dadpad wrote:I would like a response from admin on this (in the nicest possible way, possums)
Well, I did happen to come across this while looking for legitimate help needs on the forum so I'll take a stab at it.
dadpad wrote:I know this forum is free and ads such as this help support the forum, so I really dont really have the right to complain about advertising which supports this service.
Is there any possibilty that this particular advertisment could be withdrawn from the rotation on the grounds that I find it offensive to have this advertisment flashing and pulsing.
Not merely on the grounds that you find it offensive, no. It's a significant amount of work to try to filter what obnoxious ads I already do, and I don't intend to add to my existing criteria for filtering any ad that any user might happen to find "offensive".
The ad serving here is governed by a very well-defined criteria and I don't personally think you have much to complain about. I filter many types of annoying advertising (such as pop-ups, pop-unders etc..) and think the ads around here are less anoying than the web average.
They certainly aren't as well filtered as I'd like, and the ad in question may get filtered with more agressive use of my existing rulesets (which filters the bulk of the annoying flashing ads) but becaue there are several hundred thousand ads available to the rotation of this site I have no plans to play DJ with the ad serving and respond to personal requests.
Users who most heavily frequent this site will tend to get lower-paying ads from the ad networks and they will often be mass-market and more annoying. I filter a very large amount to keep away thousand of flashing ads and such and in the future I plan to improve the ad serving that does get through if I can.
I will not, however, EVER take on the burden of making sure each ad is approved by everyone who decides they have a say in the matter.
At some point I will create the option to subscribe to a ad-free version of a2k and if you feel it's offensive enough to pay a few bucks a month to see no ads you will have the power to do so.
I tried providing this option earlier and closed the program because my solution on top of phpbb was not very clean. I'm making custom software now and will empower the user with more choices as the features are built.
Right now, the deal is that the site is free and the ads support it. Later there will be the option to pay for one's own use of the site and remove them.