Story Thyme’s advertising system has been completely redesigned to improve ad loading reliability, responsiveness, and user experience across the platform. This update introduces new placement systems, Theater-friendly monetization, improved support banners, and better compatibility with ad blockers while keeping the reading experience clean and non-intrusive.

New

• Added a fully redesigned Story Thyme ad system
• Added new ad placement support for:
  • Global top ads
  • Mid-content ads
  • Bottom ads
  • Theater start screen ads
  • Theater end screen ads
  • Theater comments ads
• Added responsive ad loading system for improved desktop and mobile support
• Added staggered ad loading to improve rendering consistency
• Added viewport-aware ad requesting
• Added support fallback banners for users with ad blockers enabled
• Added Ko-fi support integration for blocked ad placements
• Added custom Story Thyme support banners in multiple formats:
  • Wide banners
  • Square banners
  • Tall banners
• Added automatic collapsing for empty ad spaces when no advertisement is available
• Added advertisement labels above support units
• Added Theater monetization support with:
  • Start screen ads
  • End screen ads
  • Comments panel ads
• Added Theater-specific ad support designed to avoid interrupting story playback
• Added improved compatibility with browser ad blockers
• Added improved Secret Garden promotional banner compatibility

Improvements

• Improved desktop ad rendering consistency
• Improved mobile ad rendering consistency
• Improved ad loading reliability across page refreshes
• Improved responsive behavior and ad spacing
• Improved support banner artwork and presentation
• Improved ad request timing and throttling
• Improved fallback detection logic
• Improved compatibility with common browser ad blockers
• Improved Theater reading experience by avoiding intrusive in-story advertisements
• Cleaned up legacy ad styling and deprecated ad wrapper systems

Fixes

• Fixed inconsistent desktop ad rendering
• Fixed duplicate ad request issues
• Fixed support fallback banners being hidden by ad blockers
• Fixed false blocked-ad detection for unfilled ads
• Fixed hidden support fallback backgrounds not rendering correctly
• Fixed large blank spacing when ads returned no fill
• Fixed support unit detection issues caused by ad blocker filtering
• Fixed Secret Garden banners being incorrectly blocked by browser ad blockers