Ads on Freegle's website

External advertising on the Freegle website brings in some of the income that is needed to keep Freegle running.

Since August 2024, Freegle is once again using Google ads.

Paying to opt out of ads

Above the page footer ad is a line saying:

Hate ads? Us too. Donate, and we'll turn them off for a month. Learn more

This link invites users to make a financial donation to Freegle, after which they should see no ads for a month. Also, if total donations in one day reach a stated daily target, then ads will be turned off for everyone for that day.

Ad filtering

Google publishes its advertising policies, but does not actively vet ads, relying instead on reports from users.

The Geeks and selected volunteers have access to Freegle's Google Adsense account.

From there, inappropriate ads can be blocked. This should be used minimally so as not to reduce income unnecessarily. An example of an unacceptable scam ad is one with a large button along the lines of "click here to activate your account".

At the top right of any Google ad is an X button. From here, any internet user can send limited feedback to Google AdSense: "Seen this ad multiple times", "Not interested in this ad", "Ad covered content", or "Ad was inappropriate". These reports seem to have no immediate impact.

To the left of the X button is a triangle pointing to the right. Clicking on this opens a Google page with certain information including the advertiser name.

Freegle's ad review team can log in to https://www.google.com/adsense, then from the menu at the left side choose Brand safety > Content > Blocking controls, then "Manage Advertiser URls". Type an advertised domain in the search bar and click Search. This should bring up the URL you are looking for; move its slider from Allowed to Blocked. All similar ads will immediately be blocked from appearing on the Freegle website.

To report a bad ad to Google, from the side menu choose Brand safety > Content > Ad review centre. In the "Filter or search" bar, enter the advertiser. This should bring up all current ads from that advertiser. If that search does not work, use the advertised URL instead. There is supposed to be a preview of each ad, but images may be blocked if you use an ad blocker; if you adjust for that and they are still missing, you can report the missing image to Google. For each ad, clicking the three dots next to the 🚫 symbol allows you to report the ad for breach of Google's policies.

A request for volunteers to join the Ads monitoring team was placed on Discourse on 21st February 2025 - https://discourse.ilovefreegle.org/t/ads-monitoring-team/8342