top left. I'm not sure if the Empowerism banner on the left was there or not. All the small graphics in the tables were there.

I'm back home now and have just checked with IE 6, Mozilla and Crazy Browser and everything is there.

It seemed a completely random thing because on the site with the 5 banners, I had a mix of banners hosted on my site and a couple linked direct from the Clickbank programmes. I could see one of the Clickbank hosted banners but not the other. I could also see some small graphic images

It was all very strange, I can't wait to go back tomorrrow for another look.

Could a Firewall or other security setting have this effect?

[Skyrocket]

If some images are appearing, then it cannot be that you have images switched off on the browser.

Code cannot just dissappear and reappear, so this sounds a bit odd too. All I can think of is that you are sober but the computer is drunk!

It's certainly not something I've heard of before, nor is it something that I can logically work out from the description. Odd, very odd.

[Elaine Currie]

skyrocket said:

If some images are appearing, then it cannot be that you have images switched off on the browser.

Code cannot just dissappear and reappear, so this sounds a bit odd too. All I can think of is that you are sober but the computer is drunk!

It's certainly not something I've heard of before, nor is it something that I can logically work out from the description. Odd, very odd.

Hi Jim, you were my best hope for finding out what was causing this. I tried asking my son-in-law if he had any special settings on his pc but, unfortunately, he doesn't know the difference between a banner and a pop-up. As far as I know he has all Norton security products.

Sorry to keep harping on about this but I work on my son-in-law's computer a couple of times a week and every time I want to make a change to one of my websites, I get the same result - half the banners are missing, so I can't see how it really looks. It would be nice to be able to work on my sites without waiting until I get home, but also I can't help thinking there must be other people who only see the site in its deformed version.

A couple of days ago someone generously mentioned success with Allied Business Schools. I thought I'd add them as I recently dropped an educational programme. Today I looked (via the inebriated computer) and the Allied banner across the middle is absent, but the text link above it in the same table can be seen and is clickable.

None of the other horizontal banners can be seen, plus the big Mom Execs one in the right column is missing as is the Empowerism banner and everything below them in that column is moved up so there is a big gap before the end of the page.

I did notice today that where there is supposed to be a banner within a table, you can just see a line at the bottom - it looks as if the page has been folded so the table containing the banner is overlapped by the table above and all you can see is the bottom border of the table.

The wierdest thing of all is the way the gap where a big banner should be gets closed up so things are not aligned the way they should be.

This is the best way I can describe the effect, if nobody recognises it, I'll have to give up but it is extremely strange.

[Tom "CloudHand"]

Strange .... very strange. What operating system is being used and how old is the computer, how much video ram, what type of internet connection? Have you tried clearing the cookies and visited website history? None of that should matter, but who knows. Maybe his computer doesn't have enough video ram, although highly unlikely these days.

I agree with Jim and have never seen code just disappear. All a browser does is read and interpret it. Maybe for some reason the loading of the page is incomplete ... once again highly unlikely but possible. Are the results reproducible in the same way every time? Close the browser, relaunch it, and see it the page displays exactly the same each time? Try saving the code from your server onto the computer and open it from the hard drive ... do you get the same results? (right click and save the file from web panel).

Just some thoughts. What a strange problem. Good Luck!

--Tom

[Elaine Currie]

bricktowntom said:

Elaine, it's possible that your son in law has something that is blocking advertising. These generally are able to block "standard" sized banners which would explain why some would show and not others. Norton is one of the products that will block banners.

Does he run "Norton Internet Security"?

Try this if so...

Open Norton Internet Security.
In the main window, on the left side click Norton AntiSpam.
Select Ad Blocking from the menu on the left.
New options should appear along the right-hand side of the Norton Internet Security window.
Click Turn Off.
Select Pop-up Blocking from the menu on the left.
Click Turn Off
Then clear your browsers cache and then refresh the page.

Nortons Internet Security comes with the ad blocking as default, so if he's using it and hasn't changed the settings, this may be your culprit.

Tom Moore

Thanks Tom!

Ad blocking was the culprit. I had no idea about this because I don't use Norton, I was beginning to think perhaps I really was going mad.

I realised today that it was not just happening to my websites: I was watching a video tutorial about something and when it came to clicking a banner - you guessed it, I didn't have one.

Never thought I'd be so happy to see a bunch of banners.

[Sandi Moses]

bricktowntom said:

That's great Elaine!

It is something to consider when deciding on banners for our sites as the ad blocking comes set at default with Norton and there are actually many more ad blocking programs out there.

Tom

If we use mouseovers and alt text on our banner ads, do people who have ad blocking see a shape the size of the banner with the dreaded red X in it along with the alt text? And does it still link to the ad? Does the mouseover work?

Sandi

[Elaine Currie]

Hi Sandi and Tom,

With the Norton default settings you would not have known a banner was supposed to be in place. There's no little box with the red x, it is as if the banner had become invisible. No alt text, nothing!

I would have preferred to see that red x because the way it moved things in to fill the space was horrible. On one of my websites, I have a 5 row, 2 column table - banners in a wide column on the left (with 1 line of text under each image) and a text description in a narrower column on the right. It appeared with Norton as if the big left hand column only contained 1 line of text, with the main text in the smaller box. As the cell sizes were fixed, they didn't close up where the banner was invisible. Nobody would have hung around to investigate what was on offer.

