On the topic of banner ads, and ads on the internet in general:
[rant mode: on]
I have no objection to ads. I get it, I understand the need & that is a viable vehicle to peddle other people wares & services for a return.
But I have and will moan about how they are irrelevant to most of us. Ads on the Internet are just as bad as on TV or the radio: pander to a very wide & broad audience. In this day & age, and with this ever-evolving technology (cookies, tracking, keywords, user profiles, etc..) the ads need to and should be more specific to the end users. Past searches seem to be the only criteria for aiming 'some' ads at you..
This is a rocketry forum, where the typical user is male, between the age of 16 & 60. The ads (Google ads) should be able to make this distinction, and serve up ads based on this (loose, but definitive) criteria. Yet I get ads for Zoolilly & other 'irrelevant' stuff. And usually the same ads regardless of what sites I visit.. If I disregard one ad, I'll just as easily disregard 17 ads for the same thing.. I'm a guy on a rocketry forum, show me ads for rocket vendors, hardware people, spray paint, etc.. even 'home depot' is relevant..
Revenue from ads should be from the ads, not the real estate they occupy. (And this site suffers from that: log out & pop on as noted) I would also point out, that despite 2 or 3 or more ad slots, most of them are the same ad.. so, again, this just seems to fail, big time! The marketing propaganda is 'more ads' regardless of their intended target, quality or diversity.
But again, it's not TRF who control the banners we tend to turn off / tune out, but Google / AdSense. If these behemoths of ad providers could generate ads that are more targeted to the users, we likely wouldn't mind as much. I feel a lot of us tend to push back on the quantity and the irrelevancy of these ads, not the quality.. And again, I get it.. most of the vendors we want don't have the budgets to advertise on a massive platform like Google / AdSense, but still, relevance toward the target market shouldn't be be based on budgets, marketing campaigns, or last searches.. But sadly, quantity over quality / relevance for eh end user.
If the ads were more relevant to us, we likely wouldn't just blindly turn them off.. (and also less intrusive / numerous)
[rant mode: off]
I'm reminded of the book / movie 'Ready Player one: "Research shows we can cover 80% of the view screen before anyone starts complaining.."