Do you guys think ads in free advertising forums and free advertising groups can hurt my website's reputation in the eyes of Google (I'm not worried about real people, because not a single one will ever see those ads ) I mean, whenever I visit one of those forums or groups, I see ads written all in CAPS and with unbelieveable clams like: "GET 1,000,000 TARGETED VISITORS FOR JUST $5" I know I won't get a single visitor from those forums, but if posting there is not bad, then I would at least get a back link. Would that be bad for my site?
When they first created the computers to run Google, they already knew about ads. Ads are a big part of the Internet, so of course they won't hurt you. And, yes, they can help your PR, but the ads have to stay up all the time. That's the rub right there.
Computers can't see the way it looks or sounds, like a human does. And aren't a lot of the ads like that, even in such sites as Yahoo, and, in this site? Don't sweat it. But I would check that site's backround. The site itself may be a red flag, like a link farm, sort of speak. Or they could be doing black hat, or whatever.