One of the funny happenstances of running a skeptical website that uses Google ads is that I sometimes get ads for services that are not, um, precisely aligned with my goals as a critical thinker. On my site I’ve seen ads for 2012, for psychics, for all kinds of nonsense (there was even a pro-Moon hoax ad on my page debunking the Moon Hoax!).
I’ve long held that this is not necessarily such a terrible thing; I think most people on the web are savvy enough to understand that I don’t endorse that nonsense. If the ad is particularly atrocious I’ll block it, but there are a thousand more elbowing each other out of the way to take its place. It’s a losing fight sometimes.
And there are other considerations too… but instead of explaining them here, I’ll let Tim Farley of the Skeptical Software Tools website take care of it. He makes a pretty good case that not only are these ads not bad, but they can actually do some good. [Note added after I initially wrote this post: Fraser at Universe Today has more to say on this.]
He’s right… but I do have to say that those ads can be downright ookie and skeevy, and I sometimes wish they weren’t there at all. When one pops up here, I let the Hive Overmind know and they block it. If you do see an overly egregious one here, let em know. I need to know the URL to which it links (just saying it’s an ad for, say, a creationist camp won’t help; I need the web address to block it), and then we can block it.
So in my mind the question is still up in the air: are contextual ads evil or not? Food for thought, to get comments rolling: the ad might be for something which is not nonsense, but may be for something I don’t care about… like say a particular movie I haven’t seen. People wouldn’t complain about that ad’s content, I suspect. So what to do?
April 19th, 2009 at 8:40 am
You think your site is bad?
Sarah Palin’s PAC advertised on AMERICAblog. Meaning she paid money to those who worked so hard to defeat her, and will continue to do so. I’m hopelessly amused.
April 19th, 2009 at 8:58 am
It depends on the site and the ad. I’ve seen posts on Steve Novella’s site where he talked about the vaccine controversy with ads on the same page pushing for mercury chelation therapy. Not destructive in itself but saddening when you think of all the other pages out there and what kind of reach those ads actually have.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Speaking as a lifetime newspaperman, I can tell you that the question of the relation between ads and editorial has a long long history that predates decisions by contextual algorithms. The classic example was cigarette ads; if you placed them onto or facing the obituary page, the companies wouldn’t pay. Even today, papers won’t take various types of classified ads (suspect “work at home” schemes, erotic massage, etc.) that fill Craiglist and online sites.
An amusing example involved our copy desk putting a wire story on a back page above a large ad – in pre-pagination times, so the desk didn’t know what the ad was. The wire story was about how certain types of diets are baloney … the ad, as we saw when the paper came off the presses, was for one of those diets. Holy cow, the advertising folks hit the roof!
Incidentally, I can also say that my decades of journalistic snobbery about advertisements has faded as ads themselves, and therefore the solidity of my paycheck, have disappeared. Obviously, Phil’s income isn’t dependent on click-throughs of Google ads.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:17 am
My biggest concern about ads on the web are the sheer number of malicious ones that get through. These companies accept ads from thousands of other companies, stick them on websites, claim they’re safe, and don’t even have a token programmer making sure that flashing javascript ad doesn’t install a virus?
It’s just absurd. I started using ad blockers after the Virtumonde virus. Because I don’t care anymore. If the advertisers can’t be assed to at least glance at the ads they’re serving up, I can’t be bothered to risk looking at them.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:35 am
What are these advertisemnts you speak of? Between FireFox and AdBlock, I can honestly say I have not seen an advert on this site at all. Ever.
Which is not to say that I don’t have one of those google adword accounts, but I think I have managed to collect a total of $15 in a year and a half… Might as well be non-existent to me.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Other than that they clutter up my life, I have no problem with the ads. In fact, I think they serve a good purpose. They are right there next to your column, as if you were pointing and shouting, “See? See? That’s the nonsense I’m talking about!”
April 19th, 2009 at 9:46 am
After that I was looking for ads all over the place… then I remembered I use ABP add on for Firefox, Add Block Plus and everything else on BA is blocked.
I just temporarily allowed them for this session to click on a few… it is the best way to support sites you enjoy. The unfortunate thing about ABP is you often forget to temporarily allow ads for a session to click on it and support a site you enjoy.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:52 am
I’ll admit that I’m not quite clear on how it all works, but isn’t the point of Google ads to get PAID? Does someone with a Nostradamus ad get paid if it merely appears on your site, or just if someone clicks through to it? Either way, by having them appear, you’re helping them.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:59 am
I think that most people who post here are going to look at them and laugh (except me and LarianLeQuella , apparently, all hail AdBlock Plus) and those who will take them seriously despite what you say here are probably so far gone that they’re going to click on them anyway.
