Ethical Ad-Tech is the future funding model for publishers and independent bloggers

When it comes to advertisements on the Internet, there is the good and the bad along with various grey shades in between. There is the publisher's argument, the technologist's argument and also the viewer's argument who either gets annoyed or happy to have consumed an ad.

For a publisher or blogger, ad revenue is their bread and butter, its perhaps the only funding model that guarantees sustainability in the long run as long as they keep their expenses to minimum. And yet, a lot of their audience don't like ads at all, the enormous popularity of ad-blocker extensions is the proof of that!

However, its not the advertisement itself which the users have a problem with in majority of cases, its the forced and privacy intrusive manner in which they are served which causes the problem. Also responsible is the fact that audience doesn't have a choice in viewing the ad and sometimes it may have annoying motion pictures or gifs.

That doesn't mean that ads don't have a scope for existence though, it just means that there is a vast untapped potential for serving ads in a manner that is acceptable to all parties i.e. publisher, audience and the technology provider viz. Adsense, Chitika, Amazon Associates, etc.

There is a great need to form an ethical code or consensus for serving ads and this initiative needs to be taken by the technology provider because they are the ones who sit in between and provision the serving of ads. The future of Ad-tech belongs to the one who takes this initiative first and ensures that ads are served ethically to the audience through their platform.

Now the guidelines or rules for such an ethical code for serving ads are subjective and might differ depending on your country, culture, gender, age, etc. but some common minimal grounds can always be defined such as:

• Ads shouldn't be forced upon the viewer. There could be a simple close or skip button in the corner, once pressed no ad should be shown through that window again.
• No flashy gifs or motion pictures. These are a primary source of concern. Ads on sites like Reddit are enjoyed by everyone because they consist of a simple and still <IMG> tag, why unnecessarily complicate things?
• Custom ads. If I'm going to be shown ads, then let me at least decide what kind of ads I want to see! The choice of my ads may or may not be dependent on the content I'm viewing right now, maybe I'm interested in computers or food or yoga or something else? An ethical ad serving technology should provide a preference box to the audience where they can specify these choices.
• Opensource please! Open sourcing your code conveys trust and transparency, the ad technology provider should open source their ad serving technology so that people can study it and ensure that their personal data isn't being sent to shady 3rd parties.

These are just some points, feel free to let me know what else could be a part of ethical code for implementing ad tech by way of comments.