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by I clicked on one of the advertising links on Omninerd and was taken to a bogus con site that I trust is an insult to the intelligence of Omninerds.
I am sorry if this post offends any advertisers who are kindly supporting our wonderful blog site, but I am at an age where I no longer will accept bullshit deliveries without sending them back. I appreciate the need for this excellent site to subsidize its activities through advertising links, and that it is not the role of the site managers to censor advertising. I am not asking for that. I guess what I am asking is why you all accept it.
I think it demeans us and should receive the reaction it deserves.
This set me thinking about what is acceptable in advertising. Is it OK to lie professionally in certain situations for the good of the company, or is truth still a requirement for credibility and decent human interaction? Is there some minimal requirement for plausibility?
Have we become so accustomed to lies and exaggerations in the commercial media when promoting products and services that we accept them as normal, even though we will not tolerate people treating us like this in our personal or business lives. If people lie to us at work or in love they lose credibility very quickly, but advertisers clearly feel immune to this reaction - and they are. Why?
Perhaps the answer is that most of us stopped taking advertising seriously years ago, but if that is true why is it still such a big industry. I suspect that we have become desensitized, but are still willing to believe what we want to believe when we see it in commercials.
There is a nice juxtaposition of this dichotomy seen on eBay. A seller can quote whatever wild claims are written on the box the item comes in with impunity, but when they give a description in their own words buyers can expect it to be true and if later it is found to be not so then they will give bad feedback.
Is this suspension of judgment a requirement of capitalism?
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Perhaps the answer is that most of us stopped taking advertising seriously years ago, but if that is true why is it still such a big industry. I suspect that we have become desensitised, but are still willing to believe what we want to believe when we see it in commercials.
I think you're right on the money with desensitization. The way I look at it, a bogus advertisement will take me to a site, but I'll immediately disregard it upon recognizing it as chaff. Until you mentioned this, I never really thought anything of it. With the speed of the network and multiple browsers/tabs open at once, I'm not really "slowed down" by it for more than a few seconds which I believe leads exactly to the desensitization you spoke of.
Now - if I were conducting some sort of research paper and the links I followed kept taking me to spurious crap, I would be rather ticked. Though if I were researching based on ads I probably deserve it!!
It does make you wonder about the ad hosting services. Apparently, the revenue side of the house "doesn't care" about the ad itself so long as it's not infecting people when they go to the page. Or at least I assume that much.
It is interesting that in a country where many believe that everything in the Bible must be literally true, they are quite content to have their entertainment interrupted by loud excited announcements that are often quite literally untrue.
Americans have been bombarded with electronic advertising since AM radio began in the 1920s. It has become one of the foundations of our commercial competitive economy and society and yet the standards for truth have diminished to invisibility. And yet, no one objects.
Why do we accept this as normal? I would like to see omnes nerdii start to scream back at these people. I have had it and I will not take it any more
Not on our web site where we have standards for the interaction of members. These terms and conditions should also be applied to those who use it to promote products and services here.
I have to pick up the mail for my workplace from a P.O box every day, and without fail I will see a person go to his box, take the mail and immediately walk over to the recycling bin and throw half of it in without anything more than a cursory glance to be sure it's junk mail. This is in small town of about 3000 people and I've never been in there where someone wasn't sorting their mail into the trash. They print it, send it, and recycle it over and over. Bales of it.
I am at the point where I literally do not see ads on the internet no matter how glaring they are, and I can usually X-out of those annoying "floating ads" that traipse across my reading space on some sites before I even see what they are. It's almost as if my immediate peripheral vision has become trained to ignore.
In the case of many TV ads, I'm finding that I have no idea what product was even being presented as they attempt to be new and different in their advertising approach.
n the case of many TV ads, I'm finding that I have no idea what product was even being presented as they attempt to be new and different in their advertising approach.
I certainly know what you mean. In the competition to make ads that are new and different the message is often lost and we are simply having our time wasted. At least effective commercials subsidise programs, but those that aren't just bore us for no reason.
We have become desensitised to unwanted crap being thrust at us, and that is a more comfortable condition than expecting truth and being disappointed. However, consider for a moment that in the process you have been de-sensitised to having people lie to you. Is that really a good thing? Haven't we a right to expect other people to be honest with us, and if they are not, for us to relegate them to the category of those who can't be trusted and should not be listened to.
Sure most of us reject commercials routinely, but we don't seem to hold the perpetrators accountable. We have lowered our standards.
I expected more responses defending the income Omninerd gets from these ads as justifying the crap. I even expected some to not understand my objection because this sort of thing is so prolific. Who cares? No one takes it seriously and why should we be different?
I think we should care and try to be different because we are seekers for the truth.
Right. It is not just on-line, all advertising has the same low standards but on-line seems to attract the worst, probably because reputable media outlets avoid the bottom dwelling scum out of concern for their image.
I expected more responses defending the income Omninerd gets from these ads as justifying the crap.
I really don't think it even reaches that level of moderation. The ads are more or less chosen automatically from some sort of pool supplied by Google and based on a search of "keywords" on the displayed Omninerd page. To quote from the link : "Google AdSense matches ads to your site's content, and you earn money whenever your visitors click on them."
No Omninerd input as to what these ads might actually be as far as I know.
No Omninerd input as to what these ads might actually be as far as I know.
Nope - we really don't have any say as to what AdSense displays. At least I don't think so, I'm not the one managing the AdSense account! But when you look at ad pools like Google and Yahoo, it's a safer bet that you're not going to get some XSS or similar attack from their system than from privately arranged ads (unless we store the ad content).
Thanks. That explains a lot about how such crap got up on our site. I still don't think that we should be complacent and accept that just because it came automatically from google and was chosen by a computer based on key words on the page that we have to accept it without complaint.
Crap is still crap however it is delivered. Computers must work for us not against us. We must react to Google and AdSense and tell them that their performance is not good enough. Threaten them.
I propose that all omninerds who agree with me should make a post on the AdSense forum complaining about the quality of ads that they are putting on Omninerd Customer feedback is always valuable.
This doesn't make sense. It shouldn't be omninerd protesting, it should be the actual advertiser who obviously is wasting money (or is it?) having unrelated ads displayed on this site. OmniNerd enjoys the benefits of extra cash. hell, it should tell anyone on the site to click at least 50 times a day on the various ads.
Occams, do you write letters of protest to the magazines/tv networks to complain about their crappy content or irrelevant ads or do you just change the channel? Because you can "change the channel" on this site by ignoring the ads....
Anon
Occams, do you write letters of protest to the magazines/tv networks to complain about their crappy content or irrelevant ads or do you just change the channel?
I am considering it, but this case is different as these ads are being placed on our site, and are therefore lowering our credibility.
Should anyone notice any inappropriate ads in the future, contact Brandon with the domain that the ad takes you to. Google Adsense does allow us to block specific ads. Brandon handles that aspect of the site so he can make the call to ban that advertiser.
... now if we could just figure out a way to ban Matt. Hmmmm ...
... now if we could just figure out a way to ban Matt. Hmmmm ...
It's easy ... make access to OmniNerd require an APFT score above 210. :-)
Well then I'm screwed... for now!! BWA-HAHAHAHA!!
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Rigourous ad testing by tomtolman :: NR6 :: on 17 March 2008
I think we should start a rigourous ad testing on OmniNerd. Click on and expose all those ads! :)
Rigorous too by tomtolman :: NR6 :: on 17 March 2008
In addition, we should start rigorous ad testing, not just rigourous. Minus one nerd rank for me.