<i>But there is an ever-growing amount of good writing online, much of which suffers from its proximity to these low-rent neighbors.</i><p>I'm not entirely sure why good writing 'suffers more' from proximity to a direct-marketing campaign - acai berries, belly fat, whatever - than it would from, say, an ad for a Ford Focus or The King's Speech. Both offer an equivalent amount of visual distraction.<p>The author here doesn't understand that online advertising is fairly efficient - the 'get four auto insurance quotes' advertisements show up because more-familiar brand advertisements simply don't work well in those spots. People reading good writing online aren't particularly valuable to advertisers, so they get to see no-risk-to-the-advertiser cost-per-acquisition advertisements. Got to try and monetize somehow.<p>I suspect there's a certain bit of class snobbery here - the reader is engaged in something <i>literary</i>, so how dare he be subjected to an ad so déclassé, it belongs on a gossip site? Obviously he, a refined soul, deserves more tasteful commercial distractions!<p>There are two solutions here. The reader <i>could</i> be extensively and thoroughly tracked, so we know enough about him to show him an ad for that off-Broadway adaption of Silas Marner he's been jonesing for. But that approach is currently under attack from all parties - and besides, when people are tracked, the ads best suited for them are often less sophisticated than they'd anticipate.<p>I prefer the more direct solution: if you don't like the ads, pay for the content through some other means, and eliminate the need for advertising altogether.
I don't think that the set of people who<p>A) want to read long form writing online, rather than in print,<p>B) but they don't use RSS, they don't use Readability, they're not using a mobile app, and they use the default website layout instead of the print stylesheets<p>C) and they're irritated or turned off by weird ads,<p>D) but they don't use an ad blocker<p>is a very large set, and I don't think it's growing any bigger.
I'm reminded of the punchline of the old econ joke "we've already established what kind of woman you are, now we're just haggling over price." We always have to remember in web publishing, ads _are_ content. Your users _will_ judge you based on the ads you display (if they are not in the tiny minority who block them). And, rightfully so. Do you think Vogue would allow some crappy ad from T.J. Maxx between LV and Prada? Never. That (and their readership who pour over the ads to see what's hot) is why they have sky-high CPMs. It can be done online, too.
Today I learned there is a whole universe of bizarre ads on web pages that I have never seen, thanks to AdBlock. Seriously, I had no knowledge of the ads described in this article.