Nerve Endings Firing Away

Adrants says, the Ad-Free Blog “places blogs on a pedestal” while “claiming that advertising on blogs devalues the medium”. I agree that flooding your blog or your website with ads can undermine your credibility as a source for content but at the same time, eliminating ads completely so as to project an image of superiority of content is not the way to go either. In the age of Google Adsense, Yahoo Ads, Pheedo, and Blog Ads, almost every blog even those with a bare minimum readership hosts some sort of ads. With the exception of TOI, I haven’t derided any blog’s content just because they choose to have ads on their pages.

As long as my ease in reading content is not compromised, I do not mind ads one bit. In fact, I instantly removed ads from DesiPundit feeds after getting feedback from readers that they were an impediment in reading. I understand the economics behind the decision to place contextual ads on heavy-traffic blogs as I have experience the perils of high bandwidth. Information on blogs is free but hosting them on a server is not. Bloggers are completely justified in placing ads to recover costs and even rake in a small profit. Advertising is an accepted reality in today’s media; the only hindrance being the quality and placement of ads. Most of the content wouldn’t be free or subsidized if it weren’t for ads. So folks, let us not deride ads on blogs. You have accepted them in newspapers and magazines, haven’t you?