Advertising is evil!

[Kay]

Well, I don't think so but I like to use cheap tactics like a shocking headline to get attention. Let's discuss this.

On another thread (about website valuation) Clinton wrote:

They don't take ads on that site and the member base is very anti-ad; many would leave if [he] stuck even one or two ads on there.

I don't know why some people are so anti-ads. Things have to be paid for somehow. You can't have everything for free.

If I buy a print magazine, I expect to see adverts in it. The adverts pay for a lot of the publishing and distribution costs. If there were no ads in the mag then the cover price would be much more.

If I visit a website, I expect to see adverts on it. Not every website is a hobby and not every website or forum is run by a philanthropist. Some are run by businesses! Yes! And businesses need to make money to survive. Is that such a revolutionary thing to say?

The "It's the internet so everything must be free" bunch of morons make my blood boil. But I'm sure I've already gone on a rampage about that before.

Advertising is great! Especially on websites. Advertisers make it worth your while to run websites without needing to charge the website visitors anything. People can read your content, comment, potter about and it's all FREE! Why? Because of the adverts.

If they didn't run adverts then the website owner (usually) needs to find other ways to monetise the site. You wanna read my content? Then pay for it. This is a tough business model to use - as many British newspapers are finding out.

Anyway, I like some adverts. They amuse me or give me the heads up on interesting things. That's not to say I like all adverts. I subscribe to a foodie mag and the first thing I do every month is to rip out the first dozen pages of adverts for posh perfume, cosmetics, and cars. On the other hand, when Private Eye arrives, I read the cartoons first and then the ads. Similarly with newspapers, I find the ads give a fascinating insight into what's happening. For me it depends on the interest and relevance of the ads.

Going back to people being very anti-ad who would leave if even one or two ads were shown, in my opinion they are selfish tw@ts. Not everyone can afford to provide you with a good service and never make any money out of it. Would it really hurt you to 'suffer' even just one or two adverts?

What is this holier than thou, purist, we don't like adverts brigade on about anyway? Do they really think that everything on the internet should be free?

Time for a reality check.

<jumps off soap box>

[grynge]

Personally I am blind to most ads, plus running through the internet with java turned off makes life much less popuppy. I am not against ads per se as they do tend to allow me a few extra perks in life. I find though the problem is magazines/tv/media tends to blend adverts into their product. I was at the doctors the other day and picked up some bloke mag but I couldn't work out what was advertising and what was content, our satellite tv which you have to pay for (unless you know a guy who knows a guy or you are the guy) also has adverts. I can't understand why I would pay to watch an advert that the advertiser has paid for me to watch in the first place.

I think there is a place for running a website without ads and also a place for running a website with ads. Usually if I want to build up a sites userbase I will leave the ads off until I have enough users that if I turn the ads on it won't matter if the few leave. Should all content be free? No I don't think it should just like not all content should be open to every person on the internet.

[KenW3]

Great headline! It is not advertising itself, but advertisers that can be amoral. In the attempt to retain the attention of the viewer, inexperienced marketing people will resort to methods potentially injurious to their companies. In the 60 years since the evening news became a staple on television, the format has evolved from news reporting to tabloid journalism. This is been done to gain market share, which allows higher ad pricing.

Advertising has followed the same path, becoming increasingly outrageous. People are not necessarily against advertising, in my opinion. Everyone loves to find something useful that will make their life easier. The problem faced is wading through all of the other garbage. Advertising, at its heart, is nothing more than the start of the sales process. There are hard and soft sells, garish and subdued attempts, consultation and information.

I find it impossible to browse the Internet, and actually read articles with flashing graphics next to the paragraphs you are attempting to understand. Firefox with the Flashblock addon solved that problem. The typical website, basic Internet advertising, banner and sidebar ads demonstrate a lack of marketing expertise vividly. Capturing attention alone is ineffective without providing a reason to act upon the attention provided. G has great targeting which is done correctly, but many of the advertisers need help with their destination pages.

A greater mistake is alienation of prospective customers by using methods to force sales process continuation when the employed method has failed. One method, sites that use an exit trap (an exit popup that demands an action), are doing so to recover from failure. Removal of a visitor's control of their computer, by forcing a click, will never engender trust. A forced click can be directed to perform any process, not always what the site is suggesting will happen. It is best to close those websites manually by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del and force closure by ending the program. A click is your permission to perform a task, not a great idea on a site you have never seen before. (For those who have found exit pop-ups effective, Antone Roundy's Expop is a better solution that will not prevent return visitors.)

Advertising serves a purpose. It is beneficial to both the company sponsoring the ads and the potential customer that can be helped. The fact that some companies do not understand how to effectively market products and services on the net should not taint opinion of all. These attempts are on display to the world, and this suggests marketing agencies will not necessarily have to advertise to find clients.

[Clinton]

1. If you build a forum as Brett did, and I'm doing, on the assurance that there won't be ads, then you're got a sort of deal with your members: Their posts and contributions are made on the understanding that they won't be "contaminated" by ads. If you change your mind later or circumstances - or as in Brett's case the site gets huge and the hosting, security and other costs rise quite substantially - then you've got to be prepared for some posters feeling miffed.

