I'm a permanent user, and though my homepage is set to my userinfo, occasionally I'll be directed to the main page when I'm logged out for one reason or another, and I see ads. For more on why this is messed up, see "permanent user."

I recently downloaded adblock plus for this specific reason, and I used it today to filter LJ ads when I was redirected to the main page. This is what I saw:

( advertisement )

When I went into ABP to make a new filter, I found the URL of the image, which started with this:

http://ads.sixapart.com/show?gender=F&age=19

First of all, I'm offended that I was targeted for this ad because I'm a young female. The assumption is that we're all easy prey for weight loss hoaxes because we hate our bodies. But that's not the main reason I'm posting.

My question is, if LiveJournal is giving me this ad because it has cookies that say I'm 19 and female, information gained from when I set up my journal, then it obviously knows I'm a user, and a permanent one at that. How can they justify taking information from my profile to target me with certain ads, and at the same time say, "Well, you're not logged in, so for all we know you're a non-user"?

I just changed my journal's theme and saw this for the first time, and it really pissed me off. When paid users go to edit their journal's themes, there they are, right on the very first page, sponsored themes, AKA ADS. I know someone already posted about this here, but I come bearing screen caps, which I've posted behind the cut:
( Read more... )

Is there something we can do about this? I know when they came out with sponsored v-gifts there was an uproar until they let paid users opt out of them but that was under 6-Apart. (that sponsored contend should, from the beginning, be DEFAULT OPT OUT for paid users is a rant for another post) Will SUP honor giving paid users opt outs if we remind them we should have it?

What happened to you pay, you see no ads? This really disgusts me.

The first ads have been spotted in Snap.com popups. They are only for nonprofit causes, however. Ads have been seen so far for Autism Speaks, WWF, Save The Children, and UNICEF. They do not appear on every popup Snap.com makes, but will occasionally appear in lieu of the usual search box.

( Screenshot here )

Snap.com's blog has reported that Snap Shares have launched. From the description, LJ has enable the charity option so far. Pages and posts on this from their site:

• Snap Shares page
• Snap.com Advertisers -- shows the three different ad types
• What's New With Snap Shots?
• Snap.com Launches Snap Ad Network
• Snap.com Launches Snap Shares

It remains to be seen when Snap Shots on LJ will start to show more than just charity ads (whether LJ stays with the charity ads or not, Snap.com will start to use some ad space inventory for their own ad network), or how this will be reconciled or justified against the no ads reassurance towards paid and permanent users.

Today's news post introduces the Diet Pepsi MAX sponsored v-gifts. Good news: "You can't send the sponsored v-gifts anonymously, but all account levels are welcome to send them (Paid users won't see the sponsored copy attached to the gifts.)"

So, that might help the abuse issue a little, and might quell some noise about paid users seeing ads. However, as the v-gift itself is a picture of Diet Pepsi MAX, it's hard to separate it from its advertising nature. Additionally, the ability to filter who can give you v-gift is still sadly lacking. They are rate limited to 10 a week until September 15th.

The news post does make sure to talk about the product in loving detail--"Diet Pepsi MAX has created some special stuff just for LJ in the hopes that you'll want to try their new drink that has zero calories, ginseng and extra caffeine." Will it appeal to MAX's target marketing demographic of young adult males?

You can see one in action on the profile of plus_tester--there is a web bug on the profile page itself as well as on the vgift page itself. The notification emails have a link to http://www.livejournal.com/promo/pepsi which forwards to http://www.wakeuppeople.com/?or=lvjrnl.1032, just like the ad copy on the vgift when viewed: "brought to you by Diet Pepsi MAX". Diet Pepsi MAX links to Six Apart's ad site which forwards to the wakeuppeople.com site.

Thanks to mynn for being the paid receiving vgift guinea pig: anyone who is NOT paid and looks at the vgift, even if it is on the profile of a paid user, will see the ad copy. However, the paid user will not see the ad copy on any profile they view. The email notification paid users receives does not talk about Diet Pepsi MAX. However, vgifts paid users see still contain web bugs--not surprising, because it was decided that serving paid users advertising web bugs didn't count as showing ads and that advertisers needed those metrics to determine their return on investment.

ETA: Basic/Plus users also see the same ad copy in the email notifications for NON-sponsored v-gifts as for sponsored ones:

Send a FREE virtual wake up gift, brought to you by Diet Pepsi MAX:

http://www.livejournal.com/shop/view.bml?item=vgift
http://www.livejournal.com/promo/pepsi

Or, on HTML email: "[Send a FREE virtual wake up gift], brought to you by [Diet Pepsi MAX]." where the []s are the links, and instead of the promo URL, it goes directly to a http://sixapart.adbureau.net/adclick/ one.

ETA2: Actually, the ad copy in email notifications for non-sponsored v-gifts seems to put the free v-gift for paid users to give away in perspective, as well, since folk who might otherwise be reluctant to send a sponsored one wouldn't have the same reluctance when it came to the regular ones, and then plus/basic users who received them would get a nice dose of ad copy as well.

