The Ethics of Advertisement

parsi

The Parenting forum has a useful batch of ads for divorce at the moment...

Faith

Heh, they're on AH too.

Hagar

You think that's bad? Lolocaust has an ad for "Butcher Ireland".:eek:

Zillah

Beruthiel wrote:

Thanks for making me laugh this early in the morning

Asiaprod wrote:

That sure made me laugh.:D

The two of you should know better!!

DeVore

Their dime, their ad. I dont want to get into moderating ads beyond certain extreme possibilities.

DeV.

Hagar

I think if you want the ads to be seen the word "adblock" should be added to the censor list.

Fair enough if people know about it already and use it but it's counter-productive to allow posts which advocate it's use. I'm sure the advertisers already take a dim view of it being mentioned so often.

/Edit Butcher Ireland seems to be an employment agency of some type, not homicidal maniacs

parsi

Thanks for the clarification Hagar - I was worried about visiting a site that may have dubious tendencies.

Stark

They butcher you in the figurative sense.

DeVore

If people want to block ads, they will. I honestly am ambivalent if they do. If someone wants to leach without the decency to even give back an ad-hit then so be it. What I really object to is that they stick it in our faces.
We play the game fair, we dont do anything underhand or intrusive with the ads, so people might want to think about "sustainability" of sites like this.

Thankfully enough do.

DeV.

Hobbes

Hagar wrote:

Fair enough if people know about it already and use it but it's counter-productive to allow posts which advocate it's use.

I disagree. I am an avid user of adblock+script block. If there is a website that you support and the ads aren't in your face then you can just select whitelist whole site and just for that site you can see adverts.

It's currently what I do with boards.ie and a couple of other places I visit.

Nevyn

I do use adblock extension but I don't block the boards add.
1) becuase it is the least I can to do support boards
2) you miss event banners and new change banners.

Hagar

Sorry, my mistake. I thought it blocked all ads. I didn't realise it could be selective. As you've guessed I don't use it. I might use it now on other sites.

I wonder how many of the people who are complaining about the ads are not subscribers? Most I would suspect. Do they think this place runs on fresh air?

5uspect

Hobbes wrote:

I disagree. I am an avid user of adblock+script block. If there is a website that you support and the ads aren't in your face then you can just select whitelist whole site and just for that site you can see adverts.

It's currently what I do with boards.ie and a couple of other places I visit.

I agree, I only use adblock to block those annoying intrusive flashing CLICK ME!!! ones that I have fortunately never seen on boards.

Ghost Train

Hagar wrote:

Sorry, my mistake. I thought it blocked all ads. I didn't realise it could be selective. As you've guessed I don't use it. I might use it now on other sites.

I wonder how many of the people who are complaining about the ads are not subscribers? Most I would suspect. Do they think this place runs on fresh air?

I use some adblocker built into my browser, didn't even know boards had banner ads until recently, when i disabled it for a few minutes. Didn't know much about there being subscription accounts either

I have had a problem with ads in that the past that were advertising something trashy on a site i liked and it took from the feel of a decent site, I don't really care if ads on good sites like boards get blocked.

If a site isn't making enough money then maybe they should have more ads, or less ads or their own ad server, or different subscription pricing or offer some other service, or maybe cut down on costs. When a site grows, gains a larger user base, their running costs go up, also their potential for ad revenue/subscriptions etc goes up. If things don't balance out, if there's not enough money coming in, then whoever is running the site is to blame, not the people who visit the site and may or may not see the ads, or choose to click them. Users should be able to complain about ads and block them if they please, just like a website can complain about not making enough money and change the way they run things if they choose.

DeVore

Things work a little differently around here though eolhc. You'll notice when the experience for users degrades, we'll go and buy servers, improve performance as best we can and generally try and get things back on the road. We also review all ads before they go live and have refused ads that we felt were too intrusive and annoying for the users because we give user experience a higher priority then making revenue.

My feeling is thus: We'll protect the users experience and try and have a standard that the ads must adhere to ie: they can't annoy the users, and in return the users will hopefully support us in turn by not blocking the ads. If this became standard industry practise, those annoying ads would become redundant and unacceptible.

In return all I would ask is for a little bit of class, if someone *still* blocks our ads ok but it would be polite not to come onto threads like this and explain how they are denying us the steam of the proverbial...

DeV.

