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An annoying doubleclick ad + firefox bug

I hope I’m not the only one who consistently experiences this annoying behavior when browsing specific web sites. I have been able to reproduce the issue both at home and at work, so I doubt I’m the only one.

Update
Kev (below) has identified that this is caused by a conflict with firefox. Sounds logical. Switching to version 1.2.0b4 or disabling firefox reportedly fixes the problem.

The Issue:
When browsing a site with one of Doubleclick’s ads on it, sometimes the ad will take over the whole page (likely due to malformed HTML in the iframe or some type of javascript error), effectively rendering the page useless. The back button doesn’t work because it just keeps taking over the page when you press ‘Back’. I usually end up just closing the tab and forgetting about it. That being said, I imagine other annoyed users are doing the same. This behavior is occurring across multiple very large sites (list below). It makes me wonder if these publishers are aware of potential dollars they are wasting by compromising the user experience in such a big way.

Over the past month, I have taken screenshots of this issue across various sites. It could be a conflict with a FireFox plugin (although I only use Web Developer Plugin and Firebug), but that’s unlikely. This issue seems to be caused by firebug. This issue has been recorded in firefox 2 and 3. By looking at the status bar text which reads something like ‘Transferring data from m0.2mdn.net’ or ‘Read m1.2mdn.net’, and by a quick glance at the source of each of these broken pages, I can quickly conclude that the problem lies somewhere within Doubleclick’s ad code.

Screenshots of doubleclick errors
yelp, YouTube, Gizmodo, and LinkedIn have all been captured with this problem.

I also wonder if Doubleclick is aware of this issue. They deal with very large advertisers and I can’t imagine something like this going unnoticed for too long.

Has anyone else seen this bug while browsing popular web sites?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “An annoying doubleclick ad + firefox bug”

  1. Kev November 13th, 2008
    5:18 pm

    Yeah happens for me as well, goes away if i disable firebug or revert to firebug version 1.2.0b4

    My guess is that this is an issue with firebug.

  2. Dylan November 13th, 2008
    6:29 pm

    Thanks Kev,

    Agreed. Post and title have been updated.

  3. Rick December 6th, 2008
    11:51 am

    I just block all double click ads with AdBlockPro for firefox. I don’t mind sites having adverts, but when they mess with my viewing experience, they hit the block list.

  4. John Ritterbush January 7th, 2009
    9:29 am

    I had the same problem. Thanks for reminding me that Firebug tends to muck up this stuff. I ended up disabling just the Firebug Script debugger and it was fine for youtube.com. I can still use the rest of Firebug (HTML/CSS/Net), just not the Script debugger.

    Mac OS X 10.5.6
    Firefox Version 3.0.5
    Firebug Version 1.2.1

    You can turn off just the scripting portion of Firebug (in 1.2.1 at least), by opening Firebug (I had to open Firebug on a page other than youtube to do this) and clicking on the Script tab above the main Firebug window, then click the drop-down arrow next to “Scripts” and select “Sites.” In the “Sites” window that pops up enter “youtube.com” then click the “Disable” button to add it to the list. Hopefully that helps some others out too.

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