Do ads make any sense?

[Holy_Diver]

First off this forum really needs a gen. discussion board, or at least a meta board for discussing the other boards...

But anyway, this post is about ads. Todd wants me to pull the Google adds that are baked into the theme. It's not a prob, but I thought I'd put it to a poll first.

First off my position. Being all, "ads are commercial man, and they make the internet ugly," is so 20th century. First off the ads are fun and often interesting, especially when targeted better than they are atm. They're using up empty space with nothing to put there... though maybe some day SoM game ads could be placed in the same space.

But mostly websites don't run on moonbeams and faeriedust, and considering this website doesn't have a business model and is probably already costing money for someone, I don't see how they are really hurting anyone. Even if once your site starts scaling, and donations seem like they're sufficient, even people with no money to spare can still help support the site, by the simple act of converting their attention into Google backed cash. And let me tell you, I thought ads worked on like a fraction of a penny at at time. But just today, two ads were clicked on this account that totaled 2.34$. Google payed more than a dollar for just one measly click (and that is during the flailing economy, which has driven down the value of ads several fold)

Anyway, the real purpose of this poll is to find out why people really don't like ads. And ultimately is it really necessary to pull them...


disclaimer: This is not a democratic website at this time afaik. Todd has the final say, but I'd just like to see some opinions aired before I go digging in the theme code to flip them off.

PS: The ads won't show up on PM pages, so you don't have to worry about Google reading your PMs. Also Google runs public service announcements, and it's just text, no graphics will ever popup. And I've never seen any sleazy ads on Google.

[Holy_Diver]

Ok, I just saw some pretty sleazy ads, but I'm fairly certain they were residual from to the ton of spam that was at the top of the "recent posts" page when we first imported the old forum database...

[dmpdesign]

I guess I should see what the ads are before I post an opinion, at work nothing is showing up because its all blocked so I can't even tell there are any.

Some embedded ads off to the side arent the worst thing in the world, but if they were the pop up kind where you have to close them to move on in the page, i despise that.  I also hate the ones where they look like links in the text, which i doubt are the ones that are here.

Tonight I will take a better look, and maybe youll change my mind :P

[Holy_Diver]

Ads should show up next (or under in your case) to your avatar at the top of the page. You can definitely see the ads if you logout. The ads are a little wider for guests to fill in the missing space reserved for avatars.

If you're not seeing ads it's because your avatar is so small (which is a bug I'd like to know about) so if that's the case I'd like to know / maybe have a screenshot.

Edited: Oh... you say your work is blocking ads??

PS: They're really just targeted content, like you get on Google or in Gmail. They're not always trying to sell something (other than wanting more netizens to see the ads on their site)

You always see interesting/amusing stuff you wouldn't have thought to look for otherwise. I think they're interesting. I don't know why people try so hard to ignore ads. It's a lot better than the random ads you see on tv or sleaze ball ads. They're target at the whatever is on the page you're reading, so it can really be more like supplemental information. Ads could be a gold mine for a site with a truly responsible community. Unfortunately the readers over at digitaldevildb.com are punk kids pretty much at the end of the day, so the site has a hard time staying even solvent.

[dmpdesign]

The tiny ads that are here are fine by me.

Finally saw them (didnt even notice them until i looked very hard hehe)

[Hguols]

I didn't even notice the adds either.  That may or may not count, as I'm not the most observant person when it comes to something I'm not really interested in.

It could be that I'm above average (actually, extremely good) at the art form of ignoring.

With something I'm truly interested in, I'm like an owl.  An owl on meth, who's eyes are so big, extra neck muscles are needed for head support.  YEAH!  OWLS ON METH!!!
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This is off topic, but I think I found why minutes on my cell phone disappear.  Every time I post on this board, when Hguols "phone's it in", my minutes go to hell.  Not really, but that sounds goofy....

DMPdesign phones it in!
Holy Diver phones it in!
Hguols phones it in!
Holy Diver phones it in!
Holy Diver phones it in!
Hguols phones it in!
DMPdesign phones it in!

*buys a gun*

[Holy_Diver]

^Yeah that's a bug I don't really understand at this point... as soon as I find time to investigate/fix it I will wipe the forum so they all say "says".

In the meantime, you can choose "says" from the Message Icon menu. But most of the message icons seem messed up, so I can't recommend anything buts says (Standard) at this time.

[Holy_Diver]

Well Google disabled our Adsense account for no reason, literally. Turns out Google is actually evil incarnate. And here I was naive enough to actually believe Google was/could be the paragon of the benevolent mega corporation. After some online research, it actually turns out Google makes Microsoft look like Santa Clause in terms of it's shear evilness (of course the irony is Google's motto - originally at least - was "Don't do evil")

Anyway I think I'm becoming highly politicized around www civil rights in general. The first thing I did was ask myself what the web would be like without Google... ie. how could it be replaced (technically it's really only 60% of the search market anyway) but still... searching is the most vital part of the internet, no way should it be monopolized or even up for grabs. Fortunately I breathed a sigh of relief when it occurred to me P2P was the obvious solution and Google was already a dinosaur in technological terms. Turns out I didn't have to pen an inquiry to the FSF - yet at least. There are P2P efforts to democratize search underway, probably the purest of the bunch being YaCy.

I've actually been rather impressed with Microsoft lately after being able to access Windows Live for chat without having any sort of Microsoft affiliated email address, video chat worked out of the box, and it even tells people what music I'm listening too, which I always thought would be a cool feature (well as long as you're using Windows Media Player) ...so I dunno, I'm quitting Google cold turkey I think. In the meantime I'll go with Bing or whatever it's called maybe if I gotta... I'm not a fan of Bill Gates et al, but at least I don't have to fear MS being Big Brother of the Beast of Revelation(s) or any other whack shit, cause even if MS tried it would crash coming out of the gate...


Ho hum, anyway, I was thinking we need to make some little php files to advertise SoM games and stuff in the meantime, we could rotate them like pseudo-ads. We could even give a nod to SoM related merchandisers and toss in some links to their stuff.

[Hguols]

*falls through the door into the room*

Did someone say evil?
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Speaking of ads, I have never seen one on either computer I've used Firefox.  I wonder if the browser's Adblock Plus has something to do with that?

[Holy_Diver]

^Well the ads have been technically gone for a while now. That is G:evil::evil:gle isn't serving them up cause the account's disabled (permanently -- if you can still call that disabled)