Devir Kahan

What’s The Deal With Ads?

// December 9th, 2009 // Blog, Emails, Google, Tech

Aleks from Mexico City wrote in asking:

Hey, it’s a cool blog you got here. I’ve seen some blogs that look very alike (is it the theme? WicketPixie or something?) and everyone seems to love it. But I have one complaint: ADS. I just hate it when content is in the freaking middle
of “ads by google”, it looks overloaded and really makes the header look dull. Is
it really that profitable to sacrifice design for some clicks/cents? I hope you
don’t take it bad, I just wanted to give my opinion. I repeat, it’s a cool blog you
got here, the content is pretty good ;)

First off, I absolutely don’t take it badly – I always like to hear all your thoughts and opinions. Also, for someone that mostly speaks Spanish, that’s pretty darned good English. I also just want to take the time to thank you for the comments you’ve made and your participation in this small, but growing, community.

Now, the truth is that yes, ads are indeed very important. At that same time though, I, as much as you, hate going to sites where the ads take over the content. On some sites you can hardly tell the difference between what is actual content, and what are advertisements. So, on my site I really tried, and want, to make the ads as unobtrusive as possible. I have one banner ad on the top of the site, one underneath the posts, and then there is also a little section next to every post that has ads, yes, but also is functional; with a TweetMeme link and related posts. I don’t find those very obtrusive or annoying at all – and trust me, like I said, I hate annoying ads.

You also mentioned that there were Google ads in the middle of content. That is not true – I have those little ad links that appear on keywords in posts, but again, they are not real blinking ads, or even text ads. They just kind of disappear into posts just like any other link. Again, I don’t really find these ads annoying or obtrusive at all, on both my own blog, as well as other people’s sites that I visit and have seen them on.

The truth is that as time goes on, I will probably have to add even more ads to my site, but I will always make sure they are as unobtrusive, not annoying, and discrete, as possible. I will always keep my readers and viewers in mind, and would not do something that I feel would be an inconvenience to you. At that same time though, ads bring in money – money that I need to run everything that I do online. Not having ads at all is not possible and is just out of the question.

Well Aleks, thank you very much for writing in and sharing your thoughts with me. I hope I answered your questions and explained these ads.

I really want to be as open to the community as possible, and you know you can always email me at mail@devirkahan.com. I promise to respond to every email I get (as long as it’s not spam or junk mail, of course) so, if you ever want to contact me for any reason, please do – my inbox is always open.