Declan should be ashamed

[Declan McCullagh]

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