…Ninety million sites, covering every topic under the sun, and everywhere I go, the same ad, for some fraudulent weight loss product? This is the pinnacle of Western civilization, our greatest technical achievement, a web of instantaneous communication binding the whole world together, all so we could all look at f*****g weight loss ads?
Good friggin’ grief!
Firefox and Adblock. I don’t see ads.
Fixed it for ya.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
You prefer to pay for content?
OK, you owe me $0.02 for this post.
(Or you could let the people who buy whatever’s being advertised pay for the SDMB).
Oh, good God, is this what the Internet has come to?
It’s what everything comes to. Magazines are full of these ads. So are newspapers. So are radio programs. So are cheaper stations/times on TV. All of these venues can (and often do) offer some great content, but no matter how wonderful they can be, they don’t eliminate the fools who buy horsecrap and the sleazebags who peddle it to them.
ETA: As cwthree has also pointed out.
FWIW, it is more like your browser showing the same ad no matter what site you visit, rather than the ad being present on every single site. There has been a somewhat recent paradigm shift in Internet advertising.
Still, whoever is buying this stuff, please stop. We need to starve the fraudsters out. It is our only hope. Sometimes I think we need to hold a National Day of Internet Savvy.
For the record, cwthree, the mods 'round these parts *really *frown on changing someone’s quote like that, even when you make it obvious.
In which case, a mod is welcome to call me on it.
<mod>
MODERATOR WARNING
Consider yourself called, cwthree.
From the Rules For Posting FAQ, #11:
[quote]
Text inside
[QUOTE]
tags is sacrosanct. Normal editorial rules apply: that is, you may indicate omitted portions of a quote by the use of ellipses “…” and you may add text to clarify a word using square brackets (e.g., “her [the sister’s] friend”), but you may **not ** add editorial comments or edit a quote so as to change the substantive meaning; nor may you substitute text such as “some blather” or “more nonsense” inside the
Don’t do it again.
</mod>
I was just being friendly- no snark was intended.
Is this what the Internet has come to?
A place where I can now browse without accidentally surfing into pornographic websites that cover my screen with popups, some of which produce loud sound?
A place where the hideously annoying popup ad has pretty much disappeared after the advent of popup blockers?
A place where (as already mentioned) adblocking software is almost impossible for advertisers to get around?
You can keep your old Internet, I don’t want it. 
OK.
Apparently so. I distinctly hated the couple months (or years?) where a stray mouse movement would hover over a smily add, followed quickly by a loud “HELLOOOO???” by one of the smilies.
I got through it by surfing the web on mute. Wasn’t fun, it’s like watching TV with no sound on.
These days, I get the “Evony” ads. Those are annoying as well.
I don’t think he is complaining about ads. I think he is complaining about those very specific ads for a fake product being all over the goddamn place. It’s really bizarre and I find it sad and pathetic as well.
Would it be any better if it was a REAL product (one that works?)
I see an ad for a school on TV “Acme College.” Every young adult (target is clearly 18-21) is the same, a good looking white, latin or black man or woman, who describes how they got a job, but without a college education that job is “just a job.” And if you go to this college you’ll get a “fun job”. ( I guess the Asians are smart enough to get into “real colleges” 'cause I don’t see them :))
I feel like saying “Do any UGLY people ever go to your college?”
The “real” answer though is quite simple, product placement is very simple because in reality you have what I term, the illusion of choice, on the Internet.
Almost all the ads on the Internet (for non-porn) are contolled by Google and Overture (Yahoo).
It doesn’t matter what the sites are, you’re most likely dealing with those companies.
Do some research and you’ll see, if you can find a popular “key word” and attach your ad to it, you will be seen.
I for instance, see that “yellow -> white” teeth ad everywhere.
Because only a small number of companies actually control ads, this is easy to do. You’re confusing the millions, if not billions of Internet sites with a handful that control ads for those millions
Yes. Yes, it would be a lot better. Real products are preferable to scams, even if I’m not interested in them. On very rare occasion I have discovered something I was interested in through advertising. But I’m certainly never going to be interested in some bullshit scam, which makes the ads more annoying than ever.
Thank you, Riggy, for explaining it better than I could. Eloquence doesn’t seem to be my strong suit today.