[stevesearer]

Ads are useful to my readers because they don't have unlimited time to research 10,000 types of side chairs for use in their office projects. If they see a chair they like in an ad, they'll meet with a furniture dealer to check it out, and then maybe use it in a future project.

How is that bad?

Many people like advertisements though - just pick up a September issue of Vogue and you'll see over 500 pages of a 900 page magazine filled with ads. And people go out of their way to buy it because they love the ads.

[aluhut]

But isn't it you job to have those pictures as part of your content? It's not like the ads have these 10000 types also. They also have only a few. Sometimes an ad even takes 2 pages for one item because they payed more. In the worst case the ad is misleading telling you: "this is the best chair for your because it has XY" and even if you don't belive it in the first place (which is self-evident already. You just don't belive what they tell you because everyone has the same claim of truth. Think about it: we got used to it!) but at the point where you make a decision, maybe far in the future, some subconcious connections that have been manipulated by the ad make you chose the product. This is actually what advertisers aim for. I see it as ethicaly wrong and I'm really sad that you can't see my point of difference between content and avertisment.

@vogue: My girfriend reads those magazines also. But she is always annoyed of the ads and the ad manipulated content. Some of these have at least ads you can take out and throw away, which she does also. She does not read the magazines because of the ads but because of the name of the magazine as well as the content (which is why she stoped reading the german Cosmopolitan for excample. The content became the ad in a way it became unreadable for her).

I've never ever heard somebody say: I buy/watch this product because I like the ads. I really doubt there is a relevant ammount of people who do this...