Comments on: Ads, Chartjunk and the Fart Machine http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/ads-chartjunk-and-the-fart-machine/ Effective Charts and Dashboards for Excel users Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:31:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Jorge Camoes http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/ads-chartjunk-and-the-fart-machine/#comment-1287 Jorge Camoes Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:12:55 +0000 http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/?p=1121#comment-1287 Mark: I understand your point, but, unlike TV ads, the reader is getting two inconsistent messages at the same time, and that's bad both for the blogger and for the advertiser. Can you imagine James Bond saying "BMW Z3 is such a lousy car" or something? If you find a link to a book that is inconsistent with my overall message, please let me know, and I'll remove it. And no, consistency do not mean a single, dogmatic, version of the true. If you say "x", the ads shouldn't say "not x", no matter what. That's what I believe in. I know the difference between editorial content and advertising content, and if I like a blogger I will not stop reading the blog just because of the ads. But it feels strange. Let me give you an extreme (but real) example. Trent, over <em>The Simple Dollar</em> (a blog about personal finance) removed "virtually" all ads in his blog. Why? Because "I finally realized that the real reason I write The Simple Dollar is to help bring about positive change in people’s lives, and when the site showed ads that really conflicted with that mission, I was undercutting what I want to do here" <a href="http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/12/18/why-ive-decided-to-abandon-google-ads-on-the-simple-dollar/" rel="nofollow">(here</a>). By the way, I think that "poor little bloggers" will never turn into rich probloggers if their main source of income are Google ads, but if that's their business model, that's ok with me, poor little blogger myself. Mark: I understand your point, but, unlike TV ads, the reader is getting two inconsistent messages at the same time, and that’s bad both for the blogger and for the advertiser. Can you imagine James Bond saying “BMW Z3 is such a lousy car” or something? If you find a link to a book that is inconsistent with my overall message, please let me know, and I’ll remove it. And no, consistency do not mean a single, dogmatic, version of the true.

If you say “x”, the ads shouldn’t say “not x”, no matter what. That’s what I believe in. I know the difference between editorial content and advertising content, and if I like a blogger I will not stop reading the blog just because of the ads. But it feels strange. Let me give you an extreme (but real) example. Trent, over The Simple Dollar (a blog about personal finance) removed “virtually” all ads in his blog. Why? Because “I finally realized that the real reason I write The Simple Dollar is to help bring about positive change in people’s lives, and when the site showed ads that really conflicted with that mission, I was undercutting what I want to do here” (here).

By the way, I think that “poor little bloggers” will never turn into rich probloggers if their main source of income are Google ads, but if that’s their business model, that’s ok with me, poor little blogger myself.

]]> By: Mark http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/ads-chartjunk-and-the-fart-machine/#comment-1286 Mark Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:48:17 +0000 http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/?p=1121#comment-1286 I know this comes a bit late but I just could not help myself after reading this. The argument that displaying google ads "is a dangerous game" is flawfed at its very foundation. Your take that since the blogger has no control over what gets displayed, the reader can get the wrong message is akin to saying that TV producers should decide what ads to show when their soaps/serial are aired. I guess the remaining part is better left unsaid and all of us know what path will that lead to. Are you yourself not guilty of "peddling" a couple of books from Amazon? Spare a thought for those poor little bloggers, some of whom have Google ads as the only "real" source of income from their blog. Regards, I know this comes a bit late but I just could not help myself after reading this. The argument that displaying google ads “is a dangerous game” is flawfed at its very foundation. Your take that since the blogger has no control over what gets displayed, the reader can get the wrong message is akin to saying that TV producers should decide what ads to show when their soaps/serial are aired. I guess the remaining part is better left unsaid and all of us know what path will that lead to. Are you yourself not guilty of “peddling” a couple of books from Amazon? Spare a thought for those poor little bloggers, some of whom have Google ads as the only “real” source of income from their blog.

Regards,

]]> By: Jerome Cukier » Review of Tableau 5.0 http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/ads-chartjunk-and-the-fart-machine/#comment-1285 Jerome Cukier » Review of Tableau 5.0 Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:03:42 +0000 http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/?p=1121#comment-1285 [...] up my Tableau review. I can see why the product has such an enthusiastic fan base. People such as Jorge Camoes, Stephen Few, Robert Kosara, Garr Reynolds, Nathan Yau, and even the Federal CIO Vivek Kundra have [...] [...] up my Tableau review. I can see why the product has such an enthusiastic fan base. People such as Jorge Camoes, Stephen Few, Robert Kosara, Garr Reynolds, Nathan Yau, and even the Federal CIO Vivek Kundra have [...]

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