In my experience, sites with non-intrusive ads (and sometimes none at all) are better developed and more original than sites overwhelmed by ads/popups. The ad-filled sites usually just have cookie cutter content, and are a dime a dozen.
Maybe in your limited experience, but it's not even close to being true. Every major site has ads up the ying yang. Are you saying CNN, The New York Times, etc, have "cookie cutter" content??? I think not.
You're right. I just crawled out from under a rock yesterday, and it's my first day on the world wide web. This internet thing looks like it'll really take off. I hope to be as experienced as you at surfing web sites. Let me clarify what I meant. The ad-filled sites I'm talking about are the kinds of sites run by DPers. They aren't of the caliber of CNN and The New York Times. I am hardly ever annoyed by the ad placement at cnn.com or other news sites. Obviously the big news sites are trying to get people to look at ads, but at least they realize the people are there to read news, not look at ads. On the other hand, a run-of-the-mill content site with tons of ads annoys me because the content is hardly ever worth the pain of enduring annoying ads, which lowers the signal-to-noise ratio. Then there are small content sites with little-to-no ads. I'm not talking about vanity sites thrown together in an afternoon. I'm talking about hobby sites where the author cares about the subject. There are a lot more of these out there than you realize. I have no problem with a webmaster putting up a bunch of ads, but I've found that there's a line one can cross of too many ads, and once that line is crossed I know that web site doesn't have any content worth my time.
Usually if the ads are interesting and not intrusive, most people won't mind... I know I don't. I can even think of a few ads on TV that I actually look forward to watching (then of course there's others that make you cringe). I'm sure no-one's complaining that DP has non-intrsive Google Adsense ads
Are you in it to make money, or run a charity? Keep the ads, unless you just arent wanting to make money.
EXTREMELY well put. As of right now, as I build a userbase - I'm barely breaking even on my adwords:adsense ratio. There's NO way I could justify spending $1k for xxxxx impressions, as opposed to paying money for clicks and real visits to my sites...