The Ethics of Advertisement

Zillah

I know the ads on boards are connected to google somehow so I'm not sure how the system works, but I was wondering if boards has a policy on what kind of ads it shows?

The one that caught my attention (and ire) was one on the Atheists and Agnostics forum. It links to a website that is essentially a Creationist front where they twist and warp the truth, misrepresent science and essentially disingenuously forward nonesense as scientific truth.

Those of you with an understanding of science, prepare to vomit into your own scorn:
"Proof that DNA was designed by God"
"Do your own Darwinian Evolution experiments with the Random Mutation Generator "
"We have proof that life on planet earth was designed by a mind"

While I understand that I personally care more about this than most might, is that the sort of stuff boards wants to support? It greatly saddens me to see this sort of nonesense on Board's banner.

Boston

Well google scans the content of the page and changes banners accordingly. The sites may be all bull****, but they are relevant. Also Boards management have no ethical duty to insure the the members aren't exposed to stupid ideas. It happens all the time on boards.

Zillah

Boston wrote:

Also Boards management have no ethical duty to insure the the members aren't exposed to stupid ideas. It happens all the time on boards.

True. But there is a difference between that and promoting it on the Board's banner in exchange for money.

Again, I know this isn't that big a deal but I wanted to see what others thought.

6th

I zone out from advertising (though I work in the industry) so personally I couldnt care less. *Of course Zillah, who's to say that those particular links are wrong and that science is right?









*I already know you wont bite & I hope you note I'm taking the píss

Zillah

6th wrote:

*I already know you wont bite & I hope you note I'm taking the píss

I'll kill you 6th, I swear to God, I have your mobile number and several email addresses, I'll hire a private detective and track you down.

Asok

Science damn you time child!

Sparky

Is my ad doing ok?



(notices no replys)

6th

Zillah wrote:

I swear to God

Thats the bit that made me laugh!

challengemaster

uhm.. adblock plus ?

just dont see em then

Zillah

6th wrote:

Thats the bit that made me laugh!

Tis just an expression. "Oh my God", "Damn you!" or "Oh hell!" are all expressions I use out of habit, it doesn't mean anything. I also occasionally say "By the Gods!", doesn't mean I'm a polytheist

challengemaster wrote:

uhm.. adblock plus ?
just dont see em then

Again, I'm not complaining, just pondering. Personally I find such links amusing cos they're so retarded and weird, but I worry about people being duped if they don't know any better: "Huh...Honey, did you know that science has proven that God created life?"

henbane

If you click on the ad, it makes boards money and costs the creationists (who are deliberately paying for inappropriate adwords) money. Win-Win! Or rather than committing click fraud, you could click on the "ads by google" link and explain why that ad is inappropriate for the page in the feedback option at the bottom of the page.

Is there an admin option within google ads to ask google to stop serving certain ads?

Terry

challengemaster wrote:

uhm.. adblock plus ?

just dont see em then

As a non-subscriber, I do my duty to boards.ie by clicking on the ads.
I did adblock one of the christmas ones, but it wasn't an ad. It was a happy christmas message and it was flashing and I hate flashing messages.
I'll get around to subscribing one of these days. I swear.

Stark

Zillah wrote:

Again, I'm not complaining, just pondering. Personally I find such links amusing cos they're so retarded and weird, but I worry about people being duped if they don't know any better: "Huh...Honey, did you know that science has proven that God created life?"

Right. Because 14 years of Irish schooling won't fool people into believing in God, but clicking on a Google ad will.

Sparky

Like "download 24 episodes" in 24.

For shame, for shame.

Asiaprod

Zillah wrote:

I'll kill you 6th, I swear to God:D

That sure made me laugh.:D

Beruthiel

Zillah wrote:

I swear to God

Thanks for making me laugh this early in the morning

seamus

As Boston points out, the ads are essentially automatic. Google looks at the content of the page and uses some of its fancy-pants ranking and comparision and puts up ads which it may feel are relevant to the discussion at hand.

Since it's automated, I personally feel that the issue of micro-ethics* is moot because there's no quality control (i.e. nobody scanning to check what ads appear on what pages), hence there is no-one making any ethical decisions.

The combination of threads and ads can be hilarious at times.

*When I say micro-ethics, I'm talking about ethical issues that aren't of much significance, such as this. Proper ethics such as "Do we show porn ads?", do come into play even with automated systems, because one has the option to ban an entire category of advertising.

Vexorg

I think Seamus put it quite nicely, thank you.

If we allow the Creationist's to come and discuss their ideas in a polite and civilised way, then I think a google advert, that is served based on the content of a forum, is OK. We did not choose specific adverts.

Adverts served that go against the some of the basic principles of boards.ie, promoting pornography, racism, abuse, etc. while unlikely to happen would be removed.

V.

popebenny16

Is that the programme? Apparently it looks at what the theme of the board is and inserts appropriate ads. As I'm not technically minded at all I just find the technology wonderful. Pity I cant get a programme to write my posts for me.

