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What Types of Online Ads Are Acceptable?

By Laura Tucker

We all tend to groan when we see online ads and would rather do without them. However, they can be a necessity for some websites and organizations as they have to earn money in some way to be able to pay for the website. Given that, what types of online ads are acceptable?

So you go to one of your favorite websites, and there are a lot of ads in the site. Some might be in a sidebar, while others might be mixed in throughout the text you’re reading. Then you try to Google for some information and get some ads thrown in there, and then once you click one of the search results, the webpage comes up, but you have to either wade through a countdown to get past the ad, or you have to “Click here” or say “no thank you” to the pop-up to clear it.

And these ads can be for anything. They can be tied to your Google habits so that it’s relevant to you yet also irritating that they know so much about you. They can sometimes end up to be something very distasteful if not X-rated, and other times be something that you just have no interest in whatsoever and not have anything at all to do with the webpage you’re viewing.

Realizing that at least some ads are a necessity, should they only match up in content to what’s on the webpage or is it okay for them to be about something totally random? Should they just be one the side and totally out of your way or is it okay to have pop-up ads to wade through to get to what you’re looking for?

What types of online ads are acceptable?

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Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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