As you know, ads are part of what helps keep the site afloat, but we've had a couple issues as of late, so I removed the Google ads tonight.
1) Do you still see Google ads anywhere? The code had to be removed from individual pages one by one, and I want to make sure I got every ad space. You'll still see ads by Project Wonderful. Right now, I see the "free goodies" ad across the top of most pages... that should still be there. And, you should still see Taboola ads, which are typically links to stories and has a heading like "You may like" (bottoms of some pages) or "from the web" (right side of some pages). If you see ads other than this, please shoot me a link to the page you see them.
2) Mobile users- are you still getting oddball redirects? I've played with the ads a considerable amount trying to identify which ad service (if it's even here) is causing some mobile users to get redirected to non-Mug pages. I've had a few reports of this, but it's insanely intermittent and doesn't seem to be linked to anything. I'm curious to know if it stopped as of right now.
3) Did site speed improve significantly for you without the ads? The Google ads may have been impacting site speed, but whether or not the degree of impact was noticeable to you folks, I can't say. If there was no noticeable speed improvement and the redirects didn't stop, I'll probably add them back in at a later date.
Thanks!
PS
If you use this thread to promote ad blockers or say this question is irrelevant to you because you use ad blockers, I'm throwing you in the dungeon until you mend your wicked ways. :)