Do you find this ad annoying?

[rail-britain]

Adverts are what keep websites like this going. We couldn't afford the huge costs related in running this forum if we didn't have adverts

Relevant ads are always acceptable and have long been a fact of websites
Some people accept them, so long as they are discreet

What I object to are websites that are 50% or more just adverts or links to pages that are yet more adverts

In my own websites I ensure there are no gambling or duplicate adverts
It's not so easy in Google Ads any more

 

[Dai.]

I don't mind adverts on websites, but when those adverts go into your history, and display ads personal to you I find it a bit creepy. I keep getting adverts for being human on bbc three. and easy car. I can't quite work out why.

 

[jon0844]

Google bought Doubleclick which uses cookies to display ads, instead of ads related to the site/page you're on. As a result, there are times when you'll see loads of ads about things you've recently searched for, or a web site you've visited - even products you've looked at on a shopping site (or someone else on your login has).

It can be annoying if the same ads appear over and over, as there are only so many times I want to see a camera or book that I looked up (but don't want to buy).

Clear the cookies and you'll go back to more random ads.

 

[Mojo]

Or, let the admins know about the bad adverts (namely ones that wouldn't get clicked on anyway) as if the site uses AdSense, they can be blocked - and other adverts (hopefully better ones) will appear instead.

Yes. I can't say I've seen the above ads but I've noticed we had a long period where the ads were becoming more and more relevant to before, but we seem to be going back the other way now. Indeed the ad at the top of this page is advertising in US dollars!

Google Adsense enhanced its options a few months ago to remove certain categories as well as blocking individual URLs. We are blocking some of these as well as URLs for some more questionable resources and ones which we feel are totally unsuitable.

 

[me123]

In all fairness, the ambulance chasers advertising at the top ATM are fairly relevant to the thread...

 

[Mojo]

In all fairness, the ambulance chasers advertising at the top ATM are fairly relevant to the thread...

Wot? National Express?!

 

[wintonian]

Please don't. Adverts are what keep websites like this going. We couldn't afford the huge costs related in running this forum if we didn't have adverts.

Read this good blog about it: http://arstechnica.com/business/new...king-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars

You can add an exeption for sites you like.

I wonder what the adverts each individual says about their life style? Just refreshing the page a few times I end up with ads for cars, airlines and website hosting, I don't drive and I can't afford to fly around with the likes of Virgin Atlantic, so in my case it doesn’t say a lot.

 

[ralphchadkirk]

Interesting - I thought Google Adsense worked on the basis of what you searched for to provide you with adverts. For example, a couple of weeks ago I was searching for After Effects and Premiere Pro CS5 tutorials - and for a while after that, all my ads were from Adobe about CS5.

 

[43021HST]

I will give RailUK this, most of the adverts on here arn't to bad, they dont force you to look at them and their normally conveniantly out of the way.

 

[jon0844]

Interesting - I thought Google Adsense worked on the basis of what you searched for to provide you with adverts. For example, a couple of weeks ago I was searching for After Effects and Premiere Pro CS5 tutorials - and for a while after that, all my ads were from Adobe about CS5.

AdSense shows ads relevant to content it picks out from the page.
DoubleClick looks at cookies to see sites you've visited that are part of their ad network - hence ads that are very specific to you, showing products/sites you've looked at.

Google bought Doubleclick and merged it in with AdSense.

It's worth adding that different people see different ads a lot of the time (even on AdSense), based on things like region or country, time of day and a whole load of parameters set by the company that has placed an ad to be shown.

It generally works quite well, but the quality of ads has fallen (in my view) but so has online advertising in general. If the large advertisers, that bid large amounts to be shown on sites, go then we're left with the dodgier ones that get shown by default.

 

[flymo]

The ad I'm currently seeing on this page is all in Traditional Chinese so it must be location oriented. This happens on other sites and pages too. No huge problem really.