I feel like people are blowing things out of proportion. It's like accusing Rock, Paper, Shotgun of selling out because oh no, there's a Mists of Pandaria ad on their site. Advertising happens. Good grief.
Actually, I hate most web advertising, because it's getting back to the really, really obnoxious eras of the past, but this time, it's doing stuff like, say, playing a trailer for Mists of Pandaria. The most egregious ads, like those found on the Nexus, actually play audio. They're bandwidth-eating pieces of shit.
So, y'know, saying "this is a problem; also, often, ads are not relevant" makes sense to me.
I am curious what you mean about "actual, legitimate problems that people have..." though. Because the above mentioned problems seem like actual, legitimate problems to me.
Are you talking about the conspiracy theorists who act as though every single ad out there is proof of sinister influence by evil publishers? Because those are as actual and legitimate as my Martian Super Chicken.
Unlike some of the scummier sites out there, which may actually do this, I trust The Verge and SBNation to be quite fair about their advertising. Call me skeptical, but I have a really hard time accepting that every gaming website, as soon as it receives advertising dollars, suddenly becomes a slave to the advertisers, and will only say positive things about them.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand this. It seems as if you--and, quite a lot of people here--are automatically equating
ShockingAlberto's post only really makes sense if you want to believe they're doing something wrong.
Here's an alternative point of view: The Verge did the kind of thing The Verge always does.
What I mean by that is that they made a documentary series about this new startup they're making because it's an interesting idea. SHOCKING NEWS: some people actually find "how we do what we do" type things to be pretty damn fascinating. I've never seen how a games website comes into being, and it's been really cool to see how they've put it all together.
Of course, The Verge works with advertisers. One of these advertisers on this big tech website is, in fact, Microsoft.
Microsoft has a habit of spending the shit out of its advertising budget. The Verge goes "hey, we're launching a new website, it's going to be pretty big, and we see that you're wanting to advertise IE. Polygon's the next big thing, so how about you present our video series for your advertising?"
No harm, no foul, and the credibility's only damaged by paranoid-as-fuck people.
They're an excellent website, by the way--this documentary thing is pretty par for the course for them--and I'm finding this documentary series a lot more interesting than its really poorly-done preview.
Remember, one of their stated goals is to make sure that advertising is relevant to the topic at hand. Microsoft is quite a bit closer than, as other people mentioned, Ford sponsoring CES or what have you.