In September 2006, brad was saying : sponsored "whatever" are ads. don't worry, we (at least most of us?) realize sponsorships are the same as ads. and we remember which account levels see ads and which don't. Paid users won't see sponsored stuff -- ignore the previous post. paid users won't ever see ads. that's why you paid, and we're not in the business of pissing off paid users.

In July 2007, arie is saying: "We believe that sponsorship is different from ads." "We haven't changed our policy on paid users viewing ads. We believe that the FAQ stating that paid users won't see ads is accurate; they aren't. Paid users may see sponsored mood themes, journal themes or other content if they're viewing the journal of a user who has chosen to use one of the sponsored features."

This is part of the reply I got when I asked why Paid users were seing ads.

ETA: This statement was given as an answer to an e-mail I had written to feedback@livejournal.com. All Feedback requests are private. If a screencap is needed, tell me so and I'll make one.

When asked if there had been a change of policy since, obviously, something that used to be considered as advertising now wasn't, LiveJournal closed my request and made it impossible for me to reopen it.

When elfwreck and I both suggested that sponsored content could be made optionally viewable for Paid and Permanent users - the default option being 'visible', LiveJournal ignored our suggestion.

In conclusion, it only took LJ 10 months to change their minds about making Paid and Permanent users see ads. Except they're very clever about it because stuff where you can see the word Pepsi and the Pepsi logo are not ads, you see. So these or these? Not ads, no siree. So Paid and Permanent users still do not see ads. Fascinating logic, right? Moreover, neither the Pepsi mood theme nor the Pepsi styles have been announced in lj_releases or news.

ETA: As ide_cyan noticed, the Pepsi logo which is at the top of the Pepsi sponsored style links to
http://sixapart.adbureau.net/adclick/. Same thing for the text which is in the sidebar. Leave it to LJ to explain why a style which contains links to 6A's ad server is not an ad. A pretty ad maybe but still an ad.

I've received a promotional Gizmo offer email with the title of "Have people call you anywhere in the world for virtually FREE!" to an email I have never signed up to the Gizmo Project with, besides signing in with the associated LiveJournal to LJTalk.

kunzite1 has also confirmed receiving this email to an email associated with LiveJournal.

The email, however, makes no mention of LJTalk, only of Gizmo's services.

So, in short, by signing into LJTalk, there is strong evidence you are opting in to receiving promotional emails from Gizmo you never asked for, turning LJTalk into a bonafide sponsored feature complete with promotional advertising emails, even to paid members.

Added note: This probably only happens if you signed into the actul Gizmo Project for LJ Talk client, not using a "third party" client.

We had a previous post on Gizmo and related issues here.

Sidenote: "contextual popups" were renamed to "contextual hover menus" because ad blockers would block the file, so it was renamed, unlike when ad_base.css was included in everyone's site scheme CSS.

I see that Livejournal now has "sponsored communities" where companies can pay money to have a community based on their movie or whatever, which is then pimped on the front page along with the rest of the spotlight journals and communities. From the main page today:



Disgusting. I'm not sure if the ads are visible to paid account holders since I don't have one.

I hope I've tagged this post correctly, and that it hasn't already been hashed out in another post. (It's my first post to the community, so I'm nervous: please forgive. :)

I made a post to suggestions recently, and another user commented to ask why his hadn't shown up yet. I wouldn't mention it except that his suggestion (which you can see here) has to do with ads. In short, his idea is this:

To allow ad revenue sharing for paid users (permanent accounts holders, and early adopters), add a second version of the print_ad function that will allow paid users to pass their AdSense code to it which then replaces livejournal's code when the ads are displayed on their personal journal.

He says his idea would still fall within the bounds of who sees ads and who doesn't, but if we can't even trust paid accounts not to have ads, what are we supposed to do then? I assume that logged-in paid users wouldn't see ads on these journals, but then we might not even want to link to other paid accounts for fear they are whoring themselves peddling to visitors. :(

I certainly plan to give it a if it does show up on suggestions, but does anyone think this kind of thing will be popular among paid users? Are people that greedy?

Sponsored+ users see advertisements at the bottom of the userpic pages of paid journals.

On one hand, it's not actually a journal page like the username.livejournal.com/profile page is--it's a .bml page off of the main site. Part of the Sponsored+ service is seeing ads on .bml pages, as has been clearly stated. Also, these are Sponsored+ users; they've signed up for ads, so seeing ads shouldn't bother them. (Personally, I'm in a camp that wouldn't mind it if Sponsored+ users saw ads even on paid journals, if that meant the free users wouldn't have to see ads on Sponsored+ journals.)

On the other hand, some people consider their userpic pages as part of their journal, and I've seen complaints referring to the "You'll never see ads as long as you're logged in, and no one will see ads on your journal whether they're logged in or not." statement.

In any case, the probably conclusion to draw is that userpic pages are not considered part of one's journal and are treated as such. Edit: Also the memories pages, birthday pages, and todo pages. If anyone else knows of any more, let me know.

PS: We also seem to be a ruse, hehe.

PPS: azurelunatic has done a State of the LJ post on this whole thing, now, too! Fun stuff.