This Is an Entry About the Ads

Okay folks -- this one is an entry about the ads: the 728x90 banner ad that was placed on the top of all Journals yesterday as part of the Journals R2 release, and the resulting furor that it's set off within the J-Land community.

First, right off the bat, I can't say what you most want me to say, which is "The advertisement is going away."

I
can't speak for upper management, where the business decisions get
made, though I can share my thoughts -- and yours -- with my own
bosses.  And I haven't heard anything that suggests we will be
rolling back the ads. (And yes, I know it's the old "Decision is made
above my pay grade" saw, but just because it's lame doesn't mean it's not true).

Your reactions to the ads have been universally negative, though there has been a range of negativity: A very vocal portion of folks absolutely HATE-HATE-HATE the ads; I have been told to resign; some of the more extreme wording has likened the ads to "rape"; there have been threats of lawsuits and I've seen calls (that I hope are at least half-joking) for vandalizing the property of advertisers whose ads have run.

Needless to say, these folks don't expect to remain AOL Journalers, or even AOL members much longer (more on that in a bit.)

(To top it off, it really, really didn't help that certain things broke as we installed R2. For example, authentication problems caused the edit buttons to disappear for a while and there are still people who can't save entries. This is really bad, and I am very, very sorry -- we should have done more testing, especially with the different versions of the AOL client. And then there's that whole unwelcome surprise thing, which I have also apologized for. But this entry is about the ads issue.)

Next, there are the people who have an extreme dislike
of the new ad placement, but might not leave their Journals, especially
if we can do things to make the ad placement less annoying. Some of
your suggestions have included:

* Letting blog owners opt-out of ad placements.

* Using less-garish ads, or text ads.

* Giving blog owners a piece of the action,
either through a third-party administered ad program like Google
AdSense, or maybe a direct payout from AOL. (On the flip side, some
folks think that this whole ad thing is a scheme to introduce a premium
"no-ads" fee for Journals.)

* Adding some sort of disclaimer to the ad, showing that the blog owner doesn't endorse the ad placement, or even giving blog owners a choice
as to what kind of ad shows up. For example, if you blog about working
at Company XX, and there's an ad running in your blog for your chief
competitor, Company YY, you would be upset about the ad content, even
if you were generally okay with the idea of ads in your blog (which you
probably aren't).

These are all good ideas, some of which
we've discussed internally before and some that we haven't, and we are
examining all of them, though I don't know if we will be able to
implement any of them.

There are other people who are neutral about AOL placing ads in their blogs -- they don't care one way or the other. I don't see very many of those right now.

And of course, I don't see anyone who says "I love the new ads!" If they do, they probably work in the advertising industry.

Of course, there's been a furious flurry of blog posts, comments, e-mails and message board posts. (I hope that as you do this, you continue to send your feedback to the feedback address we've set up, JournalChanges@aol.com, which I can't stress enough is not a dumping ground
for your e-mails -- it's set up because I don't know if any
high-powered AOL executives are going to see the comments you post in
my blog, whereas with the e-mail, we can collect your feedback directly
and share it with our executive team.)

There's also at least one petition that I know of, as well as various boycotts, embargos on Scalzi's assignments, blog blackouts and more.

Here's some of the sentiment we've found in your posts, comments and mails:

* Over at What the Hell...?, jeffcomedy uses the following analogy:

"It's
the equivalent of going to a hair-cutters, getting my hair all nice and
trim and spiffy.  I pay her and while I'm walking out the door,
she nails a coupon for Starbucks to the back of my head." (Thanks to
Suzie for calling that one out.)

* A bunch of folks
have also made ultimatums (to paraphrase): "Roll back the ads or we're leaving (and
you've made us so mad, we might leave anyway)." Patrick of Patrick's Place has put together a link list of AOL Journalers who have created new blogs at other blog providers.  A popular alternative is using a combination of the Blogger tool and BlogSpot hosting, which are both free blogging services that are owned by Google.

* Some others have suggested canceling their AOL accounts and recreating their blogs on the free AIM Blogs
platform, which gives you the same familiar features, for free (though
it does carry the association with AOL, which some people have sworn
off).

* There have also been folks who've pooh-poohed
my "poor li'l cog in the corporate wheel fighting for the customer" act
(except it's not an act), but (allow me to be self-indulgent for a
moment) do you think I wanted to be on the receiving end of
all your complaints about the ads? Yes, I know, no sympathy for the
devil and all, but just know that I'm no troll.

Anyway, this has been a pretty long post, and I know many of you stopped reading at "right off the bat",
but I wanted you to know that we are following your feedback and
reading what you're writing; we're sorry you're unhappy with the
decisions we've made; if anything changes, I will let you know; and in
any event, I hope you keep blogging, whether it's with AOL or someone
else.

Thanks -- Joe.