I’ve gone to ads

In The Ethics of Adblocking, I talked about not liking obnoxious ads (Flash and banner ones). When I started getting close to exceeding my bandwidth allocation for the Psychocats web hosting, I started moving the images to ImageShack, which worked for a while, but their image hosting can be a bit unreliable. I’ve considered switching to another web host, one which has a higher default bandwidth allocation, but making the move would be extremely complicated.

So I’m opting to go with some less obnoxious ads on my site (text-based, unobtrusive). I’m hoping that will help generate enough revenue that I can actually start hosting images (and larger ones) on my own host and then pay for the bandwidth costs. We’ll see how it turns out. If it turns out well, I’ll move all the image hosting back to my own host. If it doesn’t, I’ll keep it all on ImageShack.

8 comments

  1. well at least they’re text only. If it was some annoying flash thing I would’ve blocked it

  2. In your “ethics” article you argued your case for doing away with ads completely and asking for donations from users or asking them to pay for content.

    I suppose it becomes OK somehow if it’s “text” ads and not “Flash” ads? Is it just the technology you’re against or does ethics play a role here?

    I’m asking, because you mentioned ethics of ad-blocking (and by inference, web advertising).

  3. To clarify my question:

    I think your use of the word “obnoxious” is subjective in an ethical debate about advertising. Certainly the Flash ads are annoying as hell and everybody agrees with that, but does that bring the ethical dimension of advertising into it?

    Advertising is either ethical or not. Do you believe that the technology employed in advertising makes it more or less so? Is the ethical aspect completely determined by how much it is annoying (yet another subjective point).

    I don’t mind your ads at all. But my questions is directed at your earlier article on the subject.

  4. This would be the key paragraph from my other entry:

    So why is ImageShack okay in my book? For the same reason that Google is okay in my book. ImageShack and Google are not obnoxious about their ads. Google’s ads are text-only and off to the side. ImageShack has ads only if you click on the thumbnail to get a bigger image, and even then the ads are below the image.

    The obnoxiousness of an ad comes into the ethics of adblocking, because people have only started blocking ads since ads have become obnoxious. Honestly, back in 1996, there was no big movement to block ads on the internet, because ads were unobtrusive. It was only once pop-ups and pop-unders became the norm that people started blocking ads.

    It doesn’t really make sense, before you read it, to have someone rip out all the ads from a magazine you’ve bought. On the other hand, no one would want a magazine that, at every page turn, had a magical pop-out ad page that obscured your view of the articles.

    As far as I’m concerned, the obnoxious factor is the only reason we’re debating the ethics of adblocking at all.

  5. Hi,
    I think the place you choose for the ads is really important.
    I’m not sure that the bottom of the page is the best place.
    Also, you may want to adjust the colors so the ads will be well integrated to your page. This make them , IMO, less obtrusive.

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