I got numerous emails every day from people complaining about this ad or that ad on the blog. Typically, it's someone upset that a Republican ad is on the site, and the typical email criticizes me for being money-grubbing, a Republican sell-out, etc. Because I value the relationship I have with my readers, I answer these emails and explain what's going on. Well, now I'm getting several of these emails a day, every single day. I can't spend a good chunk of my time constantly explaining the same thing all day long, so here you go.
1. Most of the ads that you see on this blog, and most sites on the Web, are randomly generated by the ad companies we use. Advertisers buy run-of-network ads that run on thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Web sites at once, often randomly. Not only does the advertiser have no idea what site their ads are running on, but the sites have no idea what ads are coming (you may recall Obama recently having an ad on Drudge or something, this is what happened). In our case, Google tries to hone in which ads match our content, and they often see us talking about politics. So they send us political ads. Unfortunately, computers are dumb, so the political ads we get are sometimes Republican ads. So that's why you see ads you don't like on this, or any other, site.
2. I like to think that our readers are a step above the rest. Any of you who are going to suddenly turn into a conservative Republican because you accidentally saw an Ann Coulter ad on this Web site, well, I'm not sure we have a single reader who's that dumb.
3. Here's our ad policy. It's the same as Markos'. It's the same as The Nation. In a nutshell, we'll accept advertising from anyone, in principle. As Markos has clearly stated, if he starts cherry-picking which ads he deletes then it means he's endorsing the ads that remain. And I am not going to start endorsing every advertiser on this site. The advertising is separate from the editorial, period.
4. Having said that, I do block some ads sometimes. I'm certainly not going to take racist ads, bigoted ads, sex ads, or the like. But I am not going to get into the business of trying to decide whether 51% of you like the advertiser, which company is in favor or not this week, etc. It's just not going to happen, we have bigger and better things to focus on, all of us.
So in the future, if you write me about our ads, I'm going to send you to this post. I love you all, but you need to get over this ad fixation. Not everyone is a sell-out, and assuming they are, after watching years of their work, is rather insulting.
