Subject: Riiight.
Author:
Posted on: 2011-05-20 17:53:00 UTC
First, does Star have an advertising contract, either with the provider of this board or the admins thereof? I doubt it: legitimate ads are posted here are in image form and in the space allotted. The only ad deleted recently was a nigh-incomprehensible spam ad for Viagra, which can hardly be considered effective or targeted advertising. If one of your people posted that, I suggest you fire them immediately.
If your firm does not have a contract with the provider or the admins, then your advertising is considered unsolicited. The principle behind selling ad space is simple: money is exchanged in order to provide further access to a potential customer base. Space and access are valuable and worth being paid for. If someone attempts to use a dedicated forum for advertising purposes without properly paying for the privilege (thus anticipating possible compensation from advertising revenues) they are attempting to hijack something and not pay for it. That would be theft.
In addition, any incomprehensible word-salad ad for Viagra that a board full of trained writers and linguists couldn't figure out is likely not Legal Advertising. Pfizer Inc., which makes the drug in question, has millions of dollars to spend on real targeted ads--and they are the ultimate authority when it comes to selling Viagra. That would mean your company is either selling a drug without having the right to do so (since someone selling it legally would put at least two seconds of thought into their ad), or selling a knockoff and calling it the real thing. Both are not allowed.
Furthermore, where have you been? Censorship is rampant on the Internet. It does not, however, constitute censorship to remove an incomprehensible, annoying, unpaid-for and questionably legal ad from a public space where it wasn't supposed to be in the first place. Questions?