Monday, May 24, 2010

Contextual ads ooze toward the sleaziest content on your site

I wonder if I’m placing myself in contempt of terms by even saying this. Doesn’t matter. I’ll take down the ads; I haven’t had any for a long time and don’t need them to eat.

So I put an ad unit on my blog this morning, kept refreshing the page, looking at different posts and watched how it slowly learned what’s on my site. Probably cut-rate cr*** c*** and b**kr**y plans are shown regardless of the content because there are a lot of advertisers wanting to push that stuff out, but I had the added magnet of a long post about my experience with a particular company and another about f******** reform. Over the course of an hour they seemed to be acting as a beacon for more and more ads about youknowwhat even on unrelated single-post pages. Do you think that’s possible?

Now I’ve closed the posts. See if helps. I liked seeing the Washington Post banner on my blog. Why can’t more of the ads be like that? If they didn’t make you feel like such a slime merchant the ads would be even more used, don’t you think? Or don’t most small publishers care? I don’t know, but I care. See how long I can stand it. I’ll let you know.

Update: Credit-related ads are largely gone, a day later. Pleasant surprise. I’ll try reopening my February post about Capital One and see what happens.