I get the typical stuff that is fed from my browsing history and then one about how democrats are the devil…then one about how much trump has gotten done.
The last thing a paddling forum needs is politics, regardless of the viewpoint. I would strongly recommend to the site owner that you adjust your ad settings.
I don’t get any ads…
Let’s not turn this political, that isn’t the point.
I get banner ads, as well as full screen ads often when switching between topics and pages.
Are you using a phone or a computer?
I use a chromebook and only get paddling related things on the side. Are they actually coming from the site or somewhere else. I am on here often and have never had an issue. I hope you can get it shutdown because that is annoying.
I also get political ads when I’m using the phone, but not on the computer. I agree with you, Mike, it’s annoying, and who needs it when trying to forget about all that stuff by talking about paddling?
The Stetson hats commercial is tempting. But I’m holding off on the hats and farm equipment.
I highly doubt @brian is selling space to political organizations on Pcom. There used to be a sub-forum called “bicker and banter” which was political, argumentative, and quite disgusting. When pNet underwent a major redesign and changed to Pcom, Brian moved B&B to a different site far, far away from the paddling community (thank goodness).
Better bet would be to blame Google or your browser. Try clearing your cache.
FWIW, I use Chrome on my Windows desktop and Safari on my iPad/iPhone and never see political ads here or at other sites I visit.
I use a vpn (surfshark) on everything and get no ads. Adaware/adblock works well, too. Try DuckDuckGo as a search engine. Using a chromebook, android, PC with google and firefox browsers…no ads, anywhere.
Any non paddling ads you see are served from Google.
You can identify ads from Google if you see the ad choices icon (triangular play button).
If it makes you feel any better, I just saw an ad for menstrual cramps on my weather app. 
It’s Google. Baby needs new shoes, I guess.
You might try installing Brave Browser which blocks that stuff. It blocks 4 lines of Google script every time I open P.com and more with every screen refresh.
Brave is free and doesn’t keep track of you. The default search engine is DuckDuckGo. For more security it will open in Tor which routes through some other servers to hide your IP address. Tor slows things down a touch with my desktop but hardly noticeable.
You can take a peek at their web site and decide for yourself. https://brave.com/
In the time I have taken to type this it has blocked 19 lines of Google script. I just turned the shield off and refreshed P.com. I got one ad for money management services and a political ad that loaded with ever every single page. I quit counting at 12 views of the same ad. Shield up and no ads.
Just sayin’
I am using the phone app and don’t see these types of ads anywhere else. YouTube, Google, etc. It is only this site
Many of the sites I visit show ads. I see an ad for tees and hoodies at the bottom of the page here.
Google’s surveillance advertising juggernaut shows me ads targeted for my wife. If she buys something I see ads for similar products the next day. Not that the ad went to the right person. Or that, having bought one, she is in the market for another. And whats with getting ads in Spanish?
As the owner of paddling.com, I am not a fan of having to display Google ads (especially irrelevant/annoying ones or really anything related to politics) but it does keep the lights and pay some of the bills for hosting the forums and the constant upgrades and maintenance. The ads offset some of the cost but don’t come close to covering it.
There are some features that we could add to the forums that would remove all ads from the message boards for certain users. I am curious to get your feedback as to if you would be willing to become a paddling.com supporter and then no longer have to see ads.
0 voters
Hi, Brian,
I’d prefer to have an annual membership fee rather than a per month subscription. For example, levels might be $25, $50, $75, $100, $150, $200, $250.
Thanks for listening.
Tom
I concur with Tom on the Annual rather than the monthly.
Rich
Thanks for the tip about identifying Google as a source.
I clear out cookies and history every day. It has cut down dramatically the times Apple or Garmin etc will preload one of their pages when I typed a completely different URL in.
Clearing them after every Internet session eliminates the preloading.
Paddling-related ads don’t bother me, but the crudely tuned “targeted” ads do. For example, after I did some searches for handgun ammo, I started getting rightwing extremist gun rights ads. Targeting is sooooo far off the mark sooooo often!
Anyway, annual fee would be better for Pcom than monthly, which would result in less steady income, I think. Lotsa subscriptions in spring and summer, not so much the rest of the year. BUT if the fee is higher (like the fee to subscribe to Photoshop software) I would rather pay by the month, for only the months I need it.
Thanks for listening, much appreciated.
I would pay the equivalent of a couple bucks a month, whether monthly or annual. But beyond that, I would ignore the ads.