I have a pornography site?

Posted by Al on August 27th, 2007 .

Yesterday I had a complaint about one of the adverts on my websites, it went like this:

There is an add of a naked womans rear on your site (www.cleanishappy.com toilet) that shows how to make stars wars characters from paper. I would love to send this link to my 11 year old son but can’t because of the pornography. The add is tasteless and inappropriately placed. Any child could do a search for star wars and come across that add. it should be removed.

I don’t advocate porn (well not publicly any how) but to me this advert is nothing of the sort, the nudity (if you can call it that) is also pretty darn relevant, so here it is:

Advert

I’d love to hear others opinions on this, everybody that I’ve shown the advert and email to has laughed and considering it’s been shown 1,429,644 times and received only 2 complaints I don’t think it’s upsetting too many people.

So far the advert has been clicked 11,372 which works out to be a CTR of ~0.8% which is ridiculously high for a skyscraper ad positioned well below the fold of the page. The cost of the advert was $400 and considering it still has a month to run it looks like an exceedingly good investment, so it just goes to show that bare bottoms sell.

Is this advert suitable for a technology site
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Please let us know your thoughts via the poll or comments, thanks.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 and is filed under Miscellaneous . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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15 Comments »

Comment by Rachel from That Woman is Ridiculous. Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-27 09:38:06

I actually spotted that ad yesterday (I believe) when I visited your site and thought it was clever.

The woman’s bottom is portrayed non-sexually, and I’m 100% certain it’s nothing her son hasn’t seen before. Everybody knows what a butt looks like. I wouldn’t even censor the ad from my 4 year old!

It amazes me how easily offended and prude many people in our society still are.

Comment by Al from Al Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-27 09:47:01

Thanks for your comment Rachel. That’s the way I see it as well, though it does seem that the bottom gives the ad a much higher click through rate than normal.

 
 
Comment by Tomaz from Financial Freedom Ideas
2007-08-27 12:52:17

No matter what you do there will always be some people that won’t like it.

And since sex and money are two topics where most people have limiting beliefs and all sorts of painful memories, you will undoubtedly get responses like this.

The ad is ok in my opinion.

Comment by Garry from Photography Basics Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-27 15:17:49

I agree, you can’t please everyone. I’m sure if you had a picture of a teapot someone in the world would complain that it’s offensive.
And if an 11 year old doesn’t find a picture of a bum funny rather than too rude… I don’t know who will!

 
 
Comment by Jacob from CrankyRabbit Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-27 12:54:08

I think it’s a cute ad.

Too many equate nudity with pornography, methinks. If there’s nudity, it must be erotic in some way, and vice versa.

Toilets are about as far from sexual as you can get.

 
Comment by alek Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-27 14:18:51

Yea, a bit risque/edgy … but especially funny given the content of the site it’s on! ;-)

 
Comment by Humphrey from IT Drive Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-27 15:55:22

I would personally send the guy a link to a doorway page where he had to click an ad to get to a ‘purified’ view of the page for the extra time :p

 
Comment by Al from Al Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-27 18:22:10

Thanks for the responses folks, that was also my feelings so nice to know I’m now the only one. So far four people have voted that they’re offended by it though which does surprise me.

Comment by alek Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-27 18:29:21

I’m tempted to show this to my 9 and 6-tear old boys. They will laugh at the “tuuushie” … and probably say something like “it tooted!”

 
Comment by Tranix.net
2007-08-27 20:01:41

Because most of the voters were male :-)

 
 
Comment by Neale from Barbados Info Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-28 10:49:41

I dont see no problem with it either! I’d say its a dam good ad on their part.

 
Comment by Carl from Dension Ice Subscribed to comments via email
2007-08-28 13:01:21

I must admit when it first caught my eye on your site I had a moment where I thought it was a bit of an odd ad to have, but then when I actually looked at the ad I realised it wasn’t anything bad….I think its the site its on that made me think that for a second, as I use a torrent site that is plastered with adverts that clearly are aimed at being porn and because of the type of site I haven’t really given them a second thought.

 
Comment by Phil
2007-09-03 18:29:23

Honestly, I saw this ad on your site before you talked about. To some people it is not appropriate for children to see, and to some ,it is ok.
I suggest if this ad is not working great for you, remove it

 
Comment by Keith
2007-09-04 05:23:20

Naturally, there isn’t a great deal of problem with this kind of ads. There is no nudity nor obscene gestures. Well, morally, I feel it’s perfectly fine. I would see Google being more advocate in this kind of so-called less than pornography advertisement than any other CPC ads. So, I wouldn’t be alarmed.

 
Comment by Martin Reed from Community Building Blog
2007-09-07 16:40:47

I once used an image of a woman in a bikini on one of my sites - absolute bedlam followed!

At the end of the day, everyone reacts differently. We soon learn what our community will and will not accept!

- Martin Reed

 
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