I don't know if it looks for standard size banners, I can say that it blocked 3 different sizes (at least) to my knowledge.

The really wierd thing was that it only blocked some banners, not all and it made no difference where they were hosted. On my main website, I have all the banner images hosted there. On the smaller websites some of the banners were pulled directly from Clickbank. It made no sense to me: out of 5 banners hosted with Clickbank, I could view 1 of them. It seemed random.

Norton obviously doesn't realise a picture's worth 1,000 words!

[Tom "CloudHand"]

Amazing findings. I have never used Norton and am baffled that it would do something like to to web displays. What the heck!

Elaine, you said some banners made it through and some didn't. Was you able to check as Tom (Brickhouse) suggested about the height and width being the determining factor on whether it allows them through or not. That would be great to know information. If it blocks banners only when the height and width are specified, then that may be a way to beat it.

--Tom (CloudHand)

[Elaine Currie]

cloudhand said:

Amazing findings. I have never used Norton and am baffled that it would do something like to to web displays. What the heck!

Elaine, you said some banners made it through and some didn't. Was you able to check as Tom (Brickhouse) suggested about the height and width being the determining factor on whether it allows them through or not. That would be great to know information. If it blocks banners only when the height and width are specified, then that may be a way to beat it.


--Tom (CloudHand)

Hi Tom,

I'll be able to check on Monday/Tuesday.

This time I'll make a scientific study of what is getting past the filters and report back.

There must be a lot of people using Norton with its original settings, it's quite worrying to imagine what they are seeing after all our efforts to design a plesinglayout!

[Skyrocket]

Wow, what a great thread, we are all learning something!

I too have no knowledge of Norton, other than the basic facts that we all hear and see in their advertising. I don't use it as I've heard from many who do and the fact that it can be more of a pain in the **** than a protective tool. Or is it that it's so efficient it even stops you from messing up your computer by not letting you use it!

It sounds to me like Norton have developed something that only half works and is full of holes, which means it's not worth having switched on. Maybe Elaine should write to them and ask them to explain what it is and how it is supposed to work. It'll be interesting to see what they say!

Well done Tom for applying your technical and wise brain and coming up with the answer! I might be able to read HTML like a book but I'm not an Oracle on everything Internet, well not yet anyway! ;D

[Elaine Currie]

Hello,

I have just been messing around with Norton. This is how Norton says its anti spam ad blocking works:

“Ad Blocking detects and blocks ads based on two criteria: their dimensions and their locations.

Blocking by dimensions
Most online advertisers use one or more standard sizes for their ads. Ad Blocking includes the ability to block images and other HTML elements that have the same dimensions as these common ad sizes.


Blocking by location
Every file on the Internet has a unique address or URL (uniform resource locator). When you view a Web page, your computer connects to the address you request and displays the file that is stored there. If the page includes graphics, audio files, and other multimedia content, your browser displays the files as part of the page.

When Ad Blocking is enabled and you connect to a Web site, it scans Web pages and compares their contents to two lists:

A default list of ads that Ad Blocking blocks automatically. Use LiveUpdate to keep the list of blocked ads current.

A list that you create as you block specific ads. You can add to and change this list.

If the page includes files from a blocked domain, Ad Blocking removes the link and downloads the rest of the page.”
======================================
There is no way that I could see for the user to disable or change the settings for the image dimensions to be allowed. Anyway, I don’t think that is important as I can’t imagine the average person noticing they were not seeing banners of a particular size and wanting to change the settings. If I used Norton I certainly wouldn’t think of changing the setting to allow in more “spam”. So it looks as if we have a bit of a problem here if we want all our visitors to see our banners.

The banners Norton filtered out from my Work At Home Directory index page were
120x60, 125x125, 468x60, 120x600, 120x240.

The ones it let through were 100x100, 92x118, 120x65, 126x181. It also let through all the small graphics. I am wondering whether anything less than 125x125 is to small for Norton to bother with.

On another page I noticed Norton would allow a standard 468x60 banner where I had omitted to specify its dimensions in the image tag.

I had a peculiar result with one page where the result seemed not to be logical. Either I am missing something or Norton is not 100%, it’s probably the former.

If you want to look at this page it’s: www.work-from-home-top-picks.com/

With Norton anti spam ad blocker on, the banners for Survey Scout, Paid Surveys Online, Shop Until You Drop, Future Mom Execs and the top PIPS banner were all missing.

Both SFI banners, the Data Processing banner, Both Four Point Moms banners, the MPAM banner, the Home Typers banner and the lower PIPS banner were all visible.

Two of the banners are non-standard sizes (MPAM and Shop Until You Drop) – one was visible and one was missing.

There are inconsistencies in the html for the image tags (this is one of my earlier attempts so don’t laugh!) but I can’t see any errors that would account for some, but not all, of the banners being invisible.

I hope someone can immediately spot a simple way to get our banners past Norton because I certainly can’t, as even making them odd sizes doesn’t seem to guarantee anything.

The more I think about this, the more nuts it seems for Norton to market this kit that automatically blocks out all banners. Now I know what to look for, I have found that some websites are unusable with Norton. Sometimes a link is only present as a banner and if you have Norton, it isn't there at all. At least I have now discovered why I couldn't do things when the instructions included "click the banner". Actually I'm rather relieved to know it wasn't just me being thick!