The new LWN text ad system

The new LWN text ad system

The one trouble I have with the Text advertisements, speaking as a user of the site, is that they aren't archived with the page. Instead of being fixed, the ads are dynamically added to the page each time it is shown.

This makes it very difficult to refer back to advertising that I may have seen earlier in the day, or earlier in the week, but forgot to follow before leaving that page.

Minimally I think that LWN needs a list of advertisers page, and possibly an ad to user linkage that remembers which ads I've seen and can reveal them to me. If coupled with something to make the ads more interesting (in general), like an interest/advertiser match that stratifies the payment levels in exchange for directed advertising, then that would be ideal.

As for the value of advertising, editorial content shows things that the staff thinks are interesting. Advertising shows things that an advertiser thinks are interesting. In a well defined community like LWN, both types of content provide valuable data to the reader.

The ad on this page is for someone who seems to be selling an E-Commerce & credit card processing open source library. Having some experience with commerce sites, I doubt that the ad is completely forthright -- most credit clearing agencies are somewhat leery of revealing the algorithms and protocols they use for authorization, but it is definitely interesting. Actually I'd prefer it if text ads got a little more space -- not so as to interfere with the editorial content, but enough to get more interesting data than the advertising hyperbole of the one liner.