I’m (still) trying to get to the bottom of the Defense Australia ad. We run a few ad servers and no one copped to running this ad yet. I haven’t seen the ad myself (I’m pretty sure it’s geo-targeted and it’s only being served to Australian readers).

I don’t have control over specific ad inventory, which is why isolating the ad is such a slow-going process. For the record, I don’t condone ads that have self-starting audio and I apologize again for your inconvenience.

Re: flashing magenta & yellow, “winner,” and 1000000 visitor ad. Before Neatorama grew to its current size, we had little choice but to display bottom-of-the-barrel ads. We don’t have this type of ad anymore (save for the annoying hiccups like the Defense Australia ad every once in a great while).

Re: adblock. I’m ambivalent about this. I understand the value to readers who don’t want to see ads, but ads are the lifeblood of this blog (and others too, I’m sure).

Re: Freemium, that’s a great idea v.dog – though I’m not sure we’re at such scale that we can take advantage of the idea. Neatorama remains my hobby blog and probably shows that it’s run as such. No big corporation here!

Now I know you need the ads to generate revenue to keep going. While I like using this site, I like the continuous use of my eyeballs more.

Please, just go back to plain text/images (ala Google). If you want ads to catch our attention, make them clever, not annoying (or false for that matter- telling me I’m the 1000000 visitor, or pretending to be a Windows security warning is just wrong, if not illegal).

Better yet, have you considered alternative revenue models like Freemium? ( http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all  ) It’s where your basic content is free, but subscribers get the exclusives.

http://www.walken2008.com/