April 19th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Actually, if you click on an ad, the page that it’s dispalyed on (i.e. this site) pays a small amount of money TO Dr. Plait or The Hive Overmind (whoever has the google account). The people who have their advert here have to pay money to google for the privelidge to display the add, and then they can run out of funds if a lot of folks click on them.
Now, before people get click happy on all the dumb ads on the page and try to run the loonies out of money, google has a lot of rules, regulations, and algorithms that can cause someone’s account to get banned from google (it happened to me, hence why my google account is now under my wife’s name…). Very few folks ever successfully fight google on this too.
Hence why I always take the approach tototally ignore the ads.
April 19th, 2009 at 10:23 am
For the specific user base that reads the Bad Astronomy web page, I doubt that any significant number of people will be swayed by an Astrology Ad (or similar).
So, from a contextual ad point of view, the ad is taking up advertising space that an ad useful to the users might have occupied. That’s unfortunate.
The flip side is that if users want to click on the astrology ad as a matter of course, then Phil still gets his nickel, the advertiser pays his dime, the user gets a chuckle, and nobody except the advertiser is the worse off for the experience. I cannot think of a better group of people to be worse off for the experience.
April 19th, 2009 at 10:49 am
You should just get rid of Google ads. Use project wonderful or some other service so fine skeptic business people (AHEM) can buy space there instead. Google ads are so ubiquitous and annoying… I’ve never clicked on one.
April 19th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Ad (pun intended) Me to the ‘what ads? AdBlock’ category.
Of course, keep in mind we are not ‘citizens’, we are ‘consumers’.
J/P=?
April 19th, 2009 at 11:50 am
This is HUGE pet peeve of mine. What’s the point of putting advertising on a web page that has little chance of attracting the interest of the readers?
I don’t mind advertising on the web – I think it’s the way of the future. But if an ad looks skeevy and is for something I have no interest in, there’s NO WAY I’m clicking on it.
It’s so pointless in this case, because I’m sure there’s ample things that skeptics *would* be interested in. Books, movies, television shows, other websites, even products. I mean skeptics and science buffs get dry hands like everyone else, amiright?
What you all need is a skeptical/science-interest ad network similar to The Deck (which caters to web designers and tech geekery). Advertise something I might be interested in, and I’LL CLICK.
April 19th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Since you have some controversial subjects, if it bothers you that people with opposing viewpoints are advertising on your website, then maybe it’s time to switch to fixed advertising. You have a pretty good viewership rank and are probably a good candidate for certain, specific advertisers, e.g. Scientific American Book of the Month club (or is that conflict of interest?!). This works because you may have an agreement where you get a flat amount per month, so you don’t rely on clicks (and if it’s for anti-vaccines, you probably won’t be getting too many clicks from your readership) and you’re endorsing a product you’re advertising.
April 19th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
“… are contextual ads evil or not?”
Up front, I want to point out that I feel that Phil and this site are first rate. What follows is not a criticism directed at either.
All advertising is evil. Except, perhaps, for those rare ads that are purely informational and not designed to in any way at all sell, deceive, manipulate, or otherwise perpetrate some kind of fraud. Advertising inherently skews the veracity of the site it is associated with. Some folks insist that advertising is a necessary evil. I am not convinced.
It strikes me not so much as a necessary evil, but as a possibly unavoidable hypocrisy. I feel any ad detracts from the logos and ethos of any site. How can anyone, aside from the “necessary evil” crowd condone the hypocrisy of trying to tell truth while shilling, however indirectly, for frauds of one kind or another.
April 19th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Adblock here as well. I rarely see ads of any sort. That being said, I see no problem with it. At worst it does nothing, at best it costs the advertisers money and money (or Discover Magazine) money. I see no harm in it.
April 19th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
That should be: at best it costs the advertisers money and gives Phil (or Discover Magazine) money.
April 19th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Just get rid of them altogether. What do they give you? Surely the income isn’t anything to write home about, so why have something on your site that you may disagree with?
April 19th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Hey, put me down for clicking on obnoxious ads and diverting money to Phil. It just seems so poetically appropriate,,,
GAry 7
April 19th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I really don’t pay any attention to ads on the net and I certainly don’t click on them. Advertising is everywhere you can’t escape it. If I need something I do my own research and make up my own mind.
April 19th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I haven’t even noticed the ads. Anything outside of text or pictures embedded in the text I ignore and do not even realize I’m doing it. For example, while reading Tim’s page (linked to by Phil above) I completely overlooked the quote in the Twitter box, and only caught it when Tim mentioned it. It had looked like an ad to me and I filtered it right out. Kind of cool…sort of like having adblock in the brain although I sometimes wonder what else I am missing.
