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I saw an ad for Mathematics Educators SE in the right sidebar while browsing the main site here. Since the stats in the ad seemed to be out of date, I checked by clicking on "comment" under the ad that in fact it is from the 2020 Community Promotion Ads cycle, specifically it is the one proposed by User Pedro.

I believe this is a bug, since we should be served ads from the 2021 cycle. There is in fact a new ad proposed for Mathematics Educators SE (with updated stats), and it is supposed to be among the ads that are live according to the criteria mentioned in the Meta SE announcement. (I also verified that this ad appears in the list generated by running the SEDE query posted in the same Meta SE post.)

I also clicked on the "stats" link under the ad that I was shown, and it sent me to the Community Promotion Ads Statistics page. All the ads shown there are again from the 2020 cycle.

It would be great if this bug could be fixed and we could have the latest ads up and running!

Update: I just received another ad in the right sidebar from the 2020 cycle, which was for CoCalc, specifically the one suggested by User Viktor Vaughn. Clicking on "comment" under the ad does not send me to the 2021 proposal for the same ad, but it makes me wonder: perhaps this issue is only with ads that have been repeated? I will keep an eye out for other ads and update this post with further info.

Update 2: Now I have seen an ad posted for Operations Research SE, which is the old one proposed by User TheSimpliFire. The new proposal for the same ad is not among the list of ads chosen to go live, as per the criteria mentioned in the Meta SE post mentioned previously.

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    $\begingroup$ Update 3: I just received an ad for the combinatorics discord server, proposed in the 2020 cycle. Since the status-review tag has been added to this post, I thought it would be unnecessary to bump it once more, hence just noting it in a comment. $\endgroup$
    – The Amplitwist
    Commented Sep 14, 2021 at 7:16
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    $\begingroup$ I'll look into what's causing the old ads to keep showing up — I was told this could occur, due to some of those old bits of code I mentioned before that make it so Community Promotion Ads are a weird case for our ad serving mechanics. In any case, I wanna reassure you that the old ads are running in parallel with the new ones. (comment reposted from this MSE post, so folks here see it too) $\endgroup$
    – JNat StaffMod
    Commented Sep 14, 2021 at 10:26
  • $\begingroup$ @JNat It seems that my luck is such that I only run into the old ads :) I have now received ads for Real Not Complex and Math3d.org, both from the 2020 cycle. $\endgroup$
    – The Amplitwist
    Commented Sep 17, 2021 at 7:30
  • $\begingroup$ Now received an ad for IGraph/M, again from the 2020 cycle. I'm yet to see any of the ads from the current cycle, so I really hope this bug gets fixed soon. $\endgroup$
    – The Amplitwist
    Commented Sep 24, 2021 at 7:30

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These ads were being served by a system native to our code base, in parallel to ads being served via Google Ads Manager. We identified the bit of code responsible, and removed it, so you should no longer see any more of these.

To reiterate what I said in the comments, the 2021 Ads were already being served, just in parallel to these older ones.

If you see any more weirdness, please let me know.

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