Crashrat

I don’t mean to bitch, but the affiliate ads have gone crazy in the last six months or so. I’m all for monetizing the Web and would be happy to click over when I need items to help grow some cash in his wallet, but wedging ads into every block of content is really a drag. Why not just create an affiliate page and encourage folks to use it when they buy? Just an idea.

Wicky

What ads? I don't see any. Try using an ad blocker in Firefox / Safari

Crashrat

Google adwords are to the right and top. When you open a thread, you get an auto-search with ads in the header that (for me) takes about 5-10 seconds to load. This loads before you get to the content.

You also sometimes see box ads in a thread between posts and at the bottom of internal pages. (There are actually several tiers of ads on the bottom. They're line ads, so they probably don't affect load times, but I also bet that the CTR is so low on these that they could disappear and make no difference.)

Google is supposed to generate ads that synch up with the content, but I get a lot of ads for Shaws, retirement firms and gun rights.

PUSHrod

'Big Brother' knows who you are, where you are, what you use your plastic to buy, how often, and the brands...your profiles are sold back and forth between all the for profit entities that want to sell to you. With the governments knowledge.

If you complain on the forums, they know about that too.

You are NOT the customer. You are the product that got sold.

Crashrat

See, none of that bothers me Pushrod.

I do some Internet marketing myself and I’m ok with the Web as a commercial space. Ads don’t bother me as long as they’re targeted and don’t interfere with my browsing experience.

If you are concerned about privacy, you can always run through a proxy or avoid the Internet all together. I have some friends who do that and that’s fine by me, too. Involvement in Web-based forums is always voluntary.

OTOH, I still remember the promise of Web .5, that what would pop up on this space would be temporary autonomous zones, free from commercial and political manipulation. That didn’t really happen so we all have to act as though we are always monitored.

But understand that today’s marketing challenge isn’t tracking technology, but what you do with the garbage dump of information you get back.