Toban Black

Back in 2005, Keri Smith offered some insight into problems that come with with ads on blogs — and ads that surround blogging.
Here are exerpts that I’ve snipped out of three of those posts -

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“As a blogger who has over time established a somewhat regular audience, I have been approached by many companies asking to advertise on my site, and in some cases endorse their products through my writing. have always had a policy to not do anything that goes against my own beliefs …
And so I would not advertise nor endorse any product or company that I do not fully believe in. But even then I struggle with advertising in general.

As a member of a culture that is so laden with advertising I become easily winded, oversaturated, numb to it all. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to find any public space WITHOUT some form of advertising.” “One grocery store I was in recently has televisions throughout the store selling products in every aisle! As one who was weaned on television at a young age, this is too much even for me.” “I have a hard time and resent being told what to look at as I walk through my day.”

“And so I make choices to not partake in a world that is about selling, (to me being exposed to advertising on a regular basis is the equivalent of emotional junk food and I truly care about my body, so there is an emotional cost to me).”

“If I am making the choice to not clutter my mind with the chaos that is advertising, (as I choose not to put junk food into my body), then I must cut down on the sites that are saturated with it.

If I am to speak frankly here, I am saddened when I go to a site of an artist or a blogger I admire and they have ads on their site. I feel a loss of respect. When companies have approached me for the same thing I admit to a moment of ‘it might make my life easier, I could focus on my personal work more, finish that manuscript’, yes I could.

But I ask again, what is the greater cost? When do we put our human needs before those of the corporations?”

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“Many bloggers say they will not let the ads affect the editorial content. I question this statement. How long will this last? What if Apple Computers offers someone $10,000 to have an ad on their site? Are you really going to say anything negative about Apple in your ramblings? I doubt it. So now the honesty of the writing is affected. The more ads that appear on blogs the less we will all trust in honesty of the medium as a whole.

The byproduct of this is that blogging medium is now (as with many/most others forms of media in our culture, magazines, news, film, etc.) is now *influenced/controlled* by large corporations.”

“What if I chose certain companies (ones that I believed in) to advertise on my site? Yes, this is an option. I do like to support people whose work I value. I still have a problem with recieving money for this, once again it comes down to credibility for me. I want my readers to trust that I act not only for personal gain or monetary reward.

So what do I say to the people who tell me to ’suck it up there’s nothing you can do about it, this is just the world we live in’? I choose to believe that I am not voiceless, and that I do have some impact on the world, and if I choose to give up on the kind of society I wish for myself and my family then something is lost.”

“I started writing a bit about how advertising erodes our visual environment, but then realized that this is quite subjective and that many may feel the same about some of the ‘guerilla art’ that I put out there. Though I will say I find most ads souless, and ugly, which causes me to worry about the visual junk we are constantly exposed to on a daily basis.”

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“I am opposed to advertising imposing itself into every aspect of our lives (not advertising itself), and a society who puts the dollar ahead of human needs.”

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(Those remarks were posted here, here, and here — respectively.)

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Awhile back, I started to raise questions about blog advertising in this post — and in comments added to it later -
“Buying blog posts”

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A related web site -
ad free blog