Savvy Vegetarian is a free content site, supported mainly by Google Adsense

A few times a year, someone gets upset by an ad and writes to tell me about it. The following is my typical response.

Message for Savvy Vegetarian:

By having an ad such as this one (link expired) on your site, you’ve lost all credibility with me. Will look elsewhere from now on.

Larry W.

Hi Larry,

I’m sorry you feel that way. Thanks for sending me the url, so I can go to Google Adsense and block that advertiser.

You’re one of the very few people I hear from who get upset by an ad on Savvy Veg and decide to go away. It seems to me a bit like cutting off your nose to spite your face - but let me explain.

Most of the ads on our site are placed by Google Adsense, and we don’t really have a pre-approval option or a way to monitor ads closely - or the time to do all that.

Understanding Google Adsense and how the ads work explains why bad ads sometimes appear on Savvy Vegetarian.

Practically speaking, it’s only possible to block ads after the fact, and we need the url which isn’t always shown in the ad. And we’re penalized for clicking through on the ads that appear on our site. Even when we block an advertiser, it doesn’t take effect right away, and then they just get a different url.

It’s a bit of a Catch-22 situation for us. We need the advertising revenue to support us in our unpaid efforts to support vegetarian and vegan diets. Google targets their ads pretty well, although it’s not 100%, so the occasional bad ad appears - which I agree can be upsetting and even offensive.

But to me that’s a minor blip in the big picture, which is that plant-based, vegetarian and vegan diets are growing ever more popular, which encourages me to continue in spite of the occasional upset - such as bad ads, or vegetarian disinformation campaigns sponsored by the meat industry - or haters, both veg & non-veg varieties.

Following the principle of focusing on the positive, I look at the ads as wall-paper, just part of the background for what’s really important on the pages. If an ad appears that I don’t like, I block the advertiser if I can see the url. Otherwise, I just refresh the page, which then shows a different ad, and carry on with my work.

If an advertiser doesn’t get a good click through rate from Savvy Vegetarian, Google eventually will stop placing their ads where they don’t get results. In clicking through to that url, you’ve helped Google and the advertiser to make more money. But I take heart in knowing that their money is helping to support vegetarian and vegan diets.

Of course you’re free to choose what sites you visit, and how you respond to ads you don’t like. However, I think you’ll find that Savvy Vegetarian isn’t the only vegetarian site with this problem.

Thanks for writing,
All the best, Judith Kingsbury

Related Posts

^[1]Judith Is Vegan, Savvy Vegetarian Is Not ^[1]

^[2]Pro-Choice Vegetarian: “I Don’t Care What’s On Your Plate” ^[2]

^[3]The Jazzy Vegetarian Interviews The Savvy Vegetarian ^[3]