Ad hominem

[undyingking]

A little while ago LJ introduced a feature allowing paid members to display Google Adsense ads on their journals. Here's their post about it.

I use ABP to block such ads from all my browsing, so I have no idea to what extent it's been taken up, but I am slightly curious. Do any of you have any idea? Are any of you displaying such ads yourselves?

Comments

[gbsteve.livejournal.com]

I've not displayed the ads and I can't remember seeing them on any friendly LJ. So perhaps it hasn't worked very well.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I think that if you are a Paid user yourself, you don't get to see them unless you are yourself displaying them. So your experience may not be informative in this regard.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

This. Paid account holders don't get to see ads full stop or they would be shooting themselves in the foot as PA holders would riot.

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't know. I mean I'm vaguely aware of there being text ads on an awful lot of web pages, but I just sort of mentally tune them out, rather like anything banner ad shaped. I have a Plus account, which uses ads by default, but I've not tried to profit from it.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I don't think you can, from a Plus account -- money raised on those ads just goes to LJ itself.

But part of the attraction (to some people) of a Paid account was that it didn't have ads spewed all over it for the enrichment of the sinister LJ bosses, so I was wondering how such people reacted to the possibility of spewing their own ads all over it instead.

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I don't really care about sinister LJ bosses being enriched, as long as it's not at my expense.

Hmm, Do you think "spewn" sounds better than "spewed"? I don't think it's technically correct in any way, but I doubt that will concern you! "...spewn all over the place", I quite like that.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I like "spewn"! I shall start using it forthwith.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

I think I have enabled the ads, but I use ABP too...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

* looks at ar_gemlad's LJ in IE *

You have! -- but hmm, maybe the fine-tuning leaves a little to be desired. It showed me a banner claiming "I lost 30 lbs of stomach fat in 8 weeks", which might at first glance look more like a proud boast on your part than an ad...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I have not enabled ads (although I didn't know about this system, so if they're on by default I'd like to know).

As a paid user, I also don't see any.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

It's off by default.

I've now experimentally turned it on on mine, so if you peek at my or ar_gemlad's journal via some browser where you don't have a logged-in LJ cookie or an ad-blocker, you'll see the ads.

At the moment most of the ads it's showing on mine are to do with cricket.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

At the moment most of the ads it's showing on mine are to do with cricket.

That's actually not bad!

Most of the sites I see so-called "smart" ads on it's either acai berries or Evony regardless of the site's topic.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

You might remember a few years ago I ran a play-by-web game, Mighty Oaks, in which players managed trees that had to grow leaves, fruit etc. I had Google ads alongside that for a while, and they were invariably for plant nurseries or similar. OTOH Spore Wars, the game about alien miscegenators, never got any even vaguely relevant ads (perhaps just as well).

[mizzykitty.livejournal.com]

I am not, and I haven't seen anyone on my flist who has. I can't imagine why anyone would want to! Down with ads!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I think that as you're not using them yourself, you wouldn't see it on your flist even if people were -- the ads are hidden from you. For example, I've just now experimentally turned ads on here in my LJ, but I'm expecting that you don't see them -- but people on free accounts, or on paid accounts who also have them turned on, will see them.

But yes, it does seem a bit unlikely. I guess people might want to show ads if they use their LJ as a public blog rather than in a personal community-of-friends type way. But are there any such people? -- presumably they wouldn't be on LJ in the first place, they would already have proper commercial blogs which have been showing ads from day 1.

[mizzykitty.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, good point! *facepalm* I'm obviously slow. Haha.

Yeah, I would assume if you had a commercial blog you'd be on blogspot or something. LJ is too much of a community based pseudo-social networking site to be the right vehicle for a commercial blog.