Vexorg

Thats the one.

I should also point out that we would perfer that you only folow a link if its something of interest to you. We would perfer not to get any revenue than have to click on something you have no interest in. Thanks for thinking of us in that way, but its not somthing we are happy with.

Hobbes

Boston wrote:

Boards management have no ethical duty to insure the the members aren't exposed to stupid ideas. It happens all the time on boards.

Google is though. If an ad goes up that doesn't match the content of the page you can complain to google. For example lets say we had an AA board and google was spamming adverts for alcohol. Then you have the right to complain to google and they will look into it.

Hobbes

tbh I haven't paid much attention to the adverts, suppose I should. A quick look at each forum seems most are trying to get people hooked up.

Hobbes

Hmmm... Intresting the Eve forum is posting Adsense adverts that would get you banned from Eve online if you used them. They would also get you banned from the Eve forum if anyone else posted those links.

tba

Creationists and Advertisements are both the same,

ignore them and they will go away.

5uspect

But you can't adblock an annoying creationist...

tba

Im sure somebody will make an extension for FF that will allow that.

Boston

Hobbes wrote:

Google is though. If an ad goes up that doesn't match the content of the page you can complain to google. For example lets say we had an AA board and google was spamming adverts for alcohol. Then you have the right to complain to google and they will look into it.

Only because that's not suitable content for the forum. Would creationist topics be unsuitable for the forum in Questions?

Hobbes

Boston wrote:

Only because that's not suitable content for the forum. Would creationist topics be unsuitable for the forum in Questions?

TBH I see the eve forum adverts as a bigger threat. Someone gets interested in Eve via boards.ie. Sees the advert to buy a bit of cash, clicks the link, pays for the cash and then through an audit by CCP gets banned from the game.

Hobbes

Strange now that I checking the eve forum at home its showing Irish based adverts. In Work they were all "Buy Isk!" sites.

Boston

You should report the add to the admins. I mean if it links to content that would otherwise not be allowed, then it's pretty clear cut what to do. Provided of course the admins have control over the type of adds allowed.

DeVore

challengemaster wrote:

uhm.. adblock plus ?

just dont see em then

<edit> too annoyed at someone rubbing that in my face after the week I've had to respond reasonably.</edit>



Thanks for your support.

DeV.

parsi

The Parenting forum has a useful batch of ads for divorce at the moment...

Faith

Heh, they're on AH too.

Hagar

You think that's bad? Lolocaust has an ad for "Butcher Ireland".:eek:

Zillah

Beruthiel wrote:

Thanks for making me laugh this early in the morning

Asiaprod wrote:

That sure made me laugh.:D

The two of you should know better!!

DeVore

Their dime, their ad. I dont want to get into moderating ads beyond certain extreme possibilities.

DeV.

Hagar

I think if you want the ads to be seen the word "adblock" should be added to the censor list.

Fair enough if people know about it already and use it but it's counter-productive to allow posts which advocate it's use. I'm sure the advertisers already take a dim view of it being mentioned so often.

/Edit Butcher Ireland seems to be an employment agency of some type, not homicidal maniacs

parsi

Thanks for the clarification Hagar - I was worried about visiting a site that may have dubious tendencies.

Stark

They butcher you in the figurative sense.

DeVore

If people want to block ads, they will. I honestly am ambivalent if they do. If someone wants to leach without the decency to even give back an ad-hit then so be it. What I really object to is that they stick it in our faces.
We play the game fair, we dont do anything underhand or intrusive with the ads, so people might want to think about "sustainability" of sites like this.

Thankfully enough do.

DeV.

Hobbes

Hagar wrote:

Fair enough if people know about it already and use it but it's counter-productive to allow posts which advocate it's use.

I disagree. I am an avid user of adblock+script block. If there is a website that you support and the ads aren't in your face then you can just select whitelist whole site and just for that site you can see adverts.

It's currently what I do with boards.ie and a couple of other places I visit.

Nevyn

I do use adblock extension but I don't block the boards add.
1) becuase it is the least I can to do support boards
2) you miss event banners and new change banners.

Hagar

Sorry, my mistake. I thought it blocked all ads. I didn't realise it could be selective. As you've guessed I don't use it. I might use it now on other sites.

I wonder how many of the people who are complaining about the ads are not subscribers? Most I would suspect. Do they think this place runs on fresh air?

5uspect

Hobbes wrote:

I disagree. I am an avid user of adblock+script block. If there is a website that you support and the ads aren't in your face then you can just select whitelist whole site and just for that site you can see adverts.

It's currently what I do with boards.ie and a couple of other places I visit.

I agree, I only use adblock to block those annoying intrusive flashing CLICK ME!!! ones that I have fortunately never seen on boards.

Ghost Train

Hagar wrote:

Sorry, my mistake. I thought it blocked all ads. I didn't realise it could be selective. As you've guessed I don't use it. I might use it now on other sites.

