Couldn't you place them were the Recon-ads used to be? That would somehow be a familiar sight.

Do we really have to have an ad at the bottem of the threads too?

Its really easy to block the ads with firefox as they all come from the same base url.

What's with the picture ads? I thought this would be text only.

Ahah, I love Google ads.
I have conversations across GMail for the sole purpose of seeing what targetted ads I get and working out how they're remotely related to the message content. and the ads are often for things so incredibly lame it's funny.

They don't just display 'Star Wars' related stuff, they display stuff related to keywords in the thread, so we totally need to have some sort of forum game involving targetted ads.

The picture ads only come up once in a while, I can turn that off if it bothers people too much.

ditto.

I don't seen them. Could be because I've blocked pretty much every single ad server on the interent though...

Yeah, the picture ads are annoying.

I wish advertisers would understand that. They find ways to get around pop-up blockers and spam filters, and they object to the national do-not-call list... It's almost like their true goal is just to annoy as many people as possible.

Yeah, I hate those people that call up and ask if you are happy with your current phone service. Best thins to say is "Infact, no I'm not happy with my service, sometimes it just randomly cuts o... *click*". Problem solved.

Just noticed them now, I like them

I can't see any ads :?

[No, I'm not adblocking them]

Opening your eyes sometimes helps.

Actually, a lot of times they simply don't appear. Probably because it has no ads to show.

I'll have to remember that one

Seriously people... There's nothing there.

I would like to reiterate that we will not be banning people for talking about adblockers. I myself was recently banned for talking about adblockers on another site that has FLASH ADS which take up 100% CPU and have sound. UGH.

My suggestions:

Make all of the requested colors black and DARK green. Or just black with a green border, if possible.

Placing them where Recon's banners were will be comfortable for me: I actually miss that space being used :-P

The graphical ones REALLY break up the page, almost too much.

Either way, I'm happy to have them. And yes, a specific ad game would be fun.

JediKirby

yeah, what Kirb said.

and...

That's not the attitude where I work (at a telemarketing center). We actually are very much in favor of national do-not-call lists. It helps to screen our leads down to people who are truly interested in listening to what we have to say, thereby making the leads more effective, thereby inproving the sales/leads (and leads are expensive so this is a good thing).

Anyway, I don't do outbound sales anymore, but when I did I loved the national do-not-call lists. The only bad part was moronic people who did not understand the exemptions and wouldn't take the time to listen, but instead just screamed about how they were so gonna call their lawyer and sue and yadda yadda yadda when we had every right to be calling. If they'd closed their mouths long enough to listen, we would have told them why their national do-not-call listing had not prevented the call, and what could be done to ensure that they did not receive calls from us in the future... But they never bothered to listen. They just screamed... or they hung up.

Anyway, seriously, it doesn't help to say things like, "yeah my service keeps cutting ou- *click*" That just means the agent's going to call back later. What you should do is inturrupt politely (don't worry about speaking over the rep, their script forces them to not give you oppurtunity to speak, but if you inturrupt they'll shut up) and ask the rep to place you on their internal do not call list. Then stay on the line long enough to make sure they do it (they'll probably need to verify some information to ensure that you have the authorization to make that request, but by law all telemarketers are required to cease any sales attempts upon such a request).

Anyway, the national do-not-call registry will prevent most telemarketers from calling, and using the method described above will stop all others from continuing to bother you.

*cheers*

IMO people have the right to get pissed off when they get called by telemarketers under any circumstances.

God forbid should you try to treat the person with some simple respect - "No, thank you. I'm not interested."

Free, why? It's no different than television advertisments, and people don't get pissed off with those (usually). If you own a television, expect to have to watch commercials. If you own a telephone, expect to get telemarketing calls.

Maybe if they treated me with respect first, I wouldn't have to be rude to them. In fact I'm not rude to them but they really make me angry. I never interrupted their dinner or called them at 7am to try to sell them some dumb crap. It's my phone, they shouldn't be calling me unless I gave them permission (opt in).

We can't set the exact colors, we can only choose from pre-defined themes. Unfortunately.

Anger about a call at 7 AM is justifiable, because, at that hour, that's just plain ridiculous. Dinner is a minor annoyance, but doesn't call for anything beyond expression of slight irritation.

I think both television and radio adverts are obnoxious, I much prefer BBC for both simply for that reason. Instead of spending all that money trying to brainwash the public into buying crap they don't want or need, perhaps just some of it could go towards making improved products, or new products that people genuinely want. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising, and that's only going to happen if you actually have a good product.


But apart from that, I do thoroughly enjoy the Google targetted ads. They're great, and I think if existing adverts moved more towards that sort of system, I'd dislike them considerably less. Then they might actually possibly be useful.

The worst kind of marketing seems to have arisen in my area. Now we get automated phone calls trying to sell us stuff and tell us that we've won trips/vacation. It's almost as if the robots posting the popups and adbanners have telephones and voices now.

Go for it. I found this place on Google. It deserves to be here.

Actually, its intrusive whereas everything else is passive. Not to mention TV shows are paid off by the adverts they air. Phone lines are something YOU pay for and YOU fund. There's a world of difference.

That's wrong. You can set any colors you like, for the links, title, text, border, and background. I know this for a fact, I just did it on NeSI.

As for telemarketers... I haven't gotten any bad ones recently, but there is this one group that I would kill if they were in my sight.

It's the Vietnam Veteran's group. They try to ask for donations and stuff. (We had donated to them about 10 years back, that's it.) They call at least once a month, and they will never put us on a do-not-call list. We've asked, we've begged, and now I've gone to resorting to wasting their time. If they aren't going to get the hint that we've donated all we want, then that is their problem.

So I do the HOP maneuver. Answer the phone, let them start their spiel, then ask them to "Hold on please". Put the phone down, and go play a quick CS game. Come back to the phone, and if they are still on, ask them to just hold on a bit longer, and play JO for a bit. When they hang up, put the phone back on the hook, and know that you have hurt the telemarketers in one of the worst possible ways imaginable, wasting THEIR time.

I still don't see anything.

I feel left out.

I agree with Yoshi. Also, with a TV you're already watching TV when the adverts come on. You dont have to stop whatever you're doing to turn the TV and watch them. With phone calls you have to physically answer the phone, meaning it wastes your time. Ok, so are TV adverts, but you dont have to stop whatever you're doing specifically to see them.

Also, TV adverts help fund whatever you're watching. Telemarketing does not help fund your telephone bills.

Actually, it's specifically against the terms of service to mess with the javascript code at all. So even though you technically can, I'm not going to do it and I've instructed the admins not to mess with it.

And actually, you can set any colors you want in the Google Adsense page itself. I'm telling you this as a fact, and it does not go against the terms of service in any way, because you aren't modifying the code itself at all! You're using their webpage as instructed!

Go to your Adsense account, go to Ad Settings tab, go to the Color Palettes listbox, and right below the listbox is a "manage color palettes" link. Click on it. In there, you can pick any color you wish, or use the HTML color hex codes (#000000, etc).

It helps to read the instructions Brian, geesh

nice.... I'm going to have to remember that.

Yes, my TV doesn't turn on randomly to show me commercials. Then again, you could unplug the phone...