Web advertising attempt

I’ve pretty much hated advertising for as long as I can remember but since I’m managing or helping manage ads for work, I figured I would try running some on my own site to gain some first-hand experience.

If you’re reading this via the Feedburner-served RSS feed, you’re supposed to see text ads under each post, and if you’re on the site itself you should have a square box which may be text or banners in the right-hand column (it broke my search box, BTW, despite the fact that both are unmodified Javascript bits from Google).

My own browser is Firefox with the Adblock extension, so I don’t see them myself… I fired up Chrome and IE to check them out, and boy, isn’t it ugly and distracting?

Also, I’m pretty disappointed with the text matching. Seeing my company’s ad served on my own private site is a mild irony in itself. They’re probably served here because we’re currently running a campaign in Holland, and I’m using the brand name several times in my posts. However, I do wonder why we’re purchasing impressions for our most-popular search term and one for which we’re the first organic result. Must have a chat with our media agency about this, I guess I’m missing a part of the picture.

Aside from the ASICS ads, I’m seeing really weird stuff (this is after the “TV’s incredible” post):

In the RSS feed, under my review of the Bazaarvoice summit, an interesting surprise: an English ad inviting me to “Meet Local Gay Black Men Near You.” It follows another English-language ad for a video chat app, a Dutch professional web event (that’s quite relevant, actually) and something for Center Parks promotion vouchers, also in Dutch.

Might the ads deter you from coming back, or from reading my feed? Not that I necessarily have that much traffic in the first place, but I wonder if they might drive people away from the site. Hit the comments!