Ads You're Not Thrilled With But Don't Want To Block

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   Lisa HWposted 14 years ago

   For ages I had nothing but pet ads across the top of a blog, because I'd written one thing about cats.  The blog is a "general-topic" type of thing, so I was hoping the pet ads would go away.  I didn't want to block them because - really - they weren't hurting anyone and weren't offensive, and someone was paying to have them on there.  It seemed, though, that no matter what I wrote the pet ads stayed (as if I had a pet blog).  OK - they finally disappeared, only to be replaced by a bunch of bereavement ads (which were worse than having pet ads, as far as I was concerned).  As soon as anyone would get to the blog they'd be met with a string of bereavement ads.  How cheerful!  I guess that's because I made the mistake of writing something like "how to deal with loss" (or whatever).  Again, I'd add other things but the death ads stayed. 
   
   Thank goodness.  Thank goodness.  I just discovered they've finally been replaced by ads related to children.  Maybe now my blog won't look like a "death blog".     There's a part of me that thinks I should just be grateful anyone would put their ads on blogs like mine (weird and not really like a well developed blog should be).  There's another part of me, though, that doesn't really like something like bereavement ads across the top of a generally "non-bereavement" page.  (I'll block ads that I think will "tacky up" my pages, but something like bereavement ads aren't tacky.  They're just kind of bummers that make my page look particularly "un-fun".  Then again, someone has to have bereavement ads. 
   
   Am I the only one who so "passively" just goes with whatever ads I get, provided they're aren't tacky (but who is willing to secretly kind of wishes they'd go away)?     Oh, the dilemma of it all....

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2. 62

   Helen Caterposted 14 years ago

   I keep getting those horrible flashing ads for work. I think they are there when hubpages has control. I hate them and people must just click straight out. I know i would.

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3. 61

   Lisa HWposted 14 years ago

   On, shall we say, "another writing site", they put talking ads.  It's a giant shock when  you click on an article and some blaring voice comes out of where you're not sure of and talks about something completely unrelated to the article.     It takes the person not familiar with where it's coming from a little while to figure out where it is, and how to shut off the sound. 

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      EmpressFelicityposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I *hate* talking ads, and sound on web pages generally. I would rather be given the choice of whether to click on something that has sound, instead of having to click on a button to turn the sound off. 
      
      On a related note to the subject of this thread: I have a hub called "Confessions of an Eco-sceptic", which - as the title suggests - questions the existence of man-made global warming.  Most of the Adsense ads on it are to do with buying carbon offsets, which is the last thing I want to encourage my readers to do!  Rather than blocking each advertiser URL by URL (only to have the blocked ads replaced by more of the same ilk), I would love to be able to block all ads that feature a certain type of product.
      
      Mind you, I'm not going to lose any sleep over the eco-sceptic hub, since virtually all of its traffic has come from within Hub Pages so I'm unlikely to have had any clicks off it.

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4. 61

   Lisa HWposted 14 years ago

   It would be kind of good to be able to block specific products across the board.  I didn't lose any sleep over the bereavement things either, but it just made my blog look like a giant downer.    Maybe it's so hard for people like those bereavement people to find blogs where their ads could at all look at least a shred appropriate, they hang onto any site that ever mentioned the word "loss". 

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      EmpressFelicityposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      ...or using the word "piles" on your site and getting ads for haemorrhoid treatments

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5. 61

   Lisa HWposted 14 years ago

       I one time got blocked from a social-discussion type site because I used an absolutely innocent word (but it turns out that these days people have turned that word into a non-innocent word; which I knew, but which never occurred to me - in view of the fact that my mind doesn't generally run along the gutter  ).  I was shocked when I got some red-flag type of thing on the site.

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