If you’ve visited the site in the last couple of weeks, you probably noticed some flash-based ads at the bottom of the screen. They’d be banners that would appear for a few seconds and then offer a “Close” link at the top-right. These ads would sometimes take the form of square and vertical banner ads, too. Rarely, even a video would play. These ads were from a company called Clicksor. On the advice of a friend who was also experimenting with Clicksor, I added Clicksor to my Google Adsense ads. Although it was slightly against my better judgement to display upwards of four ads on a page, I went along with it.
This morning, I decided to eliminate the Clicksor ads. My fellow blogger and I began to research Clicksor a bit more the past few days and decided we didn’t like their business practices. They hide information about their pay-out methods (and how they can evade paying web-publishers) and their method of screening advertisers deserves scrutiny, too. We’ve had sporadic e-mails from readers claiming the Clicksor ads were offering pornography and some even triggered red-alerts from Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox over trojan-horses and other forms of malware. I’ve also noticed advertisements for online gambling, an activity that is illegal in the State of Indiana.
Although my traffic has remained fairly steady, my friend believes his has dropped about 10% over the last month due to the pesky nature and content of Clicksor’s pop-over flash ads.
I sincerely apologize if this has caused any problems for my readers. The malware warnings were incredibly rare, and likely were only triggered because the ad was hosted on a website known to contain dangerous elements. Likewise, only one of my readers reported seeing a pornographic ad and I only saw an online gambling ad once on this site. I also run a website that discusses political and social issues. My counterpart’s blog focuses on celebrity gossip, so there were several more problems regarding the latter problems on his site.
For what it’s worth, Clicksor asks if you have adult content on your website AND whether or not you want adult content to be featured in ads that appear on your website. I answered “No” to both questions. This plus the simple fact that they aren’t screening advertisers for end-user safety led me to say their screening method deserves scrutiny.
In the meantime, i will continue to run Google ads; which have been proven safe; on this site and satellite websites in the KTracy.com network.
DFA Wireless – a cell phone service provider that is “Calling for Change.”
