Inclusion proposals for "acceptable ads" list are discussed here. New topics cannot be created, constructive comments are welcome, flaming will be removed.
Advertising type:
1. Google Adsense text-ads 728*90 box at the very top on every page
2. Google Adsense text-ads 160*600 box in the right sidebar, the 1st one
3. Google Adsense text-ads 250*300 box in the end of text on every article page
Thanks for considering my sites, I appreciate it. I have added a link in the left sidebar to the ABP Acceptable Ads initiative. Hopefully that will alert more folks to what it has to offer.
I stumbled onto the ABP Acceptable Ads info while looking at a story somewhere. Thanks to all of you for coming up with the acceptable ads effort. Those guidelines have been very helpful to me as a publisher.
A while back I installed a plugin in my wordpress blogs that showed about 40% or so of my linux blog readers were blocking ads. I was initially quite angry about it. But then later I started wondering what was motivating them.
I figured that it was probably some or all of the following:
1. Flash ads
2. Animated images
3. Intellitext ads
4. Audio ads
I don't blame people, frankly. I don't even keep flash installed on my system except in Google Chrome, and it's only used if I need it for a YouTube video here and there.
As a publisher, I am very irritated with the ad networks and here's why:
1. Most of them offer no "quiet" advertising alternatives except intellitext type ads, which just piss people off as they clutter up the article page and aren't really contextual most of the time.
2. In the case of Google, they do not allow for any control over image ads. So you are stuck with stupid flash crap, animated images and video ads. Ugh. I would not mind static images as a publisher or reader, but Google does not give us that level of control.
3. The advertising networks do not listen to publishers like me. We are the little guys, and we have to either take their ad inventory or leave it. They could not care less what we have to say about it one way or the other.
So I am glad that you ABP folks are pushing for better quality advertising that doesn't irritate readers. You are the only ones with the power to force changes on the advertising industry by hurting them financially. They aren't going to listen to guys like me, no matter what we say or how often we say it.
I'll give you an example of this. I ran ads from a tech network a while back, they were video ads. Initially, the ad would only play if a reader put their cursor over it. But then some genius in the marketing or ad department decided to make the audio play after the page loaded automatically. As you can imagine, this pissed off people right and left.
I made this point to the ad network but didn't get anywhere. The advertisers wanted it that way, so they got it. They did at least lower the volume, but this didn't really help much. Pissing people off slightly less does not do much good in the long run. Ultimately, the ads came off my blogs. And I believe that that part of the ad network's business has died off completely.
Anyway, that goes to show you how much they listen to small publishers like me. So thank you all for your efforts in forcing the advertising networks to change how they do things. It's the only real hope that internet advertising has over the long run.
Under review due to criteria violation (label is missing). Recent changes made by Google in their content text ads made their label disappear. Those ads should be clearly recognizable as such, so a proper label will be requested.
