Beware-Installs Banner Ads

What does it do that you believe it violates the plugin guidelines?

Edit: *Installs plugin on test site*

Oh yeah. THOSE ads. That’s cute. The author populates a Javascript from this URL for the template I selected.

https://av.ageverify.co/jsmdy/opaque.21.js

It’s only to populate ads and display the “template”. It is one massively obfuscated js at that and inserts a banner ad.

The plugin does make it clear that if you buy the pro version then the ads go away.

I’m not on the plugins team (they do lots of work) but the author is using this plugin for ad revenue. This plugin does provide templates from another source so it may come under the software as a service idea. But I’ll send an email to the plugins team and ask them.

IMHO this plugin should opt-in the ads. The plugin page does not have any verbiage that reads “The plugin author makes money on every free installation of this plugin” and I don’t think that’s good. Accurate disclosure is important and that’s seriously lacking here.

*Drinks coffee*

But I’m not on the plugins team so I’ll ask them. ??

I honestly don’t know the complete policy, but it seems to me that it should be made clear that an ad banner will be part of the install.

I would also suggest that a lower price for the Pro version would increase conversions (I would for me). Perhaps a third option, where you don’t have all the templates (in my case unnecessary). I just needed a simple age confirmation box.

Thanks for following up.

Hello Allproactive and Jan,

I appreciate the feedback and understand the sentiment. In reading the reviews you are not alone. With that said, keeping AgeVerify (not just for WordPress) running on over 3,000 websites, supporting users, making feature updates, is a full time job and providing it ‘free-of-charge’ is not sustainable.

For the free version we do indeed include banner ads. Because of your review, we’ve updated our plugin description in the 1.9 release to hopefully make it clear to potential users that this is the ‘Lite’ version and will indeed install banner ads.

[ Signature deleted ]

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Jan Dembowski.