Hiding Ads

What's a website hiding Ads looking like? I found this site: http://www.facund.com/
Are the background/text colors in the footer against Digital Point's TOS?

 

I couldn't read it at all without highlighting it.

 

Subtle, but ok I would think. I can see it and it's the same color as the copyright and such, which can be seen. It's just so close to the bottom border it's hard to see.

 

If you take a look at that.... those links are done through CSS and are the same color as the theme. That should be alright. This person is not trying to hide anything. They are simply putting the links on their page and letting their CSS do the rest.

a:link
{
color: #333333;
text-decoration: underline;
}
a:visited
{
color: #333333;
text-decoration: underline;

 

Oh; I'm sorry. #333333 is just really really really really really dark brown;
as evidenced by this attachment. I also highly doubt that the vbulletin link came blended in. They're strict. Those links can easily be shown by changing the color of the css to the color above it; and I bet that's what it was originally. Or white.

 

It's not too easy to read it but I don't have a problem reading it, even with my laptop, so shouldn't be too much of a problem...

 

Here is the HTML code from the links

<center>
<a href="http://www.magsdirect.com">Magazine Subscriptions</a> - <a href="http://www.asseenontvofficialstore.com">As Seen On Tv</a> - <a href="http://www.matchwise.com/mw/dali/christian-dating.html">Online Christian Dating</a> - <a href="http://www.cointalk.org">Talk About Coins</a> - <a href="http://tapety.sony-ericsson.pl">Tapety</a>
</center>

Code (markup):

This person is not trying to hide anything or change anything.
If you look at their CSS code at the top of their page you will see that they have all of their links set to the same color depending on where they are located.


such as the footer

.tfoot a:link
{
	color: #CCCCCC;
	text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1pt dotted #CCCCCC;
}
.tfoot a:visited
{
	color: #CCCCCC;
	text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1pt dotted #CCCCCC;
}
.tfoot a:hover, .tfoot a:active
{
	color: #FFFFFF;
	text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 0pt dotted #FFFFFF;
}

Code (markup):

They have everything sitting right on their page. There is no CSS being added onto that. This person is simply displaying ads and that happens to be the color of their page. There is no wrong being done here.

 

The area where the coop ad links sit are not part of the table. They are part of the body.

The body css

body
{
background-color: #000000;
color: #000000;
font: x-small verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
margin: 0px;
}
a:link
{
color: #333333;
text-decoration: underline;
}
a:visited
{
color: #333333;
text-decoration: underline;
}
a:hover, a:active
{
color: #FFFFFF;
text-decoration: underline;

Which can be easily changed; after all the *hover* is white; the rest is not.
If you look at the graphic I uploaded earlier; the color in the little square box on the left is #333333 (maybe a dull black) the one on the right is #000000(maybe a glossy black). The links are hidden: on the four different computers I've checked on; in different browsers; you can't see the links unless the mouse is floated over them.

Not only that; but their footer- where - gasp! all *outgoing* links are:

span class="footer" style="padding:1px"<Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.0.3<br />Copyright &copy;2000 - 2005, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.<br />
Style designed by <span class="dark"<<a href="http://www.ambitiouslemon.com">AmbitiousLemon</a></span> and <span class="dark"><a href="http://www.funmac.com">

If you'll notice the <span class="dark"> equals this css:

.dark a:link { color: #333333; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1pt dotted #333333; }
.dark a:visited { color: #333333; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1pt dotted #333333; }
.dark a:hover { color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 0pt dotted #FFFFFF; }
.dark a:active { color: #333333; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; border-bottom: 1pt dotted #333333; }

Could easily be change to <span class="light"> or some other span class to where the links would easily go.

Things that make you go hmmmm.....

If I had a mind to; I can go change all of my outgoing links to just match my background; and get away with it....;O

 

That made me laugh....

 

That's why I threw it in there

 

This is a ad network! I want people to click on the ads I have on rotation in the network. I want some traffic from the ads. Hiding (or making ads hard to find on the page) are defeating the purpose of the network. I don't like it.

If you are afraid that someone will click an ad and leave your website then you shouldn't have joined the network at all. Ad should be:
- of the same size as teh text in the copy
- as visible as the text in the copy
- in a proper part of the screen real estate