F4Wonline NSFW Ads Embarrassing Their Brand

We need to talk about something here, because it’s driving me nuts.

Why is the industry standard for premium wrestling news sites not good enough for the biggest pay wrestling news site of them all to live up to?

For as much criticism as it gets, there is one undeniable truth about PWInsider’s Elite service: When you sign up, the ads go away.

Likewise, one of the perks of membership at the PW Torch VIP section is that, when you sign up, their ads go away.

ProWrestling.net, when you sign up? Ads gone.

So what’s going on over at F4Wonline, and why are they getting a free pass here? While the site doesn’t have annoying popups, they have gotten more overtly obnoxious in the past several months.

On my iPad every now and then I’ll get an ad that breaks the layout, and starts singing to me.

And then there’s this:

An array of increasingly not safe for work ads that are just flat out embarrassing, and are so wildly contextually irrelevant it really makes me wonder how they’re even generated.

It’s certainly not browser history… or, at least not accurate browser history… unless they’re working with some ad affiliates who tie big fake breasts to wrestling and Big Brother, my favorite non-wrestling TV show of summer.

Each of these screen grabs was taken on various days over the last couple of months from my work laptop upon which the only non-related form of web browsing I do is wrestling and Big Brother related during the 23 minute a day I’m able to do something other than actually work.

According to the ads, they are provided by Taboola.

Taboola refers to itself as

The world’s leading content discovery platform, serving 200B recommendations to over 550M unique visitors each month on the web’s most innovative publisher sites, including NBC, USA Today, The Weather Channel, The Atlantic and Fox Sports.

But that’s today. The real story of Taboola started in 2008.

Seven years before Taboola started, we were just a bunch of geeks in the Israeli army, passionate about the unique problems that can be solved with advanced mathematics.

Unique problems that can be solved with advanced mathematics, you say? Mhmm..

Let’s stick to the bunch of geeks in the Israeli army, passionate about big boobs, and scantily clad women.

Now, it may not even be Taboola’s fault here. From what little I understand of Bryan Alvarez from Craig Proper, and his brother-in-law the porn hoarder, these two apparently have the sort of proclivities that would to serving up these sort of ads on their site. So, while I’m certain Taboola are full of shit with their highfalutin claims, I’ll try to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

But that’s incredibly hard when we get ads like this, while trying to steal glances at the site while working…

I mean what in the honest fuck is that creature in the top middle row of the middle image above? And who in their right mind would put that next to the girl in the dental floss bathing suit?! Maybe these guys are math geeks, because there is no way a human decision could have allowed that. So, some fucked up math algorithm with some formula to mix freaks with fannies might be the only answer.

And, sure, I get that it’s probably not the most en vogue thing to do to complain about ads on websites like this… and really, hey, have your ads. If they don’t bother you, that’s fine.

But when every other premium wrestling news site removes ads for its membership, why is that too much to ask for F4Wonline? It should just be a given at this stage that members can expect no ads if they’re already paying for content on the site. In fact, I’m fairly certain that if I had the time to go back and crawl through some of the audio shows over the past six months I could readily find episodes wherein Bryan Alvarez himself pitches fits about ads being on Hulu when he already pays, and not being all that pleased with the idea of WWE Network having advertising on their service either.

And while I can agree with Alvarez on those two above points, I can tell you FOR A FACT that I’ve never been confronted by unwanted advertising that puts tits in my face while watching Hulu or WWE Network. Unwanted healthcare ads of whales being rescued to the unbearable sounds of Laura Johnson, yes… but that’s another story.

If these ads were being served on PWInsider or PW Torch people would be outraged!

So, congratulations, WrestlingObserver.com — the Wall Street Journal of professional wrestling, serving up to its readers worse than New York Post garbage ads.