Ads, There’s the Rub (sorry, it’s far from wordless)

One thing I really do like about WordPress is that there are people you can correspond with when you have questions, complaints, technical problems. How many “free” services can you say that about? For that matter, how many paid services can you say that about? Big points for WordPress here. Explaining things over and over to newbies can be a truly thankless job. I do thank the WordPress support staff for tackling it. I also thank the volunteers in the forum who explain over and over and over again . . .

Sadly, on the subject of advertising, WP support seems to be feeling the burden of open communication. When I wrote them, registering my complaints about the ads which I noticed appearing with my posts, I received this reply:

From Matt’s post:
http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/09/06/on-ads/

“Even though you will probably never see an ad, if you did happen to come across one I don’t want it to be a surprise. The comments last time we discussed ads were fairly heated but I wanted to make sure everyone had accurate information.

What are our future plans? There have been a fair number of requests for an Adsense widget so it’s still on our mind as a paid upgrade.”

Cheers,

That’s it in full. You can almost feel how weary they are of the topic.

I can’t blame them. As I said, theirs is often a thankless job. If you search the faqs and the forum, you will find the issue of advertising hashed, rehashed, minced, pureed . . . Not always nicely either. Sometimes surprisingly rudely.

Mostly WP is being badgered by people chomping at the bit to make money on their free WordPress blogs. Those folks don’t understand the policy either. Over and over again, you read that users are not allowed to include AdSense or other advertising widgets, coding, links, etc, in their blogs.

I noticed far less badgering on the matter from the strictly “social” bloggers, the folks most likely not to want advertising at all. Maybe because we don’t realize that advertising is an issue on WP? Or we think it’s only an issue for the people who want advertising but can’t have it?

Everybody blogging under the impression that “no ads” means “no ads at all” — raise your hand.

All WP support staff and volunteers tired of explaining over and over again how and why that’s not true — raise your hands.

Thanks. You can put them down now.

The very fact of the chronic confusion over the ads policy indicates the need for its clarification on pages first accessed by prospective users. I read the front matter — the features, the TOS, the faqs, — and still I came away thinking “If I blog here, my posts will be ad-free.”

In an attempt to understand how I came to misunderstand the policy, I went back to the beginning and tried to retrace my steps:

• The “Advertising” statement at the bottom of the Features page is not clear to me as a newcomer. I’m not sure what a “Google text ad” is. There’s no image to illustrate what is meant. There is no link to an explanation of “Google text ad.” It does not say what will be advertised. For all I know, WordPress intends to sometimes advertise its own services on my blog. I’d have no problem with that. I would support that, in fact. I assume that WP, being no “fancypants marketers,” will have the courtesy to let me know when they’re doing it. This “Advertising” statement gives me no reason to believe that it will be done without my knowledge of the actual occurrence or nature of the ads.
• In reading the Terms of Service, I find no mention of WP’s Adsense policy. I find no mention of “advertising” or “ads” at all. There is a prohibition against “unwanted commercial content.” Great! I want no ads on my blog. This is all very promising.
• In the “I’m new to blogging. Where do I start?” FAQ, I find this statement: “1. We do not permit WordPress.com blogs to be used for advertising, search engine manipulation, traffic generation, commercial purposes[1] or “spam”.” — Well it can’t be any plainer than that. Hooray! No advertising! — The footnote makes an exception for “VIP blogs.” And nothing here about WP itself using my blog for advertising.
• A FAQ headed “Adsense and other ads” includes another general statement: “2. We also run some ads sometimes and the reasons for that are explained here.” “Here” is the “Matt’s post,” mentioned above. I have to do a keyword search to find this FAQ, but I’ve already been reassured by the “Where do I start?” FAQ that there’s no advertising, so why would I search for a FAQ
  about advertising? I’ve never heard of Adsense and don’t know what it is, so I won’t be looking that up either.
• By the time I’m ready to start perusing FAQs, tags and Forums in earnest, I’m already in sign-me-up and how-do-I-post? mode. I’ve already forgotten that suggestion on the features page that WordPress might someday want to support its service on my blog. When I go to FAQs and the Forums, I see threads grumbling “why can’t I put ads on my blog?” I see no reason to look at them, since I don’t want ads on my blog. I just want to know how to choose themes and get my jpegs loaded. The few that I do look at just seem to reinforce the impression that no ads will find their way into my blog.

I realize WordPress can’t make overly eager newbies sit down and read every bit of front matter, but for those who do read it, hoping to map out their immersion into blogland, there can and should be a candid statement of the ads policy, in the Features page and in the TOS, with links to an explanation of how AdSense works, why WP uses it, and images to illustrate how it will “probably” look on a user’s blog.

I’ve sent them 4 jpegs, screenshots of my posts with the GoogleAds I’m not supposed to see. They have my permission to use them to illustrate the ad policy to prospective bloggers.

———————————————————-

Epilogue to what now feels like the world’s longest post:

Today I went to “The Aged Cat” through Google, the means through which I discovered the offending ads in the first place. Today, thankfully no ads.

Whom do I thank? WordPress Support? Don’t know whether or not they did anything to change it. If they did, “THANK YOU, WP Support!”

Or is this just the way the random ads policy plays out — some days you see them, some days you don’t? — Will they return again, like the Spanish Inquisition, when I least expect them? But — (feel free to chime in here) — “no one expectssss the Ssspanisssh Inquisition!”

Aye, there’s the rub.