Ads from escort services on photo.net?

I live in Italy and when I log on to photo.net I am subjected to large ads for

escort services and young women. Why? Is photo.net now accepting ads promoting

this kind of thing? In particular, I am referring to ads from

http://date.ventivmedia.com that are the most irritating since they promote

contacting of young girls from the Rome and Tivoli areas where I live.

 

Certainly such ads are beneath the level of the photo.net membership and I am

astonished that photo.net has a policy of accepting such advertising. The sites

promoted by these ads have no place on photo.net in my opinion.

I will look into it. But it is important to remember that we don't sit and sign off on every ad that shows up. We work with advertising companies and set a level of ads that we will accept. Usually this works fine, but sometimes rogue ads slip in past the filters.

I understand. I just wished to bring it to your attention. I trust that photo.net will correct the problem and let members know that they should report offensive or unacceptable advertising that appears on our screens. Thanks.

 

David

Were they google served ads (usually in the vertical strip on the right). I know that Google serves different ads to different countries which depend on the viewer's IP address (Geotargeting). If so you may be seeing something that we here in the US never see and which are only seen by those in Italy. Were the ads in English or Italian?

 

If they were horizontal banner ads then it's likely they were served by one of the other adservers that photo.net uses. I'm not sure if they also use Geotargeting.

 

If they were Google ads you can click on the "Google" name and send them feedback on the ads you see.

 

Obviously they are not something that photo.net would deliberately publish. Out of interest, what page were they on? I suspect probably one of the gallery pages?

The ads appeared whenever I was on any forum page, whether or not I had logged in.

 

Oddly, the ads have stopped since I sent the original posting this morning. They were on the right margin and they were not marked "Ads by Google". However, the ads that now appear on the right are indeed Google ads and are the conventional ads that we are used to.

 

Was this an example of hijacking the advertising sector? I am even more curious since the ads from date.ventivmedia on photo.net have stopped rather abruptly after having appeared for several days.

Google is perfectly capable of serving only pertinent ads. I also participate on radio oriented forums with Google ads served in a banner. I never see anything unrelated to radio.

 

Sometimes the ads are very specific: in a post related to the MARS (acronym, not the planet) net on HF radio (which helps military service members communicate brief personal messages to their families), I saw Google ads from antenna manufacturers who specialize in making antennas for MARS applications.

 

If Google is serving lewd or racy ads attached to photo.net it's because we photographers are perceived as naughty monkeys. No surprise. Look at the number of pix of nude and scantily clad wimmins on photo.net and other photo related sites. Google is simply serving the demographic their market research indicates actually exists.

 

We radio buffs don't see naughty ads because we are a dull bunch whose notion of sexy is a warm glowing vacuum tube.

Google serves contextual ads based on the page. That means it looks at the words on the page and figures out what it's about, then serves ads related to that topic. I don't think they're smart enough to figure out the content of images (though they can read the image filename and may use that). If a page pretty much only had the word "nude" on it, you can guess what type of ad they might serve (although as far as I know Google does have limits on the type of advertisers allowed into their program and I'm pretty sure escortservices wouldn't be welcome).

 

...-.-

When I returned yesterday, the ads were gone, replaced by some other ads all in Italian, which is expected since this is Italy. Funny thing though, the young girls offered on the ads about which I complained were in English which doesn't normally happen here. Anyway, these ads were more than simply trashy and stupid (neither of which do I normally voice any objection, just a low rating for aesthetics). I assume they won't appear on my screen when I logon to photo.net made up of such reserved ladies and gentlemen.

 

Ciao!

 

David