Why are images on Web pages replaced with "[AD-SIZE]"?

Dave, this is just bizarre. When I surf the web in Microsoft Internet Explorer on my Windows machine, sometimes I find that certain graphics on a page are replaced with the text "[AD-SIZE]". What's going on?

Dave's Answer:

This was a really tough one to track down. My first step was to ask the correspondent to send in a screen shot, which he did:

Weird, isn't it?

If you go to the Web page in question, Shop Direct Group, Ltd., it gets more peculiar, because "[AD-SIZE]" isn't the alt text for the two images in question. If it were, I'd just say that your graphics aren't all loading and it's nothing to worry about. But if that were the case, the leftmost text would read "Valid XHTML 1.0!" and the right text would read "Bobby WorldWide Approved AA".

My first thought was that a pop-up blocker was involved and that it refused to load images from third-party Web sites (that is, sites other than the source of the HTML page itself). If that were true, however, the middle graphic, from jigsaw.w3.org, wouldn't load either.

So I talked about this with my friend and colleague Leo Notenboom and our consensus is that if you don't have any pop-up blockers or toolbars that are getting in the way, the problem must lie with some poorly written spyware.

Solution: scan your computer for spyware and see if you find anything. Remove it, reload the page, and see what happens. And report back too, please!

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Categorized: Windows PC Help (Article 3927, Written by Dave Taylor)
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Reader Comments To Date: 17

CRTC said, on March 15, 2005 8:28 AM:

Hi,

This might be that the user has a firewall called Outpost installed. This firewall is made by Agnitum (http://www.agnitum.com) and comes with a plug-in for blocking ads.

The default option is to block ad's replacing them with the text [AD-SIZE] if my memory serves me correctly. It's nothing to worry about. All it is doing is simply blocking ads.

Monty said, on March 15, 2005 9:26 PM:

Hello,

This reminds me of a problem I had with red "x"s replacing ads on certain web pages - which turned out to be a problem with my HOSTS file.

Certain IP addresses were being apparently being blocked, and deleteing the HOSTS file (or all the entries in it) solved the problem.

Dave Taylor said, on March 15, 2005 9:44 PM:

What you experienced, Monty, is a standard Web browser technique of showing when a graphic can't be loaded. Interestingly, the specific image shown when the graphic image fails to load is different in different browsers, too. You can see for yourself: save the following few lines as "badimage.html" then open it in your favorite Web browser:

<img src="badimage.jpg"><br />
[failed to load image]

On Firefox, for example, it's shown as a little grey piece of paper with a few tiny graphical elements, 'torn' to show it's broken. Apple's Safari browser shows it as a small blue box with a white question mark.

Ken said, on March 20, 2005 3:58 PM:

What is really strange is that this page cannot be displayed by Firefox (1.0.1) although it displays perfectly well in IE.

When nothing happened when I tried to go to the page by clicking the link, I tried it again with IE. No problem. Then I copied the URL and pasted it into Firefox. Nothing happened. The blank page just kept staring at me. Firefox didn't even try to download the page.

WTF????????????

Ken said, on March 20, 2005 4:00 PM:

Just to clarify the previous comment, by "this page," I am refering to this Ask Dave Taylor page, not to the page that is the subject of the original question.

Monty said, on March 21, 2005 5:34 AM:

Ken, the Ask Dave Taylor page looks the same to me whether I'm using FireFox 1.01 or IE 6.0.2900

Dave Taylor said, on March 22, 2005 4:08 AM:

Ken, that's just plain weird. I check out my site in various browsers and everything looks just hunky-dory to me. But then again, I also have sporadic reports that "someone else is claiming ownership of my site and has their name in the top banner", so maybe there are just gremlins at work on the net? Seriously, what OS are you running, what version of patches, what anti-virus, spyware, pop-upware, etc etc?

Robert Straver said, on June 1, 2005 10:19 AM:

Hello,

I had thesame problem after installing the Novell Firewall. You can solve this by adjusting this firewall: click options > plugins
select ads
click settings
click the image size tab
Uncheck enable blocking by image size

Restart your pc and the problem is solved. Grx Robert

abc said, on June 8, 2005 5:41 PM:

I have Firefox 1.0.4 running on XP running Outpost with the BlockPost plugin,
and SpyBot's TeaTimer sitting in the background too.
Comments on other web sites suggest either Outpost and/or Blockpost or TeaTimer is the problem.

Don't know the source, but here's a solution:
Clearing the web-cache worked for me, replacing [AD-SIZE] with the intended graphic,
OR
Hit Ctrl-F5, since it reloads everything without going via the web cache (no need to clear the cache then),
but the latter didn't work when trying to reload a frame within a webpage.
I had to view the frame as a separate web page and then Ctrl-F5 worked.

HTH.

Richard Bovitz said, on November 14, 2005 5:02 AM:

Had same issue. I used Outpost firewall but had uninstalled it and problem still remained.

I had to manually search the registery and delete all keys containing Outpost and Agnitum.

Regcleaner may work as well. The free version can still be found here.
http://www.worldstart.com/weekly-download/archives/reg-cleaner4.3.htm

Lukey said, on January 6, 2006 12:15 PM:

I just came by to find out what was going on with the [AD-SIZE] thing I was seeing.

Well I suspected it was Outpost. I recently installed it.

Thanks for starting this thread...

Luke said, on January 6, 2006 12:25 PM:

OK, here's how I fixed this without de-installing Outpost.

Open/Maximize Outpost.

From the menu go Options > General, and then Plug ins. On this tab you'll see a list of plug ins and the first one is called Ads.

Select this row.

Press the Stop button on the right. Ads will say "Stopped"

And your web images will work as normal again.

(Cntrl + F5 as mentioned above didn't work for me).

(Anyone have any problems with those sums used to verify posting? My brain's rusty. LOL.)

ML Stephenson said, on July 15, 2006 10:46 PM:

Hi!

Yep, it's OUTPOST FIREWALL causing the problem. Just disable the Ad block plug-in and it will be gone.

Later Dude

Shayne said, on August 20, 2008 5:37 PM:

This has been the most helpful thread i have ever come across thanks guys.

kc said, on October 24, 2008 9:36 PM:

Thanks for this answer! I was getting annoyed because I couldn't figure out what was causing this problem, it was the Agnitum outpost firewall. Its strange becuase even after exiting the firewall completely the images would still get blocked which is why I had discounted it as a possibility for being the culprit. The fix works like a charm of disabling the block ads plugin.

Gurgle Ball said, on October 27, 2008 3:44 AM:

It's not even necessary to disable the adblock plugin in Agnitum Outpost to have your browser show these graphic elements. Simply turn off the blocking of images by size in the adblock plugin. You can perfectly well have the other means of ad blocking still work.

p. meterofski said, on April 25, 2012 2:31 AM:

Certain IP addresses were being apparently being blocked, and deleteing the HOSTS file (or all the entries in it) solved the problem.

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

Why are images on Web pages replaced with "[AD-SIZE]"?

Reader Comments To Date: 17

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

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