I am speaking here only in a "Devil's Advocate" capacity since I oppose putting ads in Wikipedia. I just think our continued refusal to run ads should be on the best possible arguments.
Oldak Quill wrote:
Even if the ad service (and advertising companies) are treated with independence (ignoring threats by those companies to pull out advertising money for treating a subject in a particular way), how do you think reader impressions will change?
First I think it safe to say that companies would not make such threats. I have been working with internet advertising for many years and particularly for the kinds of ads we are talking about (text ads from google adsense), I have never heard one word from an advertiser about anything. Even for largest display style ads, I have not seen that kind of disrespect for a publisher. It just really is not the major issue most people think it is.
Having said that, the issue of public perception is absolutely vital, and you do make a perfectly good point.
This is one reason to have the advertising be only in the search results page... to maintain that firewall between content and advertising.
Internet advertising is already too imposing and the popularity of anti-advertising tools reflect this. Just because the status quo is to be intrusive with advertising, doesn't mean we should follow suit. The availibility of these tools creates a disparity between those with the technical know-how to remove ads from their browsing, and those who don't.
We could institute a very very simple one-click opt-out. "Click to turn off ads". You click it, and there you go, ads are gone. Cookie set for 10 years.
--Jimbo