Forum Moderators: skibum
Article [pcworld.com]
Advertising the the scourge of the internet
Advertising the the scourge of the internet, TV, newspapers, etc.
However, it pays for these sources of information. If it were not for advertising, we would not have Google and Yahoo. We would also not have the TV and radio news. Even public broadcasting is funded in large part by "sponsors".
What you pay for newspapers covers only a small part of the cost (including reporters, editors, etc.) Sources of information that are not paid by advertising are the very, very expensive specialized services for business, law firms, and others that can pay hundreds of buck per year (sometimes well over $1000/yr) for information services.
Newspapers try to maintain a wall between the news department and the advertising department. Google and Yahoo maintain a clear separation between the paid listings and the other searches. The value of there advertising is based upon the fact that users know they can get good search results. So just stay away from search engines that do not clearly separate paid inclusions from real results, as well as from sites that are so covered with advertising or those who base their content on promoting the advertisers.
Remember when the internet was non-commercial? I could telent into a university computer, or get academic information from Gopher, but I could not get the local weather and news.
John
something has to pay for all those websites, last I checked hosting/bandwidth wasn't free.
I find it funny how people despise ALL forms of advertising on web pages, yet without those ads some of their favorite sites might not even be around.
of course there's good and bad(multiple pop up, slow load, pop in, flash, spam, etc) advertising.
I think I read somewhere that adsubtract removes all CJ, BF, LS links as well as adsense.. yet they are hypocritical enough to have an affiliate program as well. I bet their software doesn't block their own affiliate type links.