Timeline for Native Ads coming soon to Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
27 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 16, 2025 at 20:57 | comment | added | Snow | @Dalmarus Unfortunately, it seems to have had the opposite effect. Where the justification was different before, the difference in content was pretty clear. It now looks even more similar to the surrounding text was it was before. | |
| Dec 16, 2025 at 19:57 | comment | added | Dalmarus StaffMod | With English being read left to right, that's why the team felt it made the ad more obvious than leaving it on the left, along with it replacing the spot where vote counts/options would normally be. | |
| Dec 15, 2025 at 23:02 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | Either that, or the design team were directly told by the brass that they had to make it look more like regular content, and they opted to keep their jobs rather than push back too much… | |
| Dec 15, 2025 at 18:54 | comment | added | Snow | @JanusBahsJacquet - I completely agree with you. Hopefully this feedback has been made clear to the company. I’m guessing the design team have fallen into a bit of a confirmation bias trap and convinced themselves that it’s all very reasonable. | |
| Dec 15, 2025 at 16:12 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @Snow “the design team opted to move the advert logo to the left to make it more obvious that it's an advert. With this done, they decided that the background shading was no longer needed, so it was removed” — Since the logo move quite unambiguously made it less obvious that it’s an ad, this feels very much like a kind of ex post facto rationalisation that I cannot find any way to describe as being ‘in good faith’ on their part. If the design team cares about accessibility and UX, neither of those changes will have been their choice to begin with. | |
| Dec 12, 2025 at 14:05 | comment | added | Snow | @ꓢPArcheon From what I can see, the design team opted to move the advert logo to the left to make it more obvious that it's an advert. With this done, they decided that the background shading was no longer needed, so it was removed. Personally, moving the logo made the advert look more like the surrounding content and less like an advert. It would be pretty good if I could include the previous version of the mock-up in my answer (or the source question) so that the differences could be seen by everyone. I doubt I'd be allowed to share that image though. | |
| Dec 12, 2025 at 12:40 | comment | added | SPArcheon | @Dalmarus Does the "Done in good faith" also cover the "They told us that the shading was too light, wasn't clear enough and needed to be darker so we removed it instead making it even worse"? Sorry, based on Snow post I don't thing there was much good faith when handling those concerns. Not only did the company do nothing to improve the issues that were pointed out, it even go the extra mile to worsen them . | |
| Dec 12, 2025 at 11:30 | comment | added | Mari-Lou A Слава Україні | @Dalmarus when no one commented after the edit, one natural assumption would have been that no one had noticed the edit not that everyone agreed with its implementation. Did anyone add a thumbs up to the original mockup? I'll check because I am a mod on ELL. Before I do, I confess I don't regularly check the Stack Moderators Q&A site. I checked. No one gave their seal of approval, or openly criticised it but the response I would describe as being lukewarm. | |
| Dec 12, 2025 at 9:42 | history | edited | Snow | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
table makes differences clearer
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| Dec 9, 2025 at 16:46 | comment | added | Snow | @Dalmarus no blame intended here, and thank you for listening to the feedback. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 16:45 | history | edited | Snow | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 95 characters in body
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| Dec 9, 2025 at 16:44 | comment | added | Dalmarus StaffMod | @Snow Definitely done in good faith. My apologies to the mods, I had assumed the lack of additional feedback meant the mods felt that the logo being moved to the left side of the post instead of the right was clear enough. That's on me. I've been (and still am) in the process of gathering the feedback to all of this and passing it on. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 16:01 | comment | added | Snow | @V2Blast I know that now, but the default is "Newest". This might be the reason that the recent updating of the mock-up images went entirely unnoticed by the moderation team, otherwise the new screens wouldn't have been such a surprise to people and we might have had a chance to have our say on the updates. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 15:55 | comment | added | V2Blast StaffMod | "Due to the unique way in which Stack Teams works (which hosts the moderator teams content), any questions that are edited do not get bumped to the top - every question is ordered by the date of creation, not modification." – Minor note: You can change the sort of the Questions list from Newest to Active (or Bountied, Unanswered, etc.), just like you can on regular SE network sites – and it does remember whatever sort option you last selected, just as on the SE network – but the default sort is Newest, as you describe. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 15:48 | history | edited | Snow | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 584 characters in body
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| Dec 9, 2025 at 11:43 | comment | added | Jane |
@JourneymanGeek Thanks for pointing this out - I had no clue, no clue! That people also gave feedback(I guess I am still new to meta/etc? I don't use it very much but..Anyway) I didn't know it was that rough. I'm, still shocked - to put it mildly. It really matters that they look at the answers & comments here now though; because clearly many people are against these, uh what I call "camo ads"
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| Dec 9, 2025 at 11:03 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek | And that's kind of a thing here. We got asked for feedback, the feedback was acknowledged - then the company didn't follow the feedback, making things worse rather than better. So, what's the value of our feedback? | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 10:01 | comment | added | MT1 | @RobbyCornelissen to SE the ads are money, for the advertisers the fact that they are misleading is good marketing, not a bug. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 9:54 | history | edited | Snow | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
edited body
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| Dec 9, 2025 at 8:36 | history | edited | Snow | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 62 characters in body
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| Dec 9, 2025 at 8:06 | history | edited | Snow | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added clarification on what we as moderators saw before and what we see now
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| Dec 9, 2025 at 3:58 | comment | added | Robby Cornelissen | To Stack Exchange, the fact that they are misleading, is a feature, not a bug. | |
| Dec 8, 2025 at 18:06 | comment | added | PM 2Ring | I think the tags are the thing I hate the most. They act like camouflage, helping the ads blend in. | |
| Dec 8, 2025 at 18:05 | comment | added | PM 2Ring | The ads have a logo, but I don't think that's sufficient. Maybe a different background tint would help, although that has to be done carefully or the text can become unreadable to those with colour vision difficulties. | |
| Dec 8, 2025 at 17:52 | comment | added | Dan Getz | Yes. Not being deceived by ads is one of the draws of these sites. | |
| Dec 8, 2025 at 17:51 | comment | added | Thomas Owens | There needs to be more 🤢, 🤮, 😠, and 😡, but yes. Misleading ads are awful. | |
| Dec 8, 2025 at 17:49 | history | answered | Snow | CC BY-SA 4.0 |