Reply #39: No, it's not completely positive. Situations like this require unfortunate trade-offs sometimes.

[Skinner]

1) We cannot pre-screen or pre-filter any of the Google AdSense ads. We are able to block them after-the-fact if we are aware of them. We used to be very liberal about blocking ads, but now that our revenue has plummeted I wondering if we should consider letting a lot more of them stay. We definitely want to remove bigoted and offensive ads. But I wonder if permitting ads for Republicans is not such a bad thing. They waste their resources advertising on a website where they aren't going to pick up any supporters, and they help pay to keep DU online. Seems like a win-win.

2) We share your concern about how ads inside the OP might appear to be added by the poster. That is why we added a little text label indicating that it is an ad. Still, I think this isn't likely to be a big problem, because when people see the ads appearing in everyone's threads, they will figure out that they are, in fact, ads. (To be fair, the ad isn't in the middle -- it's off to the right side.)