About Political Ads on the TLF

A number of TLF readers seem to have leapt to certain conclusions concerning political ads shown on the site.  Most recently, Garrett Dumas responded to Sonia’s post Obama vs McCain: Who deserves the tech vote? (which generally sides with McCain) as follows:

Perhaps you think this because there is a John McCain banner on your site? The “tech vote” is a non issue as it is not up to the president or his cabinet to determine the future of technology. It is market driven and whoever controls the market, controls the direction.

Garrett’s understandable confusion merits a brief explanation.  The only “banner” ad on the site chosen by us is the “Crispy on the Outside” blog ad at the top right.  The ads below that are placed there by Google’s “AdSense” program, which automatically decides which ads to place on a page based on how much advertisers have bid for keyword combinations that appear on that page.  TLF readers will see a mix of political ads on our site until election day from both campaigns and a variety of other groups targeting keywords that appear on our blog.  For example, I currently see the following ads on our blog:

<!– <! function ss(w,id) {window.status = w;a = document.getElementById(id);if (a) {bi = a.href.indexOf("&nm="); if (bi < 1) {a.href += "&nm=1";return true;}c = a.href.substring(0, bi+4); d = a.href.substring(bi+4, a.href.length);ei = d.indexOf("&");if (ei 0) {var c = a.href.substring(0, bi+6); var d = a.href.substring(bi+6, a.href.length);var ei = d.indexOf(“&”);var r = ”;if (ei >= 0)r = d.substring(ei, d.length);a.href = c + t + r; } else {a.href += “&clkt=” + t;}}return true;}function cs(){window.status=”;} function jcc(a) {pha=document.getElementById(a); nc=pha.href.indexOf(‘&jca=’); if(nc>=1) return; jca=(203)+(7403)-(275); if (a==’aw0′) {jca+=(-3042);} else {jca=0;} phb=pha.href+’&jca=’+jca; pha.href=phb;} function ha(a){ su(a); jcc(a); }function ca(a) { su(a); jcc(a); top.location.href=document.getElementById(a).href;}function ga(o,e) {if (document.getElementById) {a=o.id.substring(1);p=””;r=””;g=e.target;if (g) {t=g.id;f=g.parentNode;if (f) {p=f.id;h=f.parentNode;if (h)r=h.id;}} else {h=e.srcElement;f=h.parentNode;if (f)p=f.id;t=h.id;}if (t==a||p==a||r==a)return true;su(a); jcc(a); top.location.href=document.getElementById(a).href;}} // > // –>