Do people associate ads with crap content?

[OxzenMedia]

One of our client gets links from his content but he has ads everywhere. We were thinking he would get more links if he took down the ads. I think when people see a bunch of ads on a site they associate it with crap spammy content . What do you guys think?

More specific adsense link and banner units.

one square

one letter board

one tiny square

all above the fold.

[AgentsofValue]

Too much ads on a page can affect a visitor's experience with your content. The presence of too many adverts may lead them to think that the content was meant solely to sell a product or a service instead of providing helpful information.

I do agree that judging if a content has too much ad is relative. Perhaps you can do a survey and see if people feel that the website is too loaded with ads. I think "Are there excessive adverts on this page?" is one of the questions included in some of the efforts to replicate Google's Panda questionnaire. They were trying to see if high ad ratio was one of the signals being used to determine if a site's content is crappy.

Many of the websites that have been hit by the first Panda update were loaded with adverts so proper attention to the amount of ads on your page may get more links.

[NoahsDad]

I think it depends on the site, design, content, etc. If you are careful with your ad placement and your users can EASILY find the difference between your content and your ads, I think you'll be ok.

Good isn't anti-ads like some articles you read would lead you to believe. In fact, Google even has material showing a user where they suggest placing ads on a page. Be sure to check out that link, especially sense you were asking about adsense.

I also know some bloggers that have ads set to display a set time after a post goes live, for instance 2 weeks after, that way your regular readers aren't having to look at ads, mainly organic traffic. However, if ads are done correctly (used sparingly, they take a back seat to content, etc) they can actually blend in nicely on a page.

Again, think like a user. If you were visiting a site what would you want to see? You probably wouldn't mind a few ads, placed in areas where you would expect to find ads, ads that are well done (if I use adsnese I ONLY use the graphic / media rich ads), and ones that are contextual to the site you are reading. (I've actually found adsense to pretty good at showing ads that are contextual on the page.)

Please let us know if you have any more questions.

[EGOL]

Lots of visitors dislike ads, especially if you are popping them up, playing distracting animation or slapping their face hard with huge ads.

Google says that visitors should not have to "look" for your content.  So you ads better not be pushing it down or hogging the top space on the page where content is expected.

However, people who spend a lot of money creating content and a lot of money on bandwidth have to recover those costs, pay the rent, pay the staff and make a profit.  So, ads will be present on even the highest quality of websites.

The visitors who really hate ads are probably blocking them with browser add-ons.  However, I think that most   people are smart enough to know that ads pay the bills and will tolerate them as long as they are not offensive in content, placement or action.

I run ads on my sites and they earn links just fine.  On my site I link out to about ten articles per day and I will sometimes not link to a site if they are slapping face, popping up, animating or serving raunchy ads.

[JaspalX]

Ha! love the question. I certainly associate lots of ads with crap content!

What's lots though? AdSense almost always triggers my, 'this is probably crap' filter and I can't remember the last time I ever linked to a site that used it.

[William.Lau]

If it blends in, and content is awesome, other webmasters won't care. Because it looks and feels legit.

If you feel like it is too much, there is a good chance there is. They should focus on higher CTR positions rather than massing ads everywhere. That is one thing some begginers don't understand, the reader/user will easily avoid those ads, webmasters need to emphasize on the positions that is more highly profitable and populate it with great earning ads.

[deltasystems]

For my content websites I only show ads to users coming from search engines and direct traffic.

You really don't want to show ads to social media and Wikipedia referrals. Wikipedia has strict guidelines and will definitely remove external links with too many ads. Those coming from social networks (Stumbleupon, a big one) are less likely to read your content if it's laden with advertisements.

Yes, too many ads is strongly correlated with poor content. So don't overdo it even for your direct/Google traffic users.