I wonder how many of the people who are complaining about the ads are not subscribers? Most I would suspect. Do they think this place runs on fresh air?

I use some adblocker built into my browser, didn't even know boards had banner ads until recently, when i disabled it for a few minutes. Didn't know much about there being subscription accounts either

I have had a problem with ads in that the past that were advertising something trashy on a site i liked and it took from the feel of a decent site, I don't really care if ads on good sites like boards get blocked.

If a site isn't making enough money then maybe they should have more ads, or less ads or their own ad server, or different subscription pricing or offer some other service, or maybe cut down on costs. When a site grows, gains a larger user base, their running costs go up, also their potential for ad revenue/subscriptions etc goes up. If things don't balance out, if there's not enough money coming in, then whoever is running the site is to blame, not the people who visit the site and may or may not see the ads, or choose to click them. Users should be able to complain about ads and block them if they please, just like a website can complain about not making enough money and change the way they run things if they choose.

DeVore

Things work a little differently around here though eolhc. You'll notice when the experience for users degrades, we'll go and buy servers, improve performance as best we can and generally try and get things back on the road. We also review all ads before they go live and have refused ads that we felt were too intrusive and annoying for the users because we give user experience a higher priority then making revenue.

My feeling is thus: We'll protect the users experience and try and have a standard that the ads must adhere to ie: they can't annoy the users, and in return the users will hopefully support us in turn by not blocking the ads. If this became standard industry practise, those annoying ads would become redundant and unacceptible.

In return all I would ask is for a little bit of class, if someone *still* blocks our ads ok but it would be polite not to come onto threads like this and explain how they are denying us the steam of the proverbial...

DeV.

Ghost Train

I'm not knocking the site(and was trying to talk in general terms) and have made no complaint about the ads here. Saying i don't care about seeing boards ads sounds bad, but i'm just being honest, but yeah maybe shouldn't have said it, so sorry.

The way the ads are done here seems to be the right way and i wouldn't expect any site to promote adblockers, but suggesting people should click an ad just for the purpose of clicking seems the wrong way of thinking (for me), as would censoring the word "adblocker". Take it to the extreme and you have sites that use "vote for us" or "click this ad" to proceed or trick you into clicking on a banner and i know boards is nothing like this but it's developed to that on some sites. If an advertiser is paying for an ad, i'm guess they're looking for real potential customers, which i'm sure boards provides, and not random ad clickers.

Giving out about people who don't subscribe to the site (saying they think it must run on fresh air) again seems like the wrong message, as people who post on boards can do their bit for the community and don't necessarily click ads or pay subscriptions at this point in time. I've no idea what the financial situation is with boards, or how things operate internally, but know it costs money to run, from the outside it looks like the job is done well and i hope things continue to go well for the site. I'll refrain from discussing the subject in future

btw on a different topic, boards seems a liberal place with negitive comments being directed at all sorts of things and i can understand the don't bite the hand that feeds you thing when it comes to discussing the site itself... but maybe there could be a forum somewhere where users could bitch in a semi-open way about all things boards or make general complaints without a strict need for a response to the criticism

Hagar

eolhc wrote:

Giving out about people who don't subscribe to the site (saying they think it must run on fresh air) again seems like the wrong message

It wasn't giving out, it was calling a spade a spade. People who don't contribute directly and won't contribute indirectly, by clicking an ad for instance, have no right to complain about something they are getting for nothing. Simple really. Did I miss something?

I'm speaking in a purely personal capacity here, I'm not representing the views of the management of Boards.ie.

Ghost Train

Hagar wrote:

...People who don't contribute directly and won't contribute indirectly, by clicking an ad for instance, have no right to complain about something they are getting for nothing...

okay I can see where you're coming from in relation to this thread and subject, and the world being a fair place. It's just specifically mentioning subs, just because somebody doesn't pay a subscription(i imagine most users) they shouldn't have the right to question something?
if inappropriate/offensive ads did pop up(not saying they do) general users of the site should have as much right to complain (my personal view), paying a subscription shouldn't be required

DeVore

eolhc, just for clarity, Hagar speaks for himself, I'm one of the site representatves. I haven't suggested any of the things you've replied with. We dont make distinctions between subsrcibers and non-subscribers.

We dont suggest anyone clicks an ad they aren't interested in. Not only is it dishonest but its one very quick way of annoying Google Ltd.


DeV.

Ghost Train

Maybe I got a slightly different impression from you're earlier post "If someone wants to leach without the decency to even give back an ad-hit then so be it". I took it sort of as, you'd expect users to give back an ad-hit, otherwise they're leeching. I was just replying to say you can't blame a general user if they take a certain attitude to ads when browsing the web, and don't provide ad clicks for whatever reason.

If hagor(or anyone) is willing to use an adblocker on other sites like he says he might, does that automatically mean he is leeching from the other sites, or doing wrong by them. For somebody not involved too deeply in this site it can sound pretty hypocritical. And thats the direction i was coming from.

thanks for clarifying