Annoying "pop-ups"

[BMWrider]

Happens on a couple of forums...
A random word in the text is suddenly converted to a hyperlink to an app in the App Store. Shortly thereafter a pop-up appears over the hyperlink (obscuring the text) prompting me to download the app. The pop-up disappears after a few seconds and reappears a short time later over the same or another hyperlink.
Any suggestions for making this go away?

 

[twerppoet]

You can't make it go away, or not with some easy switch. Some websites use these ad links (for lack of a better word). Usually they are double underlined to distinguish them from normal links. All you can do is avoid tapping them. When they are thick on the page that can be hard to do.

My general response is to find some other site to get my news from. It's almost always a low quality site that does this, and they are rarely the original source of the information. Sometimes they don't even bother to reword the articles.

There are also some annoying header ads that take you directly to the App Store, whether you want or not. Those can be blocked using an apps like AdBlock or Weblock. These are all or nothing. They block everything from the listed ad servers; even if they are in-app rather than on a website. They may, or may not block what you described.

It's possible, even likely, that I'm misunderstanding what you described. All I can say is that some advertising companies will do anything to put ads in front of you, even if they know they are actually losing business for their clients; because that's how they get paid; by views.

 

[twerppoet]

I'm not saying I'm anti-ad. This is the reality of online business today. Because we, the consumer, are completely unwilling to pay for the use of a site or forum, a business's only option is to run ads. At least if they want to make a living off the site.

But it is a balance. Making it difficult to use a site or forum will lose the very users needed to make that ad revenue. I'm really glad its not my job to figure out where that balance lies.

 

[BMWrider]

You can't make it go away, or not with some easy switch. Some websites use these ad links (for lack of a better word). Usually they are double underlined to distinguish them from normal links. All you can do is avoid tapping them. When they are thick on the page that can be hard to do.

My general response is to find some other site to get my news from. It's almost always a low quality site that does this, and they are rarely the original source of the information. Sometimes they don't even bother to reword the articles.

There are also some annoying header ads that take you directly to the App Store, whether you want or not. Those can be blocked using an apps like AdBlock or Weblock. These are all or nothing. They block everything from the listed ad servers; even if they are in-app rather than on a website. They may, or may not block what you described.

It's possible, even likely, that I'm misunderstanding what you described. All I can say is that some advertising companies will do anything to put ads in front of you, even if they know they are actually losing business for their clients; because that's how they get paid; by views.

You understand perfectly! the difference between my PC and my iPad 3 is that, on the PC, you must hover over the link to get the pop-up which can be deleted with the "X".
On the iPad, the add pops up randomly while you are on the page. There is no "X" to remove it so you must wait for it to go away on it's own. Extremely annoying.

P.S. Just loaded the free version of AdBlock and it appears to work - Don't know if I like the browser yet.

 

[twerppoet]

Hmm, it appears that AdBlock isn't what I thought it was. I thought it was a proxy based ad blocker, not a specialized browser. I wonder what I got it's name confused with. Sorry. At least it's free.

But if it works for you, that's good enough. I generally keep two or three third party browsers on my iPad, for those few times Safari doesn't do the job.

Weblock does what I thought it does.