I think it would be interesting to try a bit of an experiment with the outside banners. For the moment, they are all turned off.

Let's see if there is any difference in click-through rates during the next week.

One of the biggest contributing factors to the isolated cases of a decline in click-through rates is most likely the number of members that block all banner ads, which started happening prior to us allowing outside, general advertisers. However, I'm game to see what the response will be.

As a side note, 70% of our ad space is reserved for our vendors. The other 30% is open to outside advertisers. This is a policy that has been in place for several years. While we would like to keep the focus of such advertising narrowly focused on graphic arts products, they are not the only advertisers that may come to us. As you have seen, if we find ads to be objectionable, we do remove them.

We want everyone's experience here to be as positive as possible...even when it comes to such things as...YIKES...advertising ;-)

Thanks for all your feedback!

(PS. I blocked the smilie ads quite some time ago. However, they reared their ugly little heads through the new service that I stopped on Sunday. Should be the end of those guys around here. If you see any more of them...I didn't do it! ;-)

Lillian Hawkins
Marketing Manager
By serving each other, we are free.