2. If you've got some ad blocking software on your computer you may visit trusted sites with a lower level of security. If those sites then switch to ads it changes the ground rules.

3. Ads themselves sometimes have malicious scripts so it's worth turning them off

4. DMOZ editors are known to be more likely to approve a site that has no ads. Why? Because those sites are more likely to be hobby sites that have good content. Sites that have advertising are often sites set up specifically for the purpose of making money. Browse enough sites in your lifetime and you'll notice that all the sites that wasted your time - promised you info but didn't deliver, had just machine generated garbage etc - had ads on them. Why do webmasters recommend building the site with no ads first and then putting ads in later? It's a trust issue. Sites with ads are sites I (and a few others I'm sure) trust less.

In the attempt to retain the attention of the viewer, inexperienced marketing people will resort to methods

It's the experienced, slick, uber-savvy ones that I'm more wary of and my problem isn't just with ads, it's with marketing in general

[robjones]

1. If you build a forum as Brett did, and I'm doing, on the assurance that there won't be ads, then you're got a sort of deal with your members: Their posts and contributions are made on the understanding that they won't be "contaminated" by ads. If you change your mind later or circumstances - or as in Brett's case the site gets huge and the hosting, security and other costs rise quite substantially - then you've got to be prepared for some posters feeling miffed.

Funny that you mentioned Dmoz further down in the post, cause when I was reading Kays OP, dmoz is what leaped to mind.

{CAUTION: Rambling down memory lane post follows}

A Brief and Mostly Factual History of Dmoz
Dmoz was originally started by a couple of guys that thought Yahoo acceptance was too slow. [No, really, it was.] It was set up on a freebie volunteer basis by Rich Skrenta, Tolles, et al in the late 90's with a promise to the volunteers that it'd always remain a free resource, and that birds would sing when you logged in and gas would never go above $2 per gallon. [Ok I made the last two up, but they did promise it'd remain a free resource.]

Then it gained popularity beyond anyones dreams. [Yes, I'm so old I remember when Dmoz was "popular", a term later replaced by "corrupt" by 250 million frustrated webmasters]. Rich and crew sold the rights to Netscape for a big chunk of cash reportedly in which resided 6 zeros, though the amount was never published. They hung around as founders, but it was now Netscape's baby. [There's another word for your history vocabulary, please take notes, this will be on the test.]

Shortly thereafter, AOL purchased Netscape in a shrewd attempt to corner the market on soon-to-be-extinct browsers. This was reportedly part of their overall strategy of f*cking up every company they touched, although since they acquired Dmoz by accident they only get partial credit. Dmoz was at this point managed and run by voluinteer editors, and slavery having been outlawed... AOL had no control over them. The editors seemed pretty likely to walk out if the directory was monetized, since they were NOT being paid. AOL pondered this, then fell asleep with the TV on.

So AOL owned yet another asset that might have value had it been owned by just about anyone not named AOL, but they were stuck because of a promise Skrenta made to a few thousand people he never met before exiting with a wad of cash and a barely stiffled giggle.

AOL executives carefully examined the thorny problem, and apparently decided to put the directory up on blocks in the front yard for a few years to be marginally maintained by trained monkeys that could do almost anything but database backups. Then they accidentally overwrote the database with an op system in late 2006. After an extended outage during which several editors discovered their butt had actually grown to their chair, the database was pieced back together with baling wire and duct tape by two talented volunteers, RP Fuller and {insert name when memory recovers} from bits and pieces of RDF dumps, old backups, and stuff they'd scribbled on napkins.

Bottom line... Dmoz biggest hindrance to being functional is that the volunteer model didnt scale well to its size, and the fact that AOL didn't seem to know they had an asset named Dmoz. And all because of a promise to remain free made years earlier by someone that subsequently cashed out.

LESSON: Be careful what you promise going into a project... or what the founders promised if you buy one.

4. DMOZ editors are known to be more likely to approve a site that has no ads. Why? Because those sites are more likely to be hobby sites that have good content. Sites that have advertising are often sites set up specifically for the purpose of making money.

Yes and no. The official line is that they don't mind sites with ads on them, they just dont like ads with sites on them. Yes, there are some that think all sites that make ANY money are evil, but most of those live under a bridge with wi-fi and sniff airplane glue. They will probably die off soon anyway. We hope.

[Kay]

The two main points I've picked up from your excellent replies are:

- being ad-free engenders more trust

- don't go back on your promises

Hmm, websites without ads are relatively rare in my experience. Heck, even the BBC website has adverts these days. And so do most (if not all) of the major British newspaper websites. (Mind you, it's also fair to say that a lot of them are dumbing down too, so perhaps they are less 'trustworthy' than they once were.)

I put ads on a site as soon as it goes live. People are then under no illusions that it's an ad-free environment.

The typical website, basic Internet advertising, banner and sidebar ads demonstrate a lack of marketing expertise vividly.

