Hi all.
When an ad is just an ad it's annoying.
But when an ad is really content with an ad backing it I feel that's something different.
Does anyone agree with this?
An example might be linking to a site for profit. On my blog I make a list of favorite and relevant books on Amazon. But the point here is not purely an ad, but to help people find relevant things.
How can we address this? What is be a respectful way of having such ads, that is, content backed by ads. One way I see is to use the in-text amazon links.
Comments, advice, suggestions?
Possibly offtopic: the blurred line between ads and content
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jamieplucinski
- Posts: 183
- Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 4:42 pm
- Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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If the links to content really are to help users then use relevant contextual hand-placed links, say you're discussing a topic and you think linking to a book on the topic on amazon.com would help, then add the link in-line with the post ("you can checkout this great book on "TOPIC" here"). One of the most annoying things people can do is add these "recommendation" scripts to their sites that download a hefty CSS file, script, and loads of images from Amazon just to display a few links. Anything you can do on your site, with your own hands, then do it and don't rely on external sites. If you had found a nice article online and felt the need to comment about it you'd provide a link back to it, which is fine, but why people feel the need to add a "fancy" box and script to their site from another site to convey the same information is beyond me and IMHO is just down to laziness.
To sum it up anything that's written with your own hands and posted on your site is content, anything generated by an external script is junk/advertising/annoying and should be avoided at all costs. What people seem to forget is that all of these shiny new scripts from other sites to convey information all come down to hyperlinks anyway, and if people are reading your blog, as in really reading it and not just clicking on anything shiny then they'll find links to books etc in a true contextual setting, none of this Google AdSense crap where anything mentioned on your blog even once is deemed relevant indefinitely and even then they're only as relevant as the advertisers they have and how relevant the advertisers made their listing. Again it comes down to careful and intelligent placement of links, and keep it just that, links, a picture says a thousand words, but why say a thousand when you can do the same job in 4?
To sum it up anything that's written with your own hands and posted on your site is content, anything generated by an external script is junk/advertising/annoying and should be avoided at all costs. What people seem to forget is that all of these shiny new scripts from other sites to convey information all come down to hyperlinks anyway, and if people are reading your blog, as in really reading it and not just clicking on anything shiny then they'll find links to books etc in a true contextual setting, none of this Google AdSense crap where anything mentioned on your blog even once is deemed relevant indefinitely and even then they're only as relevant as the advertisers they have and how relevant the advertisers made their listing. Again it comes down to careful and intelligent placement of links, and keep it just that, links, a picture says a thousand words, but why say a thousand when you can do the same job in 4?