The short answer--this blog is an experiment and a learning experience for me. Online advertising is a new development over the past decade. I wanted to experience it from the perspective of the content provider. That's what I am--a content provider. Wow.
Do I provide any content that people want? Questionable. In reality, my blog receives less than five visits per day. Certainly not enough to turn any profit via advertising. In fact, after 617 visits, I have earned exactly zero dollars and zero cents. Why, then, should I trouble myself with ads?
There are certain aspects I like about the ads. For one thing, they are inoffensive, not at all like the "Smash a Monkey Game" that occupied ad banners years ago. If I saw stupid ads like that, I would discontinue the service. Ads seem to give my site a more professional look, as though I'm already successful and commercial, although I'm far from it.
Ads give me subtle feedback on my content. If I see ads for conservative web sites, then I know I've been using words like "conservative" and "Republican" often. I like to guess at the reasoning that the AdSense robot employed to match my site with certain kinds of ads. I also have a suspicion that advertising may increase my ranking on the search engines, although this has not been the case so far.
I relish the stark contrast between my content and the horse crap offered by online advertising. Whereas I make the assumption that my reader is intelligent and educated, advertisers assume the opposite. I use whatever skills I may have in logic and writing. Advertisers rely upon slogans, and--on ads with graphical images--the faces of attractive models. They are appealing to the lower level of the human consciousness, while I am appealing to the higher, I would expect.
Mainly, I'm simply curious about advertising and how it works. At some point, I may tire of hosting ads for free and discontinue the service. If I receive any feedback from people who dislike the ads, then I would be inclined to act sooner.
I only get paid when, and if, people actually click on an ad, and no one in their right mind ever clicks on an internet ad. The only people who might click on an ad would be people new to the Internet who do not understand the ways of the beast. This is why many people, after installing the Firefox browser, add the "Adblock Plus" add-on in order to filter out all of the advertising from the internet. Does this deprive hard-working content providers of income? Not really, because elite users do not click on ads to begin with. Only clueless novices do, for the most part. Yet I have read tirades against Adblock Plus by webmasters who think it will evaporate their precious income.
Who is making money from online advertising? Mainly, people running scams, whereby their associates click on the ads on purpose. This is the main group. The other group consists of people running extremely popular sites that receive tens of thousands of hits per day. I suppose that there is a chance you might somehow click an ad by accident, not meaning to, and this will result in income accruing to the cunning webmaster. There may actually be some users in the world that may click on an ad because they want to.
I don't feel the payment schedule for advertising is very fair to content providers, because if an ad appears at all, it has some influence upon the end user. Brand familiarity is established. Expecting a user to click on an ad to learn more is asking quite a lot. Content providers should be paid by the impression, instead of by the click-thru-rate, which rewards those who market their sites to novices, such as children, who I would expect to click on more ads than adults, especially if they see their favorite cartoon character or television actor.
Does this help to explain why you see ads on a left-wing political blog? I'm not against capitalism, by the way, although I am against laissez-faire. There is only one entity that can stand up to a multi-billion dollar corporation, and that's the federal government. State and local governments can be easily bought or bullied.
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