Anyone watch Panorama? Media companies are being fired left right and centre because the big companies adverts are appearing on "questionable" content. The happy slapping videos on YouTube being one example.

.....you want to control your company image and reputaion?

Don't farm your adverts to every tom dick and harry webvertising company on the planet......

Advertise only on your own approved websites and you'll have no problem.

The reason they don't is that they jump on the corporate logo everywhere bandwagon when a specific site is en vougue and are suprised that the outcome is sometimes negative.....

I for one could do with less advertising on the internet.

I work for a large uk website that is made of user generated content.

Our media provider (who serves the ads) has asked us to pull various bits of content and retire entire sections of the site to please the advertisers.

Slowly we are deleting all our content. No doubt annoying and confusing users along the way all so that brands aren't "associated" with certain things.

They are only being associated in the heads of technophobic daily mail readers who don't get the concept of user generated content. How about having some internet knowledge before running an online marketing campaign!

More importantly if you pull the content to please the advertiser then they are shooting themselves in the foot by reducing the amount of people seeing their advert.

"More importantly if you pull the content to please the advertiser then they are shooting themselves in the foot by reducing the amount of people seeing their advert."

Image is everything. Would Labour really want an advert for the Conservative party on their YouTube videos? Companies obviously want us to trust their brands so would Orange/Voda/O2 really want their logo's plastered over videos of servicemen/women in Iraq having their heads removed with a large knife?

Consumer is king, and it would be a lot easier for the advertiser to pull their clients, and without advertisers a lot of sites would fall down dead.

Jeremy, I would have thought the obvious solution is not to remove the content, but establish a more technically advanced advertising system that either scans the content and decides on suitable ads, or allows blacklisting of ads against certain sections of content. For example, Facebook could blacklist Vodafone ads on groups that Vodafone objects to. That would, of course, rely on common sense on the part of Vodafone.

Firefox + AdBlock Plus + Filterset.g means I often forget that the internet is largely powered by adverts.

It took me a while to realise that facebook's comendable clean interface isn't nearly so clean when you're viewing it with IE.

I agree with the comments regarding the bandwagon-jumping brands who want their logo plastered everywhere.

They'd be better off not dabbling in politics, surely they're not ignorant enough to believe that users actually make a hard connection between their company and the page being shown. What's their problem? The contents of Facebook are representative of the population at large. It's not as if the advertisers are being seen to advertise on a standalone site of a dubious nature, is it?

A company sets up their advert to say "Sick of this shit? Click on this".

Whether or not this is its intention, Vodafone has generated a bit of publicity for itself - that it wouldn't want to be associated with such groups will only make this good publicity.

I'm intrigued, though, when exactly it occurred to the powers that be, that when advertising on a social networking website, your ads may appear on pages relating to a social network that you would rather not be associated with.

"Firefox + AdBlock Plus + Filterset.g means I often forget that the internet is largely powered by adverts."

Yes it is, and its adverts that pay for the bandwith of the sites you view, if everyone used adblock, I wonder how much smaller the internet would be.

Quote: Firefox + AdBlock Plus + Filterset.g means I often forget that the internet is largely powered by adverts.

Right-fucking-on. Given enough time, everyone is going to figure this out, or be inundated with ads. I see it as a further stratification of computing in general.

Joe Blow Consumer will have his PC gradually trimmed away until it's nothing more than an ad-funded dumb terminal, whereas Harry the Hacker will end up without ads, but locked out of a lot of the more "buzzy" things on the web.

However, knowing which camp I belong to, I really don't give a shit about facebook, myspace, flickr, or youtube.

I've got friends, I don't need myspace or facebook to meet more. I've got a telephone AND I run my own email server, so I'm covered there. If someone wants me to see a picture, they can print it out, or email it to me. As far as video entertainment goes, I'd pick bittorrenting something good and produced in a larger-than-stamp sized resolution over a 20fps, 3 minute blocky clip, with a condenser mic soundtrack. If it's hilarious web doggerel, I'm sure someone will eventually email it to me, if I even care.

"Yes it is, and its adverts that pay for the bandwith of the sites you view, if everyone used adblock, I wonder how much smaller the internet would be."

Really? If that's the case, then bring it on ... the sooner the better in fact.

You can also add FlashBlock to the list of 'must have' Firefox plugins ...

""Firefox + AdBlock Plus + Filterset.g means I often forget that the internet is largely powered by adverts."

Yes it is, and its adverts that pay for the bandwith of the sites you view, if everyone used adblock, I wonder how much smaller the internet would be."

Thankfully 99.9998% of all netizens are morons who won't use extensions like AdBlock Plus because "they don't want to break anything".

Maybe my views are over simplified but isn't the whole point of user content and free websites such as myspace, facebook, youtube etc to create advertising space and therefore generate advertising revenue? The alternative is some kind of license fee. After all, everyone's here to make a buck.

Yes it is, and its adverts that pay for the bandwidth of the sites you view, if everyone used adblock, I wonder how much smaller the internet would be.

Finally! Someone else with sense. I don't block ads specifically because I realize that without ads, the sites I'm viewing (which I obviously WANT to view) wouldn't exist, since I'm too cheap to pay them to see the content. Hell, occasionally I even find something useful in the ads.

I, OTOH, wouldn't miss sites like Facebook.

"if your in marketing, just kill yourself, seriously...."

ok ads might fund some sites, unfortunately it seems that sites are forgetting there purpose of delivering content rather than adverts

who ever that tosser was that thought making flash video based ads that intrude with unwanted sound effects, weather the bloody ad has focus or not deserves, well lynching is to kind, something nasty certainly, and who ever the genius was that thought BT could benefit from some annoying bint rolling her chair across what im trying to read deserves an inverted hanging (long drop, short rope attached by their genitals)

it was that ad which prompted me to install adblock plus, and well i ain't looked back since, pages load faster, the content im after is easier to digest, and the net result some bean counters projected profit is incorrect. at the end of the day www. was designed as tool to share data, not another billboard to sell pleb's stuff they don't need, and unachievable ideals. never mind the scatter shot at best result of "targeted" marketing.

as for the "if everyone..." argument, the fact is everyone is as ridiculous concept as integers, e.g. there is no absolute 1, but 0.999999999999999...9 or 1.0000000,,,01, there is no way possible that "everyone" would block ad's, and even if the majority did, all that would do, is prove how sick to death of being bombarded with adverts people are, yeah there would be some casualties along the way but thats a fact of life (perhaps the only one) things die (people, pets, websites, whatever)

As for companies wanting to distance themselves from questionable content, maybe they should think about removing their questionable customers, cmon vodaphone, suspend the accounts of all registered British Nazi Party members on your network, i dare you, put your money where your mouth is, you don't want to be associated with them, yet you are happy to provide service to them...

Web ads started out as a way for sites with good content to provide their services for free and some sites still follow this concept. But too many sites are now starting life as ideas primarily designed to sell ad space. Is these really worth saving?

While we're at it, all those people who go off and take a (the?) piss when the ads come on on telly are depriving the broadcasters of their advertising revenue; we already have a licence fee anyway.

sort of issue: aCerno.

They say your ad won't appear:

- On sites that are hateful or disparaging toward any race, gender, sexual orientation or nationality

- On sites promoting firearms, bombs, weapons or other illegal activities

- On sites with graphic sexual content

- On sites promoting illegal downloads

- On sites providing incentives to click on ad