Monday, April 16, 2007

Targeted bigotry from adsense?

I was shocked when I went to my blog tonight and saw this adsense ad combo on my top banner...



I clicked the link to see what nonsense was being linked to from my site and I was taken to an online quiz to assess your gayness or stupidity.

I have to say that I was personally offended by the ad appearing on my website especially the two of them together which implies that being gay is indeed stupid. While I do not plan to bring my personal politics into this blog I will state for the record that I am adamantly opposed to stereotypes and bigotry of all kinds and apologize to anyone who took offense as I did.

I will be notifying Google to see what they have to say about this kind of "targeted messaging" appearing on a small business marketing blog ...

(If you have any advice on how to protect my site from this crap I would appreciate your comments.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This has really bothered me as well. I've seen this ad everywhere.

Anonymous said...

Good call. Good question. Here are some things you might consider:
How much of your income comes from AdSense?

Can you target deeper pockets with larger ticket items than AdSense clicks? (i.e. can you make up for and even surpass this lost AdSense income should you elect to jump ship.)

Maybe text a string of "auction ads" (Jeremy) here you would normally have AdSense and see (with Crazy Egg, Neil?) how often people are clicking...

Or make your OWN "AdSense"-like ads surely there are other PPC players other than Google.

Oh, and of the 14 characteristics of a fascist (state, society, whatever) Lawrence Britt identifies, #5 reads:
5. Rampant Sexism

The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

Personally I don't think homosexuality is a perversion. I think rape is a perversion, torture is a perversion, forced physical constraint and manipulation is a perversion whether between adults, adults and children, amongst children, amongst peers or mixed hierarchy. Public attacks on sexually mature adults of the same gender having consensual sex with each other is attacked most vehemently by those who have engaged in or condoned through silence and facilitation of perversions.

To be gay is not to be equated with any particular level of lack of intelligence or any particular level of perversity. Sexual orientation, stupidity and perversion are unrelated characteristics.

This is my humble suggestion:

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
Buckminster Fuller

All the best, Nia.
http://leaveamerica.info

Nia here! said...

Looks like you are using horizontal AdUnits instead of horizontal LinkUnits. Try horizontal LinkUnits instead.

Then seek/build a better boat. :)

All the best, Nia.

Luke said...

Very good points - I will not be complicit in that kind of advertising on my blog. I am waiting to hear back from Google and will be sure to post their response here as soon as I find out. Thanks for the comments!

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