[India] Ethical Ads do not load, failing with Placement is configured with invalid parameters.

[pradyunsg]

Tried on:

• https://docs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
• https://furo.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
• https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/

I noticed this while trying to get ads loading locally, as part of working on pradyunsg/sphinx-basic-ng#12.

Platform: Firefox 95.0.2 / Safari 15.2 / Chrome 96 on MacOS

[stsewd]

They do work for me, tested on firefox and chromium, not sure what could be happening that doesn't load for you.

[pradyunsg]

Here's a screenshot:

Based on this comment:

https://github.com/readthedocs/ethical-ad-client/blob/005cde6b67c8b3d4126760c7e755aa5b65ad94dc/index.js#L424

It seems that this can also happen when there's no ad to show. I'm in India, which may have a role to play? Could you share a single ad ID for me to use (maybe the ReadTheDocs ad or something) to use with data-ea-force-ad?

[pradyunsg]

It seems that this can also happen when there's no ad to show.

Yup, sounds about right. The JSONP response here was: ad_1641483214329_436596({});

[stsewd]

I have connected to my VPN using an IP from India, I was able to replicate this.

[stsewd]

/cc @davidfischer

[davidfischer]

I'm almost certain this is just a bad error message when there's no ad to show. We should have a different one. I'll prioritize readthedocs/ethical-ad-client#26.

[pradyunsg]

Is there any way for me to force an ad to be shown?

[technotip]

I'm getting the same error message on my website. I was getting almost 30% fill rate till last month, but now I'm getting this error message "Placement is configured with invalid parameters" most of the time.

[pradyunsg]

Closing this, since this is basically a duplicate of readthedocs/ethical-ad-client#26. Let's consolidate discussion over to that issue.