That's me, folks. But they're easy enough to ignore. I don't use nasty tricks like pop-ups or exit pages. And people do buy if you promote relevant goods and services. I have a cheque (Yes! Some businesses really do still use them. ) on my desk right now for a couple of hundred quid which is last month's sales commission resulting from a bog-standard banner. Maybe I'm demonstrating a lack of marketing expertise by not ramming things down people's throats, but it's not my intention to do the hard sell and annoy people.

If people feel they've been 'cheated' because policy has changed - whether under new management or not - then many will leave. I've both seen and experienced this. But things evolve. You can't always keep doing things the same way because that's how you did them x years ago. I don't break promises, when I make major changes, people get grandfathered in and get the same or more privileges they bought when they paid. If I sell, I can't guarantee a new owner would honour the promises I made yonks ago.

IMO, Brett has created a rod for his back by this anti-ad mentality on there. It's a great site, though, so maybe he will find a way to monetise it without ads. I hope so. Maybe he's fantastically rich and doesn't need to.

Personally, I can't be bothered with the takers who want everything for free and expect me to pay to provide them with a service. My attitude to them is "Goodbye. Please shut the door on your way out".

[robjones]

Kay - I don't think it's so much that people distrust all sites with ads. Sure if a site is like the directory I was pointed to the other day which literally turned out to be invisible unless you hit "page down" cause he had the entire visible frame filled with adsense that was not marked clearly as such... I mistrust. That's an extreme case though.

In this case I get the impression it's a bit of an entitlement thing... a power play. "You told us there would never be ads... So just pay the bills for our playground and hush". People chat on pages with ads every day, it doesn't hurt them. I don't know the exact wording the guy said or why he did it, but there oughta be a statute of limitations on how long you pay for a hasty statement.


I personally agree with you on the answer there, cause taking a financial loss so others can enjoy an ad-free environment seems like an odd thing for anyone to expect of you. I'd just explain that it was a statement made prior to a serious change of conditions and if I was expected to bear the costs alone I'd have to shut it down. If they don't want it shut down, they have a choice of
-1- ignoring the unobtrusive ads that help pay the bills or
-2- write stuff on their blogs/ website/ bathroom wall about me being a doo-doo-head and Indian-giver, then take their toys and leave.

There wouldn't be a third option where I supplied someone else a free ride for life without consideration of the current picture. Then again, this is what happens when you make long-term commitments based on the assumption things will always be the same as they are today. That's a boneheaded mistake, but we all make mistakes. I'd fess up, apologize for my naive statement, and move forward.

[Clinton]

Commercial ads exist to persuade you to spend money on products/services. They aren't sources of unbiased information. They attempt to portray their products as better than all others. Full information and independent product comparisons don't form part of the ad - it's always half-cocked information providing a biased view. The source of the ad is justification to treat all claims it makes as probably lies (or distorted versions of the truth)....unless you're a half-wit in which case that ad was made for you!

That photograph of a MacDonald's burger is a lie; the burger itself is never that big, that attractive looking or that fresh. That photograph of an ice-cream isn't really an ice-cream - it's mashed potato! Ice-cream melts too fast under the studio lights.

Ads are basically lies. Even if the eventual ice-cream you purchase is exactly as it looked in the picture, that doesn't make the picture less of a deception.

As great as ads are for commerce, they are bad for the human soul. Commercial ads exist for the most vulgar of reasons - to part you from your money. Any monster tainted by such a sordid goal at conception has sleaze in its DNA and evil flowing through its blood.

[robjones]

Wouldja please quit dodging the subject and tell us whether you do or don't approve of ads?

[Kay]

I disagree, Clinton. Not ALL ads are like that. I sell a financial product (as an affiliate) which has been designed specifically for the audience of one of our sites. I don't mean that it was designed just for my site, I mean the merchant saw the gap in the market and filled it.

For several years people were asking us where they could buy such a product and, despite contacting several companies asking them if they offered such a thing, the answer was always "No". So I had to keep saying to our visitors, "Sorry, I'm looking, but I can't find such things on the market".

Then XYZ company got in touch and said that they'd started offering such a product, would I be interested in selling it it as an affiliate. After looking at what they were offering, I jumped at the chance and was eager to tell our visitors about it too. That was a while ago and the company has since expanded their offerings and people continue with them year after year. There is nothing evil about that company at all. In fact, one time I queried the amount they'd paid us because I couldn't reconcile my figures with theirs. It turned out that they give us commission on repeat business too, which I hadn't realised. (Nice change from merchants/networks who try to shave you.)

I'm sure that I could come up with plenty more commercial advertisers who don't have sleaze in their DNA or evil in their blood. I will if you really want me to. I'll even PM you the name of the company if you want to look at them yourself.

Clinton, your attitude towards advertisers makes me think that perhaps an advertiser bit you when you were a child and you've been traumatised ever since. I feel pretty much the same about toy poodles since one bit me after I tried to pat it.

I like sales hype about as much as I like spammers - and you know how I feel about them. But it's simply not true, fair, or logical to describe all advertisers in the terms that you just did.