"Sgrannylove" (a member of our newest community) asks about advertising
Maybe it is just me, but isn't there a way that sites like HOT SINGLES and other such sites don't have to show up. How many of us actually will go to those sites. I know that you need revenue, but on my web site I have a choice as the kind of sites that I use for revenue. I am not a stick in the mud, but since this site is mostly over the hill [but not on the down-slope] !

Our answer
We are including this in InfoAve and InfoAve Premium this week because while this question was about ads showing up on our NotOverTheHill community, it covers all our Web sites and newsletters as well. We would like you all to read this because it makes a few points that might help you all better understand the advertising you will see on all of our sites and Web advertising in general. The following is our complete answer to Sgrannylove (this is her nickname on our NotOverTheHill.com community)

Delicate subject. Let me try to address it while walking on egg shells:

We use, almost exclusively, Google's Adsense network. Adsense "senses" the content on the page and displays ads the software feels best matches the keywords it gleans from the page. This is done with sophisticated software, no one at Google is actually sitting there reading what people are typing. They have ads on literally billions of pages, so their is no privacy issue.

When an less-than-appropriate ad appears, we make an attempt to control those type of ads by blocking the advertiser who pays Google to display them - which is a function of the Google Adsense control panel we access. But, sometimes advertisers like SmileyCentral have 1000's of domain names, that they create in order to circumvent conscientious Webmaster who try block SmileyCentral's plethora of suspicious and computer-clogging (even damaging) products. But, it's like chasing the rainbow, you never get there because SmileyCentral AKA FunWebProducts is always buying more and more domain names. If you block 100 of their domain names, they'll buy 100 more, and so forth.

As for the "Hot Singles" ads, they're probably a staple of community sites - like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and the like. If we block one, there will be 100 more to block, and as described above, we would be chasing rainbows.

We ask that you help us by clicking on advertisements that are interesting to you not on ads that are offensive to you. We do block all "adult-content" ads from this site. Some of these "Hot Singles" ads border on "adult-content" - I guess it depends on whose definition you use. Apparently in Google's opinion these do not violate our "no adult content" rule, while of course, others may disagree.

It's a catch 22 for us. We need the revenue to keep this site on the Web (we're already using over 2 GB of bandwidth a day and it will keep increasing we hope), we have server techs watching over this server night and day to make sure it stays up and to advise us when we need to add more servers. This, of course, costs money, technicians, servers, bandwidth, etc. all cost money - and sometimes lots of it. And, it costs us money to add features to this site. Unfortunately, neither Eightball or I are rich. We can't afford to spend our own money to grow this site - although we have at time had to cough up money to keep our sites growing - so we're forced to use some sort of advertising to pay the bills. Google's Adsense is the best alternative for network advertising we've used. There are far fewer offensive ads on Google's network than on any other we've tried.

We don't expect anyone on this site to click on ads that are offensive to them and we will continue to do our best to keep even slightly offensive ads off this site. But, there will be times when content on particular pages contains certain keywords that will trigger ads that may be slightly offensive to some. What is offensive to one person, may not be offensive to another - it is a highly subjective area.

We hope you will give us the benefit of the doubt. We've always been honest with our newsletter subscribers, site members, and site visitors, and we're not going to ever change that. We hope that you understand that if we could control every advertisement that appeared on this site - we would - but it's not possible when you're using an ad network to display ads.

I'm sure that you'd agree that those "Hot Singles" ads are not nearly as offensive as some of the commercials you see on network television, such as Cia*lis, Vi*agra, and those sorts of things, where the people are fawning over each other in a very overt manner. (I used asterisks to mask those words because Google's Adsense software would have had Vi*agra and Ci*alis ads all over this page :)

I hope this helps you understand that while we do hope you will click ads (it really does help) that we don't expect you to click ads that you find offensive. If you find an advertisement interesting, click it. There are many great products and services being advertised here, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with advertising. I'm sure most of us have discovered some great products and services that came to our attention via advertising.

Thank you for your question and for expressing your concerns. Most of all thanks for being here on The Hill....

Want to save 20% on some of the best software on the Internet? Keep reading!