Please Don't Block Wrong Planet Ads

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I deactivated the Adblock Plus for WrongPlanet.
But how do I block the ads cookies?

I dont see much issue with the ads.Other sites such as Free Dominion use ads to hekp pay to run the site, ....they currently use a combination of ads and member contributions

This thread is from 3 years ago, so it's not relevant today.

Yeah, but the membership has ballooned from 4000 (when the thread was written) to over 30,000 today.

I am amazed that WP can still finance things without charging fees. In either case, it's better than those ads that cover up certain text, and you have to wait for them to stop moving before you can close them.

I don't like the blinking ads, but I'm using Chrome so I can't block them.

I don't block ads unless I see those people with closeups of bad teeth. WTF is that about???! !! First of all, those ads are tasteless and an insult to aesthetics. Second of all, they are a scam. If you want teeth whitened you need to go to a dentist.

I get rid of those by closing the whole window and re-opening (mostly that's just a matter of clicking a Topic Reply Notification again in my email box).......most forms of advertising just doesn't work on me even if they get the product name right under my nose, but those new ones that cover up what I'm trying to read, shouldn't be legal IMHO.

I think the ethics of it hinges on whether or not the individual has been properly forewarned about what ads are in the agreement. Maybe I just didn't look in the right places, but I don't think I was forewarned about those new intrusive ads. It's also hard to formulate a code of conduct - I'm sure my powers of ignoring ads are pretty much as good as an ad-blocker; nobody would lose any sales if I were to use one.

But there's nothing wrong with admin asking us to not use blockers......they're in a tight spot, or at least they were when the topic was first posted. Maybe the solution would be a blocker that made the advertisers think the ads had got through?

Those ads of people clutching great handfuls of surplus body fat really should be blocked as a basic human right Their claims don't look at all believable and it just annoys me that they get away with making them.

I block all ads on all sites....so It's not like I'm singling out WP.

Does it help more if people click on the ads? I don't mind them being there at all, but I never click. Should I? (this may be a stupid question, but I don't know how this stuff works.)

I don't know how it affects the costs of the site when you click, but I do know it affects the costs of the advertiser, in most models. We're seeing a lot of inappropriate ads for our population at this moment in time, however, and I would NOT want people clicking on those. WP doesn't choose the ads, if I understand it correctly, a third party company does. I would suspect that the ad supplier uses the click data, in part, to choose which ads rotate on the site. If you click on inappropriate ads, that encourages them. On the flip side, if you see something that sparks your interest, clicking might encourage more of that sort.

But its really frustrating to be looking at a 3 year old thread and have no idea how Alex feels about the issue at this point. Things change.

My understanding of how advertisments work is that the ads are provided by a third party and they're pretty specific to each user. They look for keywords in the sites you visit and then show ads that fit those keywords.

For instance, everyone here is probably going to see ads that have to do with the autism spectrum, because that's what this site is about. You can't go to a single page here without the word autism showing up, because it's in the banner up top. The ads see that and pull up ads that are under their autism category to display.

There will also be fairly generic ads. Lots of people want to lose weight and/or earn money, so those ads are also likely to get clicked (in theory, anyway).

However, there are also specific ones for each person. If you search glasses repeatedly or read a lot of sites about glasses, you're going to start seeing ads for glasses. It saw that keyword and picked it up.

Here's a few (this site) examples, if you want. A few months or so ago, there was a discussion in another part of the forum about acid reflux ads. Most people didn't have them, but if they went to that topic (especially repeatedly) and replied, the ads starting showing up. It recognized that keyword - acid reflux - assumed that everyone had it or was at least interested in it, and started showing ads for it. It doesn't even have to be here on the site; I got a ton of ads here for diabetes after my mother did some searches for it on Google.

On the other hand, shortly after I joined, another person from Ohio started getting dating ads for wealthy men on Lake Erie. He mentioned it and a few people replied. The post wasn't all that popular, because back then ads weren't such a big deal, I guess, and probably because it's funnier if you live in Ohio (I did at the time), but it got replies. Of everyone on the thread though, I was the only other one who ever saw it, and that was after the post and even then only twice. Why not everyone, since it happened in the thread up there? Well, for one thing, Ohio isn't as big of a keyword as acid reflux and autism, probably. It's not that big of a state, and there's not much special about it. Beyond that, the two of us who did see it also did outside searches for things related to it and/or also mentioned it in other posts. So it all depends.

I don't think that clicking the ads will increase them for other people, but it probably will increase them for you. What will increase the ads for multiple people - and this is kind of a Catch 22 - is openly complaining about them. The ad searchers don't get that you're saying I don't like dental ads; they see the dental and assume that that's what you want, so you see more. And if other people quote that or post about it, they're going to start seeing those same ads. I didn't see any of those ads until Dilbert mentioned them, and now there's one hanging on the side. It doesn't bother me, but that's just a personal thing.

All my ads are blocked, I don't have exceptions.

Rain Song, thanks for all that great information! That all seems likely. And I won't quote your post, lol, because of the potential key words

Yep.....they're basically compiling extremely low-quality customer profiles, assuming (most often quite incorrectly) that if you mention anything that could be construed as a product, you want ads for that product. Apparently the advertising industry doesn't care how many people it annoys as long as it makes the occasional sale, which speaks volumes about its attitude to society. That, to my mind, justifies the use of reasonable force to dodge irrelevent ads (e.g. by using an ad blocker). When advertisers can limit themselves to providing information about stuff the individual is really looking to buy, then blocking will be unnecessary. But they won't, because they know it's hard for the law to reform the situation, as the Web advertisers are located all over the world. Though it's interesting that the law puts a lot of energy into policing copyright on the Web, with some success. Where there's a will, there's a way. Governments would rather waste our time than risk whacking down the sacred market. Shame on them.