I am curious to know why we have the ads that we do appear at the top of the site. Lately, it has been all "Yes on 8" political ads. I find those offensive. Is there any screening process for the ads that are displayed? I don't care if I am being bombarded with ads for diet pills or hair loss treatments, but politics bothers me. I don't come on here to stare at "Marriage is between a man and a woman" stuff with which I strongly disagree. Is there any way we can NOT have political ads on here? I would appreciate it.
Hmmm...this is really a mod-issue, but I will say that Premium Membership is a way to get rid of all ads altogether. On political issues, I think that they're a valid advertiser as well as any other, and I don't really get offended by them, they're just the opposite side of the argument- however, I can definetly see how you could be offended. I would say that Daniel would be the person to talk to about this.
This issue came up in a different forum I post in and I have mixed feelings about issue. On one hand you have a fantastic point but, This being a free forum, we must accept a certain amount 'inconvenience' to keep it free. I agree with your post however don't expect much to change till after the election
Seeing as the election season is very nearly over, I don't see this being much of an issue for much longer.
I suppose not. I was simply asking what the screening process was. I was annoyed with what I was seeing. I might be the only one. But this is the feedback area yes? So, that was some feedback. There will be other elections.
You cannot block the adverts unless you pay to have memberships I think. I actually think the adverts fund the site, or at leats give so much money towards it ... I assume.
In our current world, it is impossible to avoid such advertisments. There are placed in television, on the side of the road, in our newspapers, in our websites-everywhere. Why should one site turn down potential funding, when no other entertainment source does? If you are truly offended by such advertisements, you would have a lot of letters to write to many people asking for such ads to be taken down, and realistically I don't think this could happen.
I was just asking if the ads were screened, selected, or whatnot. I don't know how the process works. I am offended by one series of ads. I thought I would ask how the process worked to get the ads up there. That is all. I am writing angry letters to anyone. Just asking a question.
That's odd. All i get are ads for writing agencies and seedy-looking self-publishing sites... I think ads-by-Google are context-sensitive, which means it should only show political ads if you're looking at politics-related material. My guess is that it's coming from your gay marriages thread... I don't think the mods have much control over it...
The ads are provided by a google feed. The site owner has little control over the content of individual ads apart from certain general decency and ad category parameters.
Generally with the ads they are contextual. They're based on the content of the page. If you were seeing political ads it was likely because it was a political thread you were viewing.
Not true. When I was on WF on the day before voting the adds were in the index page about prop 8, when I was in general writing nothing to do with prop 8 and there were those adds, etc. So, I have adds for random things. Like in one of the plot threads it was about magic and I got a pizza hut add. We found the secret witches and wizards work for pizza hut.
The context is undoubtedly from Google's own stats for the page. I wouldn't begin to try second-guessing how that selection is performed.
Being geeky I happen to know that it is based on context of the page, at least for the base of the algorithm they use to decide what to show. But if it doesn't find keywords that it can match with the ads it has, then it probably picks a random one to display. Either way, the only way to stop viewing them is to get a paid membership, or to stay away from any page in the forum that might be used as a political ad keyword.
