- Joined
- Sep 22, 2008
- Messages
- 389
It's our intent to provide this service free of charge for decades to come. Just like so many other services on the internet like Google, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo mail and thousands of newspapers, we plan to offset the costs to run this site by allowing advertisers to bring this service to you all for free. In the next few days we will turn on some ads which are powered by ad networks. These ad networks work with the advertisers so they can reach folks across many sites. It streamlines the process for the advertisers and sites like this to work together.
The buyers pay for ads based on many targeting criteria. They set these targeting criteria when they are setting up their media buy. We are not part of that process. Sometimes they target people based on what they have been recently searching for, other times they target people who have recently visited the advertisers website and sometimes they target a keyword or specific website. Although we (Redwood Owners website) don't have control over the targeting options, everyone as individuals do through the Network Advertising Initiative. This group is a proactive consortium who wants to allow users choice so policy makers don't force laws on the topic. It's great to see them come together and allow you to opt-out of certain targeting (or all). You can see the options available at this link:
http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/
Keep in mind that many of the targeting choices are attempts to personalize the ads based on what they know about you. This might actually make for a better internet experience as you might want to see ads which are relevant instead of ads which are totally irrelevant.
If you totally hate ads, you can install an ad blocker but we don't want to encourage that too much. If too many people install ad blockers thousands of sites could switch from free to paid meaning internet browsing could get really expensive!
Thanks for being part of our community and understanding that we need these ads to keep this site alive. We hope that you will agree that they are minor inconvenience in exchange for free services like this site!
Oh yeah - We show more ads to guests and less to members. So it's best to sign up and stay logged in so you see less ads.
Kind Regards,
Andy
The buyers pay for ads based on many targeting criteria. They set these targeting criteria when they are setting up their media buy. We are not part of that process. Sometimes they target people based on what they have been recently searching for, other times they target people who have recently visited the advertisers website and sometimes they target a keyword or specific website. Although we (Redwood Owners website) don't have control over the targeting options, everyone as individuals do through the Network Advertising Initiative. This group is a proactive consortium who wants to allow users choice so policy makers don't force laws on the topic. It's great to see them come together and allow you to opt-out of certain targeting (or all). You can see the options available at this link:
http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/
Keep in mind that many of the targeting choices are attempts to personalize the ads based on what they know about you. This might actually make for a better internet experience as you might want to see ads which are relevant instead of ads which are totally irrelevant.
If you totally hate ads, you can install an ad blocker but we don't want to encourage that too much. If too many people install ad blockers thousands of sites could switch from free to paid meaning internet browsing could get really expensive!
Thanks for being part of our community and understanding that we need these ads to keep this site alive. We hope that you will agree that they are minor inconvenience in exchange for free services like this site!
Oh yeah - We show more ads to guests and less to members. So it's best to sign up and stay logged in so you see less ads.
Kind Regards,
Andy
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