Advertising and Blogs

 

Hello friends. I try to keep this blog on a positive note and leave the ranting for others, so I have put off writing this post for quite some time now. But yesterday, as I was reading some of the blogs that I follow, there was a link to another blog that looked like it would make for nice reading. So I clicked on the link and found a fairly nice home decor blog. Simple enough.

Have you noticed how advertising has found its way to so many blogs (especially the home decor ones), that it isn't even pleasant to read them anymore? I do most of my blog reading on my iPad when I am having my coffee in the morning, and have approached the point where it takes so much time to get past the ads (some of which I can't even "x" out of, or lock up my screen altogether), that I am no longer going to read any that cause so much aggravation. I may as well just go out and buy a magazine and put up with those advertisements.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mind some advertising. As a matter of fact, I tried AdSense for a very short period of time. At least that vehicle had the good sense to place advertisements where I wanted them placed, and with content that was relative to my post. But I choose not to read blogs anymore that have a pop-up ad every time I scoll down to the next paragraph, at the same time as having others pop up from either side of the screen, and in a much bigger format that the blog post I am trying to read in the first place. I guess these are the bloggers that we see on Pinterest claiming to earn 100 grand a year on their blogs. Oh, and let's not forget the blog setups that give you a short paragraph and then make you click to "read more", where, of course, you are switched to another screen and start all over with yet more ads.

 

But back to the blog that I linked to through one of the blogs that I read...This gal with the lovely home and family, who indicated that her faith was the focus of her life, had a unique form of advertising that I had not seen before. You know how when you get to the bottom of someone's post and it has little glimpses indicating "other posts that you might be interested in"? Ones that are usually relative to the post that you just read? Well, at the bottom of this post were  four such glimpses. One was to a post from her own blog. One was for a new testosterone booster. One was about what happens when you take a testosterone supplement, and the last, accompanied by a very suggestive photo, was about the most embarrassing dirty photos on the web. In fine print at the bottom of each thumbnail the sponsor was stated.  I checked this same blog today, and at the bottom of its very lovely post, was an ad for the "skinny pill sweeping the nation", and it was illustrated by an awful looking person, with what were very exaggerated facial features. Would you want to end your own posts this way? I wonder if some people read their own blogs as a viewer would see them.

I personally believe that our blogs should be extensions of ourselves, and not gimmicks for advertising at our readers' expense. Especially when the ads are not at all relative to the type of  reader who is taking the time to follow that blog in the first place. But that's just my humble and worthless opinion.

By the way, the advertising you see at the top of my post is scanned from a 1923 Woman's World magazine that I have in my ephemera collection. And it is the only type of advertising that you will see on this old woman's blog.  Feel free to save it to your computer and use it as you wish. 

 

I wonder if the women of 1923 got tired of seeing advertisements everywhere they went!

Thanks for putting up with me today!