Ghost Train

I'm not knocking the site(and was trying to talk in general terms) and have made no complaint about the ads here. Saying i don't care about seeing boards ads sounds bad, but i'm just being honest, but yeah maybe shouldn't have said it, so sorry.

The way the ads are done here seems to be the right way and i wouldn't expect any site to promote adblockers, but suggesting people should click an ad just for the purpose of clicking seems the wrong way of thinking (for me), as would censoring the word "adblocker". Take it to the extreme and you have sites that use "vote for us" or "click this ad" to proceed or trick you into clicking on a banner and i know boards is nothing like this but it's developed to that on some sites. If an advertiser is paying for an ad, i'm guess they're looking for real potential customers, which i'm sure boards provides, and not random ad clickers.

Giving out about people who don't subscribe to the site (saying they think it must run on fresh air) again seems like the wrong message, as people who post on boards can do their bit for the community and don't necessarily click ads or pay subscriptions at this point in time. I've no idea what the financial situation is with boards, or how things operate internally, but know it costs money to run, from the outside it looks like the job is done well and i hope things continue to go well for the site. I'll refrain from discussing the subject in future

btw on a different topic, boards seems a liberal place with negitive comments being directed at all sorts of things and i can understand the don't bite the hand that feeds you thing when it comes to discussing the site itself... but maybe there could be a forum somewhere where users could bitch in a semi-open way about all things boards or make general complaints without a strict need for a response to the criticism

Hagar

eolhc wrote:

Giving out about people who don't subscribe to the site (saying they think it must run on fresh air) again seems like the wrong message

It wasn't giving out, it was calling a spade a spade. People who don't contribute directly and won't contribute indirectly, by clicking an ad for instance, have no right to complain about something they are getting for nothing. Simple really. Did I miss something?

I'm speaking in a purely personal capacity here, I'm not representing the views of the management of Boards.ie.

Ghost Train

Hagar wrote:

...People who don't contribute directly and won't contribute indirectly, by clicking an ad for instance, have no right to complain about something they are getting for nothing...

okay I can see where you're coming from in relation to this thread and subject, and the world being a fair place. It's just specifically mentioning subs, just because somebody doesn't pay a subscription(i imagine most users) they shouldn't have the right to question something?
if inappropriate/offensive ads did pop up(not saying they do) general users of the site should have as much right to complain (my personal view), paying a subscription shouldn't be required

DeVore

eolhc, just for clarity, Hagar speaks for himself, I'm one of the site representatves. I haven't suggested any of the things you've replied with. We dont make distinctions between subsrcibers and non-subscribers.

We dont suggest anyone clicks an ad they aren't interested in. Not only is it dishonest but its one very quick way of annoying Google Ltd.


DeV.

Ghost Train

Maybe I got a slightly different impression from you're earlier post "If someone wants to leach without the decency to even give back an ad-hit then so be it". I took it sort of as, you'd expect users to give back an ad-hit, otherwise they're leeching. I was just replying to say you can't blame a general user if they take a certain attitude to ads when browsing the web, and don't provide ad clicks for whatever reason.

If hagor(or anyone) is willing to use an adblocker on other sites like he says he might, does that automatically mean he is leeching from the other sites, or doing wrong by them. For somebody not involved too deeply in this site it can sound pretty hypocritical. And thats the direction i was coming from.

thanks for clarifying

DeVore

I have no idea what you are saying.

I'm not talking about clicking an ad, many of our ads pay just to be seen. By explaining to people right in front of us, on our site, how you avoid giving us even that much, seems pretty objectionable.

Especially when Adblockers can be set to allow some sites to serve you ads. ie: you should reward sites that are well behaved and block those that arent. That seems sustainable, reasonable and decent... dont you think?

Mostly I'd just like it NOT shoved in my face.

DeV.

Ghost Train

Like I said I'm sorry, didn't mean to show lack of class or shove anything in your face.

I was just taking issue with what I saw as a negative attitude shown towards users of the site who block ads.

Why do I have an issue it, I guess I think that there are more ways somebody can contribute towards a site than just through ads.

Yes, If ads aren't intrusive, they don't bother people as much. However if somebody doesn't want to look at ads (intrusive or not) I don't think they should be told that they don't contribute because of it. If the site doesn't see users time spent here, or users posting to boards as contributing, by suggesting they leech etc, then why should they bother with boards.

If you're not comfortable with users talking about blocking boards ads then I don't think you should be telling them what they should be doing regarding ad blockers, even if its only to tell them how they should rewards good sites, block bad sites.