In the last five days, I have received two advertisements sent me from Ancestry.com when I open my RMG9 app. Is there a way to opt out of them? I’m open to messages from RMG, but not so much solicitations from a company with which I’m not doing business, through an app that for with I have already paid.
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No there is not . Same for the other partner offers. There was a setting in RM7 to enable whether to Display news screen or not.
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Are they not just messages posted by RM Inc that contain the Marketing Partner’s offer?
Those are news items that you elected to open and read. You might want to consider them as a possible reason for not paying as much for an “app” as you might be due to any affiliate money that Rootsmagic is earning from it. That specific add is not specific to RM anyway, it is a general Ancestry sale and they are spamming every contact they can. One can even go directly to Ancestry.com and get that special price.
I have been a loyal customer of RMG since around 1990 or '91 (when it was Family Origins and in DOS), but this one might become a deal-breaker. I dislike spam in my email box, and I consider these no different. I try not to support spam.
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We sent out a RM Newsletter with the Ancestry special. If you don’t want any more RM Newsletters then you can unsubscribe at the bottom of the newsletter. If you got something other than the RM News than it wasn’t from us. I received an email from Ancestry too, but both are clearly identified.
It’s an optional read (beyond the tagline), is integral with this program’s features, is not fraudulent or hijacking or redirecting or even dubious, is not repeated, is subject matter-related (genealogy), has value in cost savings, is likely welcomed by some to many users, and is intentionally offered for some/all of those reasons.
I must admit I was surprised to get news items for third party (Ancestry) offers for which I was already aware. I think it would be better if news items are kept focused about aspects of RM itself and not leveraged as an additional marketing channel, no matter what spin is used to justify it.
We are all entitled to our opinions, as yours certainly is. My question was whether I could opt out of receiving unwanted commercial messages. I was NOT asking for a debate on whether or not to narrow the definition of “spam”.
It is NOT an optional read, as it pops up as an alert that will not go away until one checks the message; when one does so, it automatically (and without option) takes one to the web page. It is likewise NOT the RM newsletter, to which we can choose to subscribe or unsubscribe.
Bottom line is that, to me, it is an unwelcome third party ad. I realize that companies need to make money, but I would prefer to pay more for the product than this. Find A Grave has ads on its site, but they offer an option to donate in exchange for killing the ads, and I have paid the money to remove ads from many ancestors’ pages.
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I initially answered that very specific question and only that. I did not invite debate. I just… ,as You have, expressed “my” bottom line regarding spam comparisons.
I did not notice that both replies were from you. My apologies.
RMG7 had an opt-out, but we are given no choice with RMG9, probably with 8 also, but Ancestry wasn’t sending unsolicited ads to us during that period.
I have complained before that when RMG9 came out, it did so with a number issues from the initial conversion from 7 to 8 remaining, my concern being that priority will be given to further enhancements and fixing bugs from the 8/9 upgrade, and the remaining 7/8 issues will never be addressed. I fear that to be coming true.
Not if one clicks the little check mark in the upper right corner. The messages then get marked as red and no further annoying blinky warning.
You need not fear it coming true. It is true. Once 9 was released there was going to be no further effort to fix any issues from 7 or 8. This is a long known annoyance…err…policy of RM.
“RMG7 had an opt-out, but we are given no choice with RMG9, probably with 8 also, but Ancestry wasn’t sending unsolicited ads to us during that period.”
True, it had an opt out which was good only until the next time there was an update, then you got the annoying splash screen again. Maybe Ancestry wasn’t running an ad campaign during that time but MyHeritage certainly did, at least two or three times. There was also a big old fuss fit thrown about the annoying notification in RM8. It used to be even more annoying and there was a slight change made to the notification so it wasn’t quite so annoying. I don’t remember what exactly they did. The justification for this notification change was that the company wanted to make sure everyone updated when there was a new update to be had.
So you weren’t referring to the email newsletter but the Home page news feed. If you are not interested in the news item just click the circled checkmark at the top and it will mark them all read. Those news items are coming from RM. Ancestry gave us the link to share as part of our partnership with them.
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Were those offers just for US customers or global? If they were just US offers then 1. I don’t want them as a RM News Item when I open the program and 2. It should say that they are US only.
That’s I don’t know. We posted what Ancestry gave us. I’ve heard of people from the UK purchasing memberships for the .com site so I don’t think it matters. Not sure I’ve ever seen a UK specific discount. Do they send those offers to you?
Yes Ancestry.co.uk subscribers get offers priced in pounds sterling (£) and they are not necessarily the same as the US ones. We don’t do Labor Day or Thanksgiving so our offers are at different times to the US ones. I daresay a similar thing happens for Australian subscribers. That is why I object to these offers being promulgated as part of the program which I believe seeks to treat all nations equitably. Why not post the UK and Aussie offers as News items as well?
And Canadian $CAD ancestry.ca…
Yes of course! Didn’t want to do a long list - but basically all countries where Ancestry has a URL and membership scheme. In the words of the Small Faces (showing my age here) All Or Nothing.
Because that would involve geolocating every person that starts up Rootsmagic and when that information is retrieved, then there would need to be some hoops to jump through to determine if there was an available offer for that user’s location and then send it. I am OK with my software not tracking my location.
So far as I can tell, RM does not phone home with the user key ever time it starts so assuming people registered, it is not likely that they could reliably pull location by user key either.