Those rectangles above the topic names which automatically advertise products based on key words in the message. If you mention the flag, they are trying to sell you a flag and so forth. It’s ingenious, at least interesting because they change, and with any luck it’s helpin’ to pay for the Chiffboard.. Or is it?
I think we should pay for the chiffboard. Based on our incomes, we could all donate a small (or large) monthly fee to C&F, in prayer, and we’d have no need for banner ads. We’d also be fighting capitalism, which, as you admit, is greedy, cruel, evil, sordid, double-bad and stupid.
(Note: I’m half-way kidding yall, please don’t go mental…)
Oh, I’m glad I saw the thing about not going mental 
.
I never noticed they changed. I can’t see them right now, so I’ll have to look at them. I thought they just advertised whistles and stuff all the time. Really they are quite a deal. I never notice them and if it helps pay for stuff then why not? If the advertisers think they are working and are willing to pay, that’s great. At least they aren’t big flashing things.
That would go along with the fact that Dale has recently been revealed (in his confirmation hearings) to be a communist French woodchuck.
For some reason, I want to ask if he had sexual relations with that woman.
Which woman? I’m not sure…
Okay, now the ads are for “Cork-Vinyl-Fabric Boards”, “Aol Message Boards” and “Paper.com”. Are you sure these are correlated with what we are typing?
Let’s see…
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL AOL
Nope, I got this:
Okay … so what do Uilleann Pipes and AOL have in common?
One sucks, the other blows?
Those little ads are from a Google thing called Adsense. The advertisers pay Google a certain amount for every click on those ads, and as Adsense is an affiliate scheme, C&F should get a tiny payment for clicks on those ads.
I suggest we all click on them occasionally and check out the sites that advertise… Maybe it’ll make Dale and Rich enough money for a couple of coffees. But don’t overdo it or Google will think C&F is trying to con them by clicking on the ads just to generate income.
Adsense does tailor the ads according to the content of the page they appear on.
Edited to add: Google doesn’t crawl and udate its index fast enough for it to be likely that we can influence the ads by typing keywords and then hitting refresh!
Although I’d bet Googlebot crawls C&F every day.
I recently put banner ads up on my site as well…so obviously, I don’t begrudge Dale doing so.
I can’t really say what kind of money the banner ads make Dale’s site, but I know my own ads bring in about $50/month. That pays for all the costs in running a website: hosting service, database space, domain registration, etc. It pays shipping and handling on whistles I trade, and whistles I buy soley for reviewing that I otherwise wouldn’t have any interest in, which adds up to 2 or 3 whistles a year (depending on how much they are).
I’ve been making that money for less than a year. I’ve been running the website for about 10 (though I took about 18 months off several years ago). Some years cost me more to run the site than others, but it averages a couple hundred a year. Which means I’m easily a good couple grand in the hole. I spend several hours a week working on the site, even when I’m not uploading music. Whistle reviews take 10-20 hours spread out over 2-3 weeks, meaning I probably spend 250 hours a year doing those. I’m sure Dale spends a similar amount of time on newsletters, his own reviews, policing the board, etc. If Dale were making about the same money I make with his ads, he’s probably earning in the neighborhood of $.50 an hour for his work after costs. Not quite what I think of when I think of “greedy capitalism” 
When the internet bubble burst around 2000, I lost my job. Around that time, I put out a plea that people donate (you could donate via yahoo and paypal at that time, though I think those programs fizzled) so that I could keep my internet connection alive and keep my site up. I made $25.00 that year from donations. I say if the ads are unobtrusive and help keep the costs of running the thing in check, and keep it alive, that’s a good thing…because donations are not a long-term solution. It may work better here than my site did for me, because of the community nature of the site, but I doubt it would be sustainable. I see the fact that the ads are about things you’d already be interested in (whistles, etc) as being a very good thing…I hate getting hit with obnoxious ads for “performance enhancers” “male extenders” and all that other crap that’s out there. I’ve clicked on Dale’s ads a couple of times because they showed things I was interested in (and Google frowns on you clicking on your own ads..hehe!)
Now if you want rampant capitalism, I just recently read somewhere where some blogger brings in 400K a year on his google ads..for blogging. (sigh)
My feeling is that we know that there are ads in newspapers, magazines, radio, televison, movies even. And we PAY for some of those things.
We pay for the physical Internet connection, but we don’t pay for the content—unless it’s some special website that charges. So we are getting to do all sorts of things and get all sorts of information for free.
Naturally the people who run these websites are having to pay rent on the site, do work to maintain it, do work to keep it interesting. We can either pay those costs, by subscribing to a website, or we can ignore ads. I think it is a darn good deal to get to ignore ads. There are no apologies needed for using advertising!!!
People who criticize (sp?) simply do not understand the situation.
I’m going to start a new post with an interesting subject line, let’s see what happens!
MarkB
Yeah, because I mentioned the word “banner” in there. It might just be the subject line, not sure. It’s very cool. needless to say, the political thread is always asking about Bush polls etc.
PS. On Mark’s thread about cannibalism on Political Forum is a pop-up for Meat Packaging. Nyuk.
(posting to add that I’ve had my ads up a little over a year, not a little under a year)
The AOL’s did indeed bring up a Google ad for AOL message boards.
I thought it was funny when this](http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=33105%22%3Ethis) thread about making a whistle from
a copper pipe repair coupler brought up an ad about anti-corosion](http://www.corrodefense.com/%22%3Eanti-corosion) tape
for pipelines!
I posted this in a separate thread, but now I’ve found this one again . . .
Yes, the banners do change. Sometimes hysterically.
This was the banner on that cannibalism thread down in the political forum. It was discussing a National Geographic article on cannibalism in human ancestors . . . .
Seal-a-Meal® Seals The Freshness In No More Freezer Burn Or Bacteria!
www.Seal-A-Meal.com
Couldn’t get anything better than that, unless it would be barbecue sauce.
The chiff tithe?