Part of my lingering responsibilities for Feministe is putting together their new ad content. This has been a personal challenge — because if you surf the internet like I do the only time you click on an ad is on accident. It is a necessary evil, seeing that the hosting service was becoming increasingly unreliable and the alternative options for hosting are incredibly expensive. After several long discussions about how to monetize the site, I opted for increased BlogAds exposure and the addition of Google Adsense.
I have immense respect for BlogAds because they allow people to finance what they love to do, and additionally the host and the advertiser filter the ad content based on their own preferences, but Google Adsense seems to be more of a crapshoot. Google’s keyword advertising pulls keywords from the blog and pairs them with “matching” advertisements, some of which are really disappointing.
Tonight while optimizing the ad content and filtering inappropriate ad material, I discovered a few things:
- Posts discussing race and racism will include advertisements for Date-An-Asian/China Love personals sites (literally, one of them is called China Love) and DOWNLOAD THE HOTTEST RINGTONE.
- Posts discussing feminism and the pro-choice movement will include advertisements for crisis pregnancy centers, gravestones (!), and minister-cum-presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
- All of them include ads on how to get rid of “stubborn belly fat,” presumably because a feminist website focuses in part on women’s issues, and women are fatty weight-obsessed fatties.
One of the things that makes ad hosting so difficult is that advertising aims to hit the most common denominator, which means many advertisers rely on stereotypes and generalizations to hit their targets. This is obviously problematic on a site professing anti-racist and anti-sexist politics. The thing that makes it that much more difficult online is that the web-savvy can play the computerized system to their own advantage and thereby put gravestone advertising on all blog posts related to abortion on a pro-choice, feminist website. Which wastes my damned time.
I dunno, I for one still get a lot of enjoyment out of looking at the ads on Pandagon. At least I know immediately not to click them, whereas some ads from appropriately credentialed lefty sources trick me into clicking them, and I usually end up irritated.
Ads? What ads?
your use of the colloquial “on accident” rather than the more formal “by accident” warms my heart. it reminds me of things i used to do on purpose to make my mom (who was a linguist) upset.
i am amazed, and glad, to hear that there is actual ad filtering going on. of course, i may be the minority in this viewpoint, but nearly all adsense/blogads/similar content is anathema to me - it frequently crashes my browser, and sometimes my computer.
but i don’t wish to appear to complain about its presence - i know that “blogging isn’t free”. thanks for all your hard work.