I am a webmaster of a small technical content based website and intend to use my own banner system to publish advertising as a means to supplement my income. Ideally I would get a job in I.T. such as a PC technician, but due to my partners career that has us moving every few years in some rather remote places my job opportinuties in this area are rather limited.
Anyway, back on topic. It is my intention to only accept advertisments that are directly related to the content of my site, and I've been reading a lot of Wladimir's blog posts citing responsible advertising and was wanting to quantify this. I realise that a lot of people here dispise advertising in all forms, and I can appreciate that. However I would love to hear what made the rest of us take the time to insall ABP. I basically want to compile a guideline list for my advertisers so that any advertising displayed on my site is not obtrusive or offensive to my visitors. Here is what I have to date;
- no sound
- no mouse over interactivity
- no flashing, pulsing or strongly contrasting bright colours
- Limit of 40Kb per banner
- Wording of adverts must directly relate to the products and/or services on offer, i.e no "punch the monkey to win" style ads.
Anything else?
What constitutes responsible advertising?
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jamieplucinski
- Posts: 183
- Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 4:42 pm
- Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Contact:
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Wladimir Palant
WhatMakesBadAds: Too bad, it seems that you entered an invalid email address in my blog. I actually hoped to discuss your idea with you via mail. Whatever...
So, if we are speaking about some certification about "good ads". The "no external servers" requirement is probably too strict, most webmasters lack the knowledge to implement this. However, requiring advertisers to use one server name only should be realistic. So the common practice where a script from a.com inserts a script from b.com that finally inserts an image from c.com (if you are lucky, there might also be d.com, e.com and f.com) should be forbidden - it increases page load times, makes web pages unreliable (because depending on many external servers) and violates user's privacy (by letting many advertising servers know what the user is currently up to).
Additionally, cutting down the number of requests should be possible as well. I can hardly see why somebody would need to make more than two requests to display one ad. And even in this case one of the two requests would be a general script that can (should) be cached.
Speaking of scripts: allowing advertisers to insert random scripts into the web page is a security risk and bad for privacy. So advertisements that are inserted as iframes or images are way preferable.
Content of the ads must be relevant, meaning that the advertiser really has to consider the site's target audience when choosing the ads to display. This is especially the case when advertising for adult content - this is rarely a concern on English-language sites, but I often see adult advertising in regular Russian sites.
Animations, sound, attention-grabbing colors or fonts are definitely not allowed (banner blindness makes these ads ignored but they are still distracting). This criterion rules out Flash ads and favors text ads. Also, ensuring a clear separation between ads and content is a requirement.
There is some to be said about placement of ads - but this is often something the advertiser has no influence on.
So, if we are speaking about some certification about "good ads". The "no external servers" requirement is probably too strict, most webmasters lack the knowledge to implement this. However, requiring advertisers to use one server name only should be realistic. So the common practice where a script from a.com inserts a script from b.com that finally inserts an image from c.com (if you are lucky, there might also be d.com, e.com and f.com) should be forbidden - it increases page load times, makes web pages unreliable (because depending on many external servers) and violates user's privacy (by letting many advertising servers know what the user is currently up to).
Additionally, cutting down the number of requests should be possible as well. I can hardly see why somebody would need to make more than two requests to display one ad. And even in this case one of the two requests would be a general script that can (should) be cached.
Speaking of scripts: allowing advertisers to insert random scripts into the web page is a security risk and bad for privacy. So advertisements that are inserted as iframes or images are way preferable.
Content of the ads must be relevant, meaning that the advertiser really has to consider the site's target audience when choosing the ads to display. This is especially the case when advertising for adult content - this is rarely a concern on English-language sites, but I often see adult advertising in regular Russian sites.
Animations, sound, attention-grabbing colors or fonts are definitely not allowed (banner blindness makes these ads ignored but they are still distracting). This criterion rules out Flash ads and favors text ads. Also, ensuring a clear separation between ads and content is a requirement.
There is some to be said about placement of ads - but this is often something the advertiser has no influence on.
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WhatMakesBadAds
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Wladimir Palant