When did irrelevant site-skin ads become a part of Giantbomb?

So I've just let my GB subscription lapse this month (there are numerous threads with the reasons why). No videos were playing at all, so I turned my adblock off. Then I see this ghastly yellow homepage that is apparently a full site-skin completely unrelated to gaming for a company that doesn't even exist in my country.

Have I got something set wrong in my profile or something? Why am I seeing this?

Pic for those that don't have the same:

Sorry, not sure if this should be in "General Discussion" or "Off-Topic".

They became part of GB when they started getting money from advertisers for them.

If only I could play Pokemon on my new Sprint Evo.. is there an app for that.

They've been doing this for about a month or two. It's usually a skin about a game, like I've seen ones for Tomb Raider and Hitman: Absolution.

Yeh remember when they used to go on about how advertising was going to be small on the site and not intrusive certainly stuck to that.

They've done it a few times in the past, but it's only been a few months since they've been back.

Wow, that's some pretty garish stuff, can't say I'm in support of this at all. It may be that this site skin is coming via an ad provider and that the GB guys aren't aware of it. None the less I remember Jeff talking a few PAXs back about how most video game sites were damaged by being slathered in this kind of advertising and that this wouldn't happen to Giant Bomb. Hopefully this is something that will make a permanent exit pretty soon.

Jeff has come out and said that they've dropped the ball on the ads. It was during some live stream I believe, and he said that they weren't very smart businessmen and they didn't have a business department to do it for them.

That said, he did say that being acquired by GameSpot would give them the businessmen they needed, so I'm not sure why there's an ad like that. They've been reasonably up front about this kind of stuff, though, so I say give them the benefit of the doubt.

It's probably GameSpot's call what ads go up on the site, as well. Although I don't know for sure.

This is pretty terrible. I know the site has to make money, but there must be a better way.

I'm fine with it because it only affects the homepage. Every other page is still normal. I think they sometimes have small ad boxes.

If this stays then, well, GB is completely losing its integrity.

It's the same on GameSpot if you're not logged in. I smell a conspiracy!

They had a skin for ODST way back when.

GB has been on a downward slope since joining up with CBS. I hope things improve soon

@WinterSnowblind said:

They had a skin for ODST way back when.

I think you're missing the point?

I'd never have known. I'm fine with it. I pay for the site and I don't see them. They did say pretty specifically that this wouldn't hapen, though...

God, that's an egregious eyesore. Hopefully this is just some mistake that slipped through the cracks, soon to be fixed.

It's not as if the Giant Bomb crew themselves approved the ad and made the deal, they are entirely separate from the ad team at CBSi. Somebody on the ad team somewhere pushed an irrelevant skin to the site. The only thing in question here is if they'll contact the ad team to remove it from Giant Bomb's ad circulation, and seeing as it's 2:30 AM there I'd hardly hold it against them for not putting a major priority on it right now. Saying they've lost their integrity because a bad ad showed up on the site is a huge stretch.

If your annoyed by ads, get an ad blocker. If you feel guilty about using ad blocker because you want to support the site, get a membership.

Money talks?

@Gamer_152: I recall a bombcast where they were talking about full screen animated pop-ups being referred to as "eye blasters" within the advertising industry. I was pretty shocked to see the yellow evo skin today, though it serves me right for ignoring the prompt to update my card info for as long as I have.

CBSi ad team.

Wow, this looks absolutely terrible. If the site looked like that for me, I'd leave immediately.

There's no better way to make people turn on their adblockers again than dressing your whole site in eye cancer inducing site-skins. This is NOT smart advertising. People will not see this ad and any future ads because you made them turn on adblock again with this visual abomination. And if they do because they don't know how to use adblock (very unlikely in this community), they will probably just leave.

Well its better than the 'date a milf' adverts we get in the UK.

I never see ads, thanks to Ad Block Pro!

Why is this so horrible or shocking? The guys can't stay in business without advertisement. Their Whiskey Media venture did not pan out for them on the advertisment side of things. Can't we just be happy that this may mean that things are going well for the guys at Giantbomb or is your private concern that their is a big ad on the site (free site mind you!) more important than that the bomb crew can have a job and work with the site we all love? And as someone else said. If you don't like it adblock it and if you think you don't support them because of that then subscribe. The subscription model has always been their for those who want to to support them and that was how they wished the site would manage but we were not enough people to subscribe to make the whole thing go round.

Their utopian vision of a less ad intrusive site did not work because advertisers were not interested so now they have to do as the other big boys and CBSi makes that work.

Also...lost their integrity? What has this to do with their editorial integrity? Does that mean that all site and magazines with ads don't have editorial integrity?

Clearly not enough people were playing $50 to the indie video game website.

Jesus christ, that's disgusting. Like Dave said, they now have an expert ad team. (i.e. detached assholes who will always take the highest bidder.)

Holy shit, that's hideous. I don't have a problem with site skins for the most part, but that's actually painful to look at. It doesn't lessen my opinion of GB any since this is CBSi's doing, it just makes me want to never buy that phone.

@Humanity said:

If only I could play Pokemon on my new Sprint Evo.. is there an app for that.

Super GNES.

So that's how the site looks for poor/cheap people...

That's pretty terrible, not much defence for something like that.

Though I actually thought the PS Vita launch skin was worse than that. Because it wasn't one constant colour it was really hard to read the bloody text on the site.

To people freaking out like little girls at a Justin Bieber concert (or hanging): 
Calm your tits for a second, could this thing show up because they're still working out a few kinks? 
Noo, let's all just freak out. 

At least it's not AT&T am I right?

EVO you say?

Love the glaring yellowness.

The meebo bar was worse.

Keeping that in mind, I would prefer if they somehow kept the site and wiki ad free and adopted a sort of Revision3 or twit.tv ad style for the bombcast if that can make them consistent money. Hopefully they could get rid of the superfluous third party javascript dictated by the CBS suits (compete.com, scorecardresearch.com). If you need to do client analysis then do it server side.

Yeah, that ad is everything that's wrong with big gaming sites, and I hope it doesn't stay on GB for much longer.

You know i was thinking about letting my yearly sub go this year because since the move from whiskey i just haven't been feeling the premium content. But if this is what i am going to get if i did i guess i will keep paying to avoid these horrible ads. Kind of sucks that they put up such horrible ads with the possible intent of getting people to pay for subscriptions.

And anyone who thinks the GB team isn't involved with the ads is fooling themselves, or the GB team doesn't have the same control over the site anymore. either way i will quote Jeff "gross right?"

Marketing is now handled entirely by CBS, but regardless of that, Giant Bomb has always had advertisers in this way. I will concede that a bright fuckoff yellow background isn't particularly pleasant to look at, however.

It's the yellow colouring that makes it so bad, not specifically the fact that it's a site skin. If it was a more neutral, subtle colour it would look fine.

Ya that is one bright ass ad. I feel bad but i'm enabling adblock for while on this domain because good god my eyes.

Although, it is reminding me strongly of the DNBA site colour scheme.

Oh god.

Pay for the subscription which is worth it or get ad blocker, problem solved

Well they did say the CBS merge would bring bigger and better things. Right guys?....guys?

I ain't even mad because of the ads but because they lied to us.

@MB said:

This is pretty terrible. I know the site has to make money, but there must be a better way.

Kidnap people, sell their kidneys on the black market! And then there'd be no more awful site skin.

Also, before there was a theoretical chance of me buying your product, now there's no chance in hell, I'm stupid that way.

This is pretty terrible. I suppose the ad works because I can't concentrate on any headline for long enough without being bothered by the advertisement.

Gotta make money somehow. If you don't like it you can always adblock it.