Goodbye ugly ads.
I feel like I’m being bribed by Google.
Three days ago, they sent me an email that began…
Hi,
We’re writing to let you know about an upcoming update in your AdSense account designed to help you generate the maximum revenue from your ad units. You’ll soon be able to allow multiple ad networks to show on your pages, which means that advertisers from external Google-certified networks will be able to compete with AdWords advertisers for your ad space.
Then, they started running these really ugly ads, like these:
So much uglier, than the old, tasteful, text-only ads, with the pleasant notice to remind me that I’m looking at an ad by Google. No notices on these new ads. And some of ’em are in Flash, and compete for CPU cycles with the lovely Flash I’ve written myself and am sometimes trying to demonstrate!
But then I look at what Google is now paying for these new ugly ads…
Almost twice as much! Yikes. Oh Google, you make it so hard to not be evil.
Sigh. I’m turning ’em off anyway. Can’t keep subjecting you to these ugly ass ads.
UPDATE: I’ve turned ’em off, but Google is taking a while to figure that out…
UPDATE: According to Google, the ugly ads and the recent policy change are unrelated. If you see an ugly or offensive ad, please let me know and I’ll pull it.