April 19th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
AdBlock Plus here. I haven’t seen an ad in so long I almost forget what they look like.
For me, banner-type ads are a minor annoyance. What’s far worse, IMO is that advertisers are flocking to social media, where they are insidious… instead of just putting up a banner ad hawking their product, you’ll get companies kiboizing Twitter looking for mentions of their product… Then they follow that person and try to engage them in a conversation, spinning the product in a positive light. It’s dishonest and harkens back to the days of shills in the crowd. I found it very off-putting given the great potential Twitter has for honest communication. If I want to say that iPhones suck, I don’t want some paid Apple shill pretending to be interested in what I’m saying so he can spew fanboi crap to my followers.
Marketers and PR people want to blur the line between conversation and advertising, and it’s a direction I don’t really want to go.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I don’t agree completely with Tim Farley’s article, but one thing he said I wholeheartedly agree with: “Get over it. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.” It does seem annoying occasionally that we actually kind of need to have these ridiculous ads on our skeptical sites. But the technical problems in avoiding them just doesn’t make it worth fighting over.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Thanks Phil, I’m definitely sick of all the psychic ads I’m getting. I wonder if they target science-related sites or if they’re simply one of the biggest advertisers?
April 19th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Oops … read Farley’s article … we’re doomed to see such nonsense simply because the keywords appear. That’s hilarious really because in the case of blogs like this, the contextual ads will be almost 100% ineffective (although it may be very effective at annoying people).
April 19th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Phil, take comfort in the fact that any creationist, anti-vaxer, or moon-hoax true-believer gets equally spammed by the myriad skeptical websites debunking their claims.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Whats ads? Ad block is awesome.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Well if you think about it, the more ads they send to your site where no one takes them seriously, the more they’re spending on nothing. It’s better that the ads be here than at some place where people are vulnerable to baloney.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
I’m sure it’s not what you had in mind, but putting entries in your HOSTS file pointing unpleasant things like google-analytics.com tp 127.0.0.1 works wonders and has the added benefit of not broadcasting everything you do on the Internet go Google. I’m happy to view ads served from the web server I’m visiting, but not willing to help 3rd party ad servers develope a “profile” about me. An per the discussion from the blog entry, this type of context based advertising doesn’t really work well anyhow.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
If you don’t like them, click them until they go broke.
April 19th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I run Adblock Plus as well so I’m not at all bothered by the ads. Out of curiosity I just disabled it and re-loaded this page. It seemed to be slower, but I got an ad for an exhibition at the New York Academy of Sciences and one for the Imagine Science Film Festival. Not too bad I would say, but I still prefer the look of the site without the ads – less cluttered. At least with ABP it’s my choice.
April 19th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
While I usually don’t even look at the ads, and mostly don’t care, I do find it annoying when I see an ad that is completely counter to the skeptical nature of the website. If there were a way to allow truly worthwhile companies to advertise, especially if they’d be completely drowned in the noise with Google, I would think it would be beneficial to everyone.
April 19th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I usually just block the ads out mentally.
April 19th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
If these are contextual ads, they don’t seem particularly well-targeted. I really can’t see any audience overlap between readers of this site and people looking for psychic readings and anti-vaxxers’ mercury treatments. The people who are seriously looking for those types of services obviously don’t read Phil’s blog.
As for advertising on the web in general, I use ABP so I’m not subjected to it. Advertisers failed to realize that flashy, obnoxious, off-target ads were not welcome and making them more intrusive would not improve click-through rates. It is out of this time period that ABP delivered our salvation. Now, just as some advertisers are starting to deliver timely accurate advertisements, so much of the audience has blockers, it’s like herd immunity for ads.
OTOH, I like seeing product placements that naturally fit into the story; that don’t look like they were forced into the narrative just to push that product.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Advertisements? They exist on the internet? I’ve never seen one.
Just like reading a newspaper. There are stories with empty space in between. Every Sunday I toss out 25 completely blank sections of a couple of pages each.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Did I mention you are the 100,000 customer…this is not a joke!!!
April 19th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Wow. You had those ads? I use adblocker and am amazed what ads show up on different websites, I usually read about them in the comment section. This isn’t a plug, by the way. I really do use it and another ad filter when I use IE. Really, I hate ads. I have been muting the ads on TV since the days I had to get up and manually turn the volume down.
April 19th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
It was great to finally meet you in person, Phil. Good luck tomorrow at the American Museum of Natural History!
April 19th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
I have a website of an entirely different subject matter, but also don’t want to see ‘competitor’ ads on my site. Funnily enough, I earn 70% more from Amazon referrals (of which I have complete control over what kinds of products are shown) than Google ads – so much so that they only place google ads appear on my site is on the search page, where using Google search doesn’t allow you to remove the contextual ads. Why not just only use certain money-making ad systems and ignore Adsense altogether?
