I sell products that are useful to virtually all adults but are inherently useless to minors. Along with plenty of conventional, targeted advertising, I'm considering experimenting with putting ads on some not-so-conventional sites that aren't on topic but are very popular and trafficy.
I want to know if purchased ads can harm my ranking. I'm not talking about link farms or dubious off-topic recip links; I mean ads that link to my site from a paid ad, but no link from my site to theirs. After all, buying an ad for the clicks is not manipulating search engines (like off topic link exchanges); are questionable neighborhoods dangerous in this context?
To clarify: one prospect is a very popular joke/picture site that is very spammy; they manage to slip me a few popunders even with 2 blockers running. Despite that, hundreds of thousands of people a week eagerly go there, myself included.
Other prospects include off-in-left-field material; tinhat stuff like conspiracy theories and political intrigue. Without a link to them on my site, I'm not so much worried that a sensitive customer will see me advertising there and be offended. I just need to know if an inbound-only link from a controversial site would be harmful. I'm not considering sites that are about porn, pills, or casinos; but what about ads on sites that also accept ads from those fields?
I'm looking for an edge in a competitive field here, going where no competitor has gone before. Don't worry, I'm not betting the farm on these sites. Part of the motivation is to support sites I like, using funds I can afford to lose if they don't draw the traffic after all. Most of the advertising eggs will go into sensible baskets; I need to know if I should avoid experimenting in unconventional advertising. This strategy has produced results in bricks-and-mortar situations where I don't have to worry about search engine penalties, I should add.
Thank you.
