Ad-Free Blog

The Anti-Advertising Agency is a blog devoted to critical analysis of advertising. They have an Ad-Free Blog button that bloggers can use to indicate that they don’t accept advertising.

They point out that, aside from the visual and psychological clutter of advertising, the invasion by corporate power into our every millimeter of expressive space, and the dubious value or even destructiveness of what many advertisers are selling, the fact is that the vast majority of bloggers who advertise don’t make any money at it:

I know people that have Google Ads on their sites, and I have yet to meet anyone who has received a check from Google. Why? Your balance has to exceed $100 before they issue a check. And this can take years. There are so many sites that use Google Ads and are too small to get paid that, according to wikipedia, Google has a $370m balance of unpaid accounts.

If you would like to proudly display the Ad-Free Blog logo and help promote blogs that are independent from advertising, visit their web site. Look at the smug look on that owl’s face. Irresistible.

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~ by lolarusa on April 7, 2008.

Posted in Advertising, Politics
Tags: ,

5 Responses to “Ad-Free Blog”

  1. I find it interesting that you promote yourself as an ad free blog while adverts are displayed on your blog.

    Details here: http://wank.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/define-broke/

    whatswrongwithautomattic said this on June 13, 2008 at 2:51 pm

  2. You have a good point. There are three ads on this blog that I can think of — one is at the beginning of an embedded video from the 60 Minutes web page, one is a short film that is sponsored by Dove soap, and the third is the Louis Vitton ad posted by guest-blogger Daranee. There may be others that I’ve forgotten.

    Commenters also occasionally advertise by posting links to commercial sites, and I generally don’t delete them.

    So yes, there are ads on the blog. I don’t take the matter lightly, and thought a lot about it before posting the Ad-Free Blog logo. And I decided that my blog fits the criteria outlined on the Ad-Free Blog site:

    1. That I am opposed to the use of corporate advertising on blogs.

    2. That I feel the use of corporate advertising on blogs devalues the medium.

    3. That I do not accept money in return for advertising space on my blog.

    I am indeed opposed to ads on blogs and feel that it devalues the medium. The medium of television, however, is already completely corrupted by advertising. And none of these advertisements generate any income for me or the blog. Any ad that is posted is either interesting as art, or, in the case of the 60 Minutes ad, was felt to be a small inconvenience relative to the value of the video. (It’s also not visible unless you hit the play button).

    I’d be curious to hear what anyone else thinks about this issue.

    Thanks for your comment. I welcome critical feedback.

    lolarusa said this on June 13, 2008 at 5:06 pm

  3. the trick to getting ads to display on a wordpress.com blog is to use internet explorer 7, not be logged in, and click through from google (i searched for “nemo slumberland”).

    fwiw, the commenter above is http://options.wordpress.com
    he seems to have difficulty properly introducing himself.

    sunburntkamel said this on June 13, 2008 at 6:33 pm

  4. Thanks for the info, sunburnt kamel. I’m clearly going to have to address this issue.

    Turns out some of you are getting ads when you visit my blog, something I was completely unaware of (they’re not visible in most browsers). Sorry about that. I’ll see what I can do.

    lolarusa said this on June 14, 2008 at 3:22 am

  5. hi there! referrers from my stats sent me here.

    surely, there are quite a few difficulties that I may have. but the one expressed above is certainly not the case here.

    so, I’m sorry for the possible disappointment, SBK, but that “commenter above” unfortunately was not me.

    [fwif, I’ve got some ideas on the reasons why that person used (or, perhaps, was having to) this particular identity.]

    .
    a bit on topic: ads are shown on every .com blog in all (JS enabled) browsers except the FF. and according to Matt FF’s share on .com is only about 30%.

    also, according to Automattic stats:
    * 43% of pageviews to permalink pages.
    * 93% of pageviews were to people not logged in.

    which means that roughly almost every second page (including the Global Tags link farm) viewed on .com is an ad laden one. therefore, there can’t be an “ad-free” blog on .com. just by definition.

    and yes, lolarusa, there’s nothing you can do about it. well, may be except switching to another blog-hosting service.

    options said this on June 14, 2008 at 5:14 pm

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