April 20th, 2009 at 12:07 am
Well, 2012 is just a movie.
I’m sorry, but the trailer with the wave coming over the Himalayas was cool. But, yeah, I know with Emmerlich in charge there is little hope for the best.
April 20th, 2009 at 12:13 am
I remember the early days of contextual ads. I did a web search on Ebola, and got text ads along the lines of “Click here to find the best places to buy Ebola online!”
They would toss the search term into any phrase like the old Mad Libs game.
“Purchase cancer at huge discounts!”
“New and used prostate search service!” <— Probably a link to the Igors out in Uberwald.
April 20th, 2009 at 12:19 am
Hehe, I noticed one a few days ago
Personally, I got accustomed to that peripheral form of web advertising, but still they feel like a vendor pitching greasy snacks at a dieters convention!
April 20th, 2009 at 2:15 am
I dunno–I got a real kick out of seeing an ad for my nemesis ISR (International Star Registry) on your blog, Phil! Almost spilled my tea, I was laughing so hard…
April 20th, 2009 at 3:48 am
@Quiet Desperation:
I got some pretty funny stuff just searching for things. While looking for ‘LaTeX’ it is actually quite surprising that maybe the first 2 results are relevant. One of the funniest hits I’ve had though was from a robot responder. I was searching for “atmospheric transmission” and got a mechanical overhaul site: “We guarantee the lowest price and satisfaction (lowest satisfaction?) on repairing your atmospheric transmission.”
I miss the Golden Age of MAD when Bill Gaines was running the show; getting my latest load of trash from the usual gang of idiots was the highlight of the month.
April 20th, 2009 at 5:30 am
The biggest problem I see is that if the ads you show are in opposition to your content, your readers are far less likely to click on them. If your system pays on a per-click basis, you’re unlikely to get much of a payout from the “badvertisements.”
April 20th, 2009 at 5:46 am
I’ll also weigh in with the “Wow you have ads?” comments. Srsly? Haven’t many of you heard about the AdBlock extension for Firefox? I haven’t seen an ad in such a long time, I thought it was just the web finally getting a clue again. I don’t understand why anyone with a brain (or even half of one) would ever click on an advertisement. Anyone have any good reasons? I realise that ads are a way to make money, however, they are usually intrusive and a bit disconcerting sometimes. Google Ads are a little better, because they are only text based, but they still get blocked regardless.
April 20th, 2009 at 7:45 am
Just to see what people are talking about I clicked “Disable on this Page Only” on my ABPlus and re-loaded the page. I got a head banner and a side banner from National Geographic with some heavy flash content (I didn’t see any Google side bar ads though). Took the page about 4 times longer than normal to load and it sized up differently in my browser. Pretty easy call to keep ABPlus running from now on.
April 20th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Never look at advertisements, completely block them out of your life. They don’t exist.
April 20th, 2009 at 8:56 am
My personal opinion is that ads are sensory pollution, because they have minimal value to the observer, while they distract him/her from other sensory input that does have value.
Yes, I’m one of those who mute the TV during the commercials. I also have opted out from receiving spam in my snailmail, I throw away all other hardware spam before reading, and I use AdBlock. But it still irritates me sometimes.
April 20th, 2009 at 9:06 am
I would like to point out that AdBlock should be paying the Hive Overmind for the above comment thread: talk about advertising!
April 20th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Yet another ABP user here…
April 20th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I actually don’t mind the crazy ads, I find it kinda funny that they’re subsidizing reality.
As for AdBlock I don’t use it, I can see why people do but I’m of the mindset that this content wouldn’t exist without advertising so I try to avoid blocking it.
April 20th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
I complained to GoogleAds about a laser pointer ad (not your humdrum, university lecturer variety – the kind they point at the cockpits of passenger aircraft: http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24063937-5006301,00.html) that appeared on your site.
No response, no action taken. I still see the ad now and then
.
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:36 am
Well now. Could a visitor to this site be lured in by one of the less obvious and more deceptive woo adverts? I think they could. Just as certain cults offer to do you a service, and before you know you’ve given them your debit card and had your ears pierced.
I’m curious about the system. Does it work selectively from both sides? Would you promote your site through AdSense? If you’re pro-choice then can you avoid being paired with pro-life? If you’re for adult readers (I don’t mean dirty) then can you avoid that being mistaken?
When the tsunami hit across Asia, some lesser news web sites (computer sites that I read) initially got reports of the crisis adorned with Google ads for surfing equipment. I wrote in and somebody stopped it.