So far I've seen:
Leather chaps, Harley boots, baby sitting, Midget parts...
Plus, the whole home page is starting to blink, strobe and flash like a cheap Vegas advertisement. It is giving me motion sickness.

Please change it back.

I know several NAM members who have purchased these already!

 

I was unaware of it until seeing this thread. It continues to not bother me.

 

but I'm not too bothered by it now. If it makes NAM more $, more power to ya!

Matt

 

I just wish that the "MINI Cooper is a ripoff" Ad would go away!!!! As far as ads go I'm a pretty stolid netizen - but this one raised my ire enough to make even me look.

Now the damn thing doesn't seem to go away. As easily as I can ignore the rest of the ads (even without Adblock) now I'm mysteriously drawn to look to see if this one is still showing - and it's always at the top of the list. Is the number of click-thrus also calculated into Google ad placement? I suspect the topic grabs the attention of a lot of people on this board and they click on it to find out why someone would say that a MINI Cooper is a ripoff (which, it turns out, isn't even the actual point of the damn site).

As much as I dislike this particular ad, I'm somewhat torn. Generally speaking, does NAM really want to drive traffic to and "feed" sites that detract from the very things and concepts that we cherish? Not to say that differing opinions are worthless - but I thought the point of NAM was to build and promote the MINI community, not provide divisive fodder (we do that well enough in the forums on our very own, thanks!) or "anti-" sentiments. It just seems that this is something that should be able to be (and should be) filtered, IMHO.

On the other hand, if we ALL click the link everyday then we'll quickly and consistently use up that person's ad budget every month - thereby making the ad go away for a while - and possibly cause them grief in a different way.

 

I've noticed the same thing. I think since we are all cliking it the ad stays up on the ad list.

 

By clicking in that link, the site owner gets charged for each unique click. While considered a form of 'click fraud', I dont see it as such since people here making the clicks are not 'competitors', rather they are consumers voting with their dollars, albeit in reverse.

This is the main reason why I detest 'contextual advertising' in it's actual form. It's purpose is to deliver helpful info on goods and services relating to topics being discussed. Quite often the links end up showing undesirable vendors who often bank on certain keywords to deliver unrelated services. It's seedy, unscrupulous and in bad form.

The nice thing is, one script placed in Adblock kills it forever. I will continue to support those vendors who have worked hard and built up intimate relationships with the folks here. They are most deserving of our time and money, not something slid under the door by some algorithm.

 

I've been watching this one as well. What amazes me is that this person is actually spending money to rant. I can imagine that a huge number of NAM members have clicked on it to see what it was all about.

Regardless I've added it to our blocked list of ads so it should remove itself in the next few days (as soon as Google pulls it out of our ad mix).

Thanks

Mark

 

Ditto! At least NAM (the entity, not the community) made a few pennies from it.

That was also the reason I suggested (in lieu of filtering it) that we make a concerted effort to click the link - just to make sure we force them to spend their entire budget. If they're smart it isn't a big budget - if not, we could really put a hurtin' on them. Of course, I think that might very well be the essence of "click fraud," but I dunno....and I guess that would just give him something else to rant and rave about against the MINI...

 

They don't bother me in the slightest. As long as they stay out of the way where they are...