Adsense already has a "report" button on the ads served to this site.
Their report button doesn't do enough, though. The definition of "acceptable" to Google is understandably broad. Google wants to scoop up all the money, even from skeevy advertisers whose ads are following the very few rules. And yes, if I want to set up a personal account at AdSense, I can give Google permission to track me personally, and display ads that I've told them I'm up for, and block the ads I've asked them to block...but as you mention, all it takes is a vendor changing their ad ID, or placing the ads through an agency or into a pool, and voila, no longer blocked! AND I've volunteered to give Google a bunch of information that they didn't already have.
btw, as you note, that's how AdBlock makes their money, too. They sell your personal data, including the sites you've visited and the ads you've blocked, and take money to let "Acceptable Ads" through the block. Details
here, but I don't want to make them sound villainous. Everybody has to get paid, and again, I
believe in advertising. The more people trying to raise the standards, the better!
The report button I'm suggesting for UU would be reporting to UU, that me, a UU member, doesn't think that this ad belongs at UU. For example, the ads that prompted me to turn on ad-blocking for UU are in plenty of other places on the web. Fine, let those ads be THERE, not here.
Revelry usage is two orders of magnitude larger (based on current members online), and the site is the primary product. Their math on ads is quite different.
Outstanding point, which leads me to the other thing I've been meaning to suggest. UU has products -- really good ones! Fantastic classes, concerts and the UU+ experience, one-on-one lessons with Aldrine Guerrero, Kanilea and Islander ukuleles (including some very reasonably priced gift packages that would be great for the holidays), and yet no ads for those! The reason why is obvious: XenForo's built-in tools only support AdSense-style network ads. But a $20 plug-in could allow locally served ads AND AdSense, and now, all of those wonderful UU products.
Maybe start by putting a Shop link in the top nav, right next to that UU VIP link.
No need to integrate the store, per se. Just a link that points to shop.ukuleleunderground.com. I suspect that many members, and certainly
most visitors, have no idea that it's even there!
I agree with you, AdSense is chump-change. It's barely worth their effort, which is why I've volunteered to take on some ad moderation if anybody there is interested. It would be a much, MUCH better use of their time to dump AdSense altogether, and go all-in on advertising their own stuff, plus maybe some affiliate sales for things they'd rather not stock but have still promoted through other UU efforts. I'm thinking of Cynthia Lin being on the UU podcast a couple of weeks ago --putting her records in an affiliate store is a couple of clicks, but nobody will buy them from UU if they don't know that UU has them.
Maybe they don't want to go that far, but I'm thinking of something like a countdown clock here in the forum before the live YT streams. Can't do that with AdSense, and there's no need to build that kind of feature yourself if somebody is selling it cheap. Even if the only ads that UU has are for other UU products, it will make for a nicer site, and only a couple of sales would bring in more dough than unpleasant ads that nobody is clicking on.
The last thing I'll say about this is that a website is like a garden. The weeds aren't at risk of taking over the garden, but they make the garden a lot less pleasant for the people who prefer gardens to weeds.
And once again circling back to the original topic, the top two benefits listed in
the original UU VIP thread from 2011 -- the UU VIP forum, and ad-free browsing -- aren't currently working.
Happy to support regardless, and as much as I believe in advertising, AdSense doesn't make much sense
here.
