On Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 10:28:57PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
I never click on banner ads, but I decided to do an experiment, just to see what sort of company Declan has established this business relationship (of whatever kind) with.
To defray in part the costs of running the site, I use Burst Media (burstmedia.com), an ad agency similar in principle to Doubleclick. I include a small chunk of HTML code at the top of the webpage -- Burst salespeople sell the ads and they run on my and other sites (Burst's commission varies from 30 to 50 percent). I do not review the ads that appear on my site, and Burst adds and deletes advertisers (generally about 50 are cycling through at any one time) from the list without consulting me. News organizations would call this an editorial firewall. Burst does give me the ability to make broad choices, like reject gambling or alcohol ads (I allow them) or pop-up ads (I reject them). I'd do the same with the evil blinking ads that Tim hates, if there was a category I could reject. Fortunately, it's trivial to use ad-blocking software if this bothers you. The online ad business is in the toilet, true, but if I can pay part of the server hosting fee through the ads, I'm inclined to keep doing it. In any case, it's a stretch to say I have "established a business relationship" with an advertiser when I have no idea what ads are appearing -- it's only correct to say I've established a business relationship with Burst. -Declan