Ok, weird question, but is anyone else getting served German ads on Prime Video or 5's online service?

Posted by terahurts@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 14 comments

This started over Christmas. Every ad break when what something on Prime or 5, we get served the German ad for Blink cameras. Every other advert are the normal UK ones. It's the same using the TV's smart apps and when using the web portals. We're not using a VPN to stream although I do, very occasionally, use one to access Imgur.

Reply to Post

14 Comments

[-]

l0stlabyrinth@reddit

I haven't, but I've definitely noticed an abundance of ads on Prime Video for washing detergent. At least it's not US prescription drug adverts where they inform you that the side effects may include heartburn, indigestion, headaches, insomnia and death.

[-]

Koda614@reddit

Who is your ISP? A lot of the smaller and/or newer brands have started buying IP addresses from overseas due to a shortage of V4 addresses, and then they aren’t getting registered/updated as a UK based address so you get served ads for the wrong country or sometimes even blocked from certain websites as it thinks you’re outside the country. Yayzi did this to me and it got so bad at one point where BBC iPlayer, Sky/Now TV and the UK government all blocked me from accessing their services at all, Disney Plus thought I was overseas and served me different content, all my adverts on most websites were from Latvia, and it was generally just a bad experience all round. I left them for Brawband who only have fully registered UK IP’s and all my problems went away.

[-]

terahurts@reddit (OP)

Virgin Media and our external IP address hasn't changed in months.

[-]

Koda614@reddit

Virgin’s IPs are all British anyways, and yeah their addresses are super sticky so they almost never change. So in your case this definitely isn’t the reason

[-]

terahurts@reddit (OP)

Yeah, the only thing I can think of is that I've left my VPN running whilst browsing Amazon, which has flagged us as being in Germany. Not sure why that would affect 5's ads though, unless they're getting them served via an Amazon service and it's literally just the one ad for Blink.

[-]

banglaonline@reddit

I can believe you had VPN on for browsing, but not Amazon 😉 Joking aside, if you left VPN on, it impacts any communication to/from your computer/phone. In addition to Amazon, most other servers will think you are connecting to internet from a location in Germany.

[-]

terahurts@reddit (OP)

I know how VPNs work and I'm not using one on the TV, only very, very occasionally on my desktop (and it's not for what you think either, sailing the high seas, not porn.) I'm seeing the German ad using *the built-in 'smart' apps on the TV*, not on my desktop and the Prime app is signed as as my wife not me. Same with 5, I've never watched anything on their streaming service on my desktop and don't even have an account with them. I *might* have browsed Amazon *once* using my wife's account with my VPN running but, if I did, it was like over a year ago and I'm 90% sure I was connected via the Netherlands rather than Germany (and yes, it's definitely a German Ad) since it would have been via ProtonVPN's free tier service and I don't recall it ever connecting to anywhere other than their servers in the Netherlands. I'm only seeing one, single ad (multiple times) rather than my entire ad stream being German. It's weird and slightly amusing.

[-]

banglaonline@reddit

Sorry - you didn’t say the VPN was not on for the streaming device. Is there an active 5 account login on the computer with VPN? That might have set the geolocation for the whole account.

[-]

terahurts@reddit (OP)

No, the only place we watch 5 is on the TV or via the HTPC, both of which are signed into my wife's account and neither have ever had a VPN installed or connected. One minute it's Next or Simba ads, the next we're being yelled at in German to buy the latest Blink Mini, then it's back to UK ads again.

[-]

trequartista811@reddit

Prime does often poop itself, I've noticed this with some film trailers on prime video too, where the audio is in random foreign languages despite the film being a bog standard Hollywood production. I know vpns can also cause this, I used surfshark and it's quite good for netflix, but even when you turn off the vpn on the fire stick it still causes havoc with other streaming apps so I often need to restart it

[-]

jbennett360@reddit

Yeah I've seen this a couple of times actually.

[-]

Green_Army@reddit

Not recently but we've had it before with a random German set of adverts or one in a bunch of normal ads on prime. We have EE broadband. To be honest they were preferable to the normal same adverts that loop.

[-]

abcdefghabca@reddit

Idk but I started getting some canestan vag cream adverts and I’m a guy lol

[-]

AutoModerator@reddit

**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - When replying to submission/post please **make genuine efforts to answer the question given**. Please no jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*