Has anyone noticed some of our banner ads at the top of each page? If memory serves, they tended to be military related before, but now seem to be car and political ads. I can live with car ads, but political ones may just cause problems or turn off potential posters who may feel the ad reflects a point of view pushed by the forum. Any thoughts?
Unfortunately, we have to take the good with the bad and those ads pay for this forum. We entered into a contract with Google to provide the advertisements and it is in their best interest to provide meaningful ads, given the subject of the forum. Unfortunately, given the current economic climate, I suspect that ad content will have to occasionally take a backseat to ad revenue, if we want to to enjoy the forum as a free site.
What I had suspected, We will just have to soldier on as best we can. On the bright side the election will be over in about 15 months
To be honest with you, I rarely even look at them and since I am an admin, I never click on them. I do not want Google to accuse us upping our click-through count and pull the ads.
I'm in agreement with Jeff, I too rarely even notice them anymore, I know they are there and fund this wonderful place but I ignore them as a "necessary evil". The same as I ignore them most everywhere else.
Honestly, my first thought when I saw the topic was, "Someone wants to add banner ads to the forum." I never really pay attention to them on any website I visit, though I do share belasar's concerns. Hopefully, folks will not judge us by the "color" of our banner ads, but by the content of our forum.
Adsense ads (which I assume are used on the forums) are usually randomly generated based on site content, sometimes they could also be generated based on a specific user's browsing habits if they use other Google products. When I visit the gaming forums I usually get game related ads, if I visit a thread asking for record info I usually get ancestry related stuff, etc, sometimes I just get random stuff.
Our Banner ads have reached a new low or high depending upon your point of vier. After I congratulated Martin on ten years a banner ad for a Lesbian online dating service came up. Now I know my browser history had nothing to do with it and unless our forum has changed lately, neither did our content. I think VBuliten is out to get us!
Most the time's when I log on or even just change the page, I keep getting an 'invite' from Stephanie She says she wants to meet me and be my friend but I'm beginning to think she is stalking me! She use to pop-up in the banner now and then but lately it is nearly the first ad every time I log on. She's already 'popped-up' four times today! She also must have a sister "Shannon" since I occasionally get an invite from her and curiously enough they both live only 2.8 miles away? Even though I've never responded my wife is getting suspicious.
Well I did watch an episode of "The Universe" last night and just because Texas is only 1400 or so miles away from Northern Minnesota ( in our version of reality) anythings possible Or maybe there are "Two" Shephanie's looking for 'a friend'. Oh Great! Now someone's trying to sell me my own website!
