Mike Baker

However, the business I work for targets tech people, so naturally our target market uses Google more often. If you target non-tech people, for example the elderly, yahoo & MSN may pay off real well.

I’m kinda with Mr. Required in the anti-advertising camp. I don’t believe advertisement driven services and affiliate networking can support the web when it’s all spread so thin. Advertisers pay top dollar to compete with competition when they don’t really understand how much they’re getting ripped off.

However, I also believe Mr. Required’s logic is flawed. The advertising companies have no qualms about cheaters as long as they fly under the radar of the paying advertisers since it just means more money in the bank… I doubt they care how. I can’t even believe pay per click still exists.

For me getting rid of the opportunists and the parasites is just a matter of keeping something that was once valuable from not getting that much worse… just a matter of principle I suppose and habit.

But the other mistake is assuming people don’t click on links. I assumed the same for a while until I realized that even people I thought would know much better still click on links regularly. It’s hard to get perspective on the different levels of understanding with the web/net/technology.

One thing I’ll definitely agree to is there’s no lack of idiots out there!

Cheers,

Ja

I never thought if it that way. With Microsoft in both the ad’s biz and the web browser market, they’ve got us at both ends. Its like they own the company store in the mining town — you want milk, its 10 dollars. Good thing there is firefox around.

My perspective is from a website operator. Here on maxpower I never have more than 1 ad per page, and I try very hard to make it disappear into the website. If you put this site on your whitelist, not much will change. That philosophy is not shared by most website operators (as I’m sure you know). The other day I counted over 8 ads on some guys rather normal blog. 8 — its like I had to look for a place to click to avoid stepping on an ad.

Anyway, 2 points:

If the company itself has no real interest in the so called cheaters, why are you so intent on making the charge against them?

– I want to make a little money doing this hobby, if it so happens that by doing my hobby I can make enough to buy a new pair of shoes every month that would be great! People who rig their ads to fool people into clicking on them actually hurt the profitability of my website. Since there is no mechanism to report bad websites, all websites must be considered bad until the problem is fixed. While we are all in this state of not knowing how best to serve advertisements, advertisers themselves won’t want to pay top dollar for a sub-par service. After all, they want people to click on their ads when they are actually interested in the product, not because they have been tricked somehow.

So if you remove the pink you’re cheating?

– Yes. How is a typical web surfer to know the difference between ads on your site and content. Again, if you trick someone into showing them a product, then the advertiser has lost out (and by extension, website operators). They want people who are genuinely interested.

While your point of view is valid (since you don’t see ads, this isn’t a problem), its exactly the same as putting your hands over you eyes so you don’t see dirty magazines, global warming, jaywalking, and the yeti. They exist, they might not be a problem for you, but they are out there.

I see all advertising as a bane. Bandwidth hogs. Worthless waste of time cluttering up my screen, sort of crap.
I have never clicked an ad and I never will.
Yahoo could put a thousand a day in my face and I doubt I’d even notice as I have learned to filter them out completely.

I pay my provider for internet access. I pay for a usenet service. I pay for mail access. I’m not going to pay someone else just for the [so called] priviledge of seeing advertising based content.
I use several very effective programs that block almost all advertising. Sites that require me to lower certain protections in order to access them get black listed. Content is easily found elsewhere on non-advertising glutted sites.

I looked at your two examples and still don’t see what the issue is. One has a link in pink at the bottom. So if you remove the pink you’re cheating? You’re assuming that users actually click the links, ever.
Most, if not all, of the people I know have learned to completely ignore internet advertising. We don’t even see it any more.

I guess they can always count on the stupid people. Gods knows there are plenty of them.

Thanks for stopping by. I had no idea I was such a loose loser. All is better, I have been enlightened. As an aside, your comment reminded me of the main character in ‘confederacy of dunces’, has your valve closed?

Cheers, and thanks.

However, I don’t see this as the only problem with these advertising services. I see sneaky stuff going on using Adsense all the time even on very popular blogs. I don’t have the time nor the will to memorize the TOS for all this sort of stuff so I honestly don’t know that while it’s shady it’s actually violating TOS or not.

How easy is it to fill out a complaint? If it’s not that hard I may just invest in a program like Roboform AI or even more complex macro proggie/languate to fill out most of the important stuff for me. Otherwise, I’ve pretty much given up. I’m just too fed up with all this advertising BS.

I am fairly certain it will reach all new levels of insanity when MS formally opens up for business. “Here’s our OS you’re already dependent on, here’s our new browser that’s a million times better than the old one, here’s our call-home Genuine Advantage plan for YOUR safety, here’s our free Windows LIVE online serrvice, and here’s our new advertising dept. that we’ll try really hard not to leverage any of the previously mentioned items for in order to gain an advantage.” Hrm.

For a while now I’ve been collecting screenshots of sneaky practices as well as ‘contextual’ ads that are ridiculously out of context but fairly common. I don’t know if I’ll bother to even attempting to post that stuff anymore.

I’m starting to see more and more that the way things are shaping up sooner or later all these advertisers and affiliates playing with monopoly money and not providing enough real service for the advertising prices they charge… it’s all going to cave in. So why bother being a watchdog when the situation is bound to right itself naturally over time?

Yes, that’s hypocritical coming from me and the things I write in my blog but I intend to change the model of it very shortly. My hypocrisy has finally reached its limits I believe.

Jā