Online advertising providers were and still are basically an unethical scam, a vexatious practice that offloads all the responsibility for any potential questionable actions from those selling the ads space to third party companies specialized in evading customers rights and legal consequences.

• The ads are compromised and used in a malvertising campaign? The company holds no responsibility for any damage caused to the site visitor, and the ads provided will probably evade those as well.

• The ads providers are harvesting user data and may be violating local legal requirements? No matter the legal or ethical issues this may raise, the actual site owners hold no responsibility for whatever their chosen provider is doing.

• The ads are inappropriate for the site rating, promote scams or illegal content? Best case scenario is that you will able to press a report button that... based on my personal experience having tried for years reporting bad ads on the Google platforms, does absolutely nothing. See for example all the PEGI-3 mobile games sharing online casino ads, adult ads appearing on kids' sites and apps or ads for scam apps (all the "free money" ones). Again, the actual owners of the site/game take no responsibility.

That is to say that, given that the network consists mostly of SO and SO users generally being tech-savvy, I expect that the majority of said userbase will be VERY wary around any form of third-party advertising.

I fear that the only hope the company has to realistically persuade its users to whitelist the site, is doing something quite rare nowadays and self-host the ads, thus taking full responsibility for their content.

I'd note this was previously mooted in 2019 and well, appears to be deeply unpopular.

I notice the question post here is very much centered around the process, and what the company intends to get out of it. I know there's generally vague promises of more resources for the community but what do the communities in question get out of it?

Also, as a initiative that affects a broader subset of communities, this is the first I've heard of it. Even if one might argue this is picking up an 'older' project, I feel like it would have been a nice thing to give a preview of this to moderators in general. One builds trust by communication, and the communication here has been lacking. There's a comment from a moderator on one of the sites affected in the main post indicating they weren't informed either.

I really do wish the company would do better with understanding that, there's a social contract between the company and community, and suddenly announcing something like this with no feedback, or seemingly a focus on the mechanics and the company's goals with little reference to the benefits the community might get feels... off. You're not selling this to management, an investor or even an advertiser. You're trying to sell it to a community that's jaded, and somewhat suspect of many of the initiatives the company takes, and the end results it seems to get.

Tight category controls have also resulted in no ads reported by community members via the “Report this ad” function.

This is not a good metric to use. Malicious ads can evade that reporting mechanism fairly easily. In many cases, you can't tell that an ad is malicious until after you've clicked on it. The ad can't be reported at that point because either 1) the malicious site hijacks your 'back' button preventing you from going back to the original page, or 2) you go back to the original page but when it re-loads you get an entirely different set of ads (so there's no way to report the malicious one). By the time you detect the ad is malicious, there's no longer any way to report it.

On top of that, very few people would actually use that button even when an ad is obviously malicious. Those buttons are always on top of or very close to the ad itself, and they're always tiny. If you don't have perfect aim you'll end up clicking that ad that you've already determined is dangerous. It's hard enough to do on a desktop, but on a touchscreen it's nigh impossible. After one or two mis-clicks, you quickly train yourself to not even bother trying anymore.

How much revenue do you believe you'll get per-user with ads?

Can I just pay to use the site somehow, in addition to volunteering my time, energy, and expertise? Or is there no way around the gradual deterioration of everything into advertising space?

I've been watching carefully for ads on the sites I moderate since this change, disabling the rep privilege to see fewer ads.

I haven't really seen any that differ from ones that were running previous that I already recognized (of course I'm not perfect), until today. Here's the ad:

This looks like a scam to me, not exactly consistent with "strict controls and precautions". At a minimum, it's clearly an attempt to trick users to click on something that they think is going to help them print the page.

We give you control over your personal information, presenting you with a choice of whether to accept cookies that will allow your personal information to be used for targeted advertising. As always, you can review and update your cookie preferences by scrolling to the bottom of any webpage and clicking “Cookie Settings.”

Will rejecting targeted advertising be included in the "Necessary cookies only"-button, or will it be separate, akin to the "Object to legitimate interests"-buttons that are in some of the sunsections of the cookie settings as shown below?

As a moderator on one of the phase 2 sites (pets) - I noticed there's no mention of what categories of advertisements are allowed for sites on this phase. Considering its not a tech, or finance sites, would there be more directly relevant categories for more niche/non tech sites?

Bring it on! If it makes the CEO happy and could lead to the hiring of more CM's, I don't mind the ads.

/me already using anti-ad technology

Wait, what?

Just to give a "userstory" that I don't expect is particularly uncommon: I saw this and was really surprised that network sites don't already see ads--why is the company leaving money on the table?! I guess that establishes 3 things:

• Many users are using adblock on all devices, and functionally this will change nothing for them.
• StackExchange (company) could be doing a better job communicating about its ad policy, if it believes that it's significantly more fair/less invasive than other companies. (A "please turn off your adblock" blocker banner would either make me block the popup or stop using the site, though.)
• Likely, the people who will be most affected by this change are not the people expressing opinions here, and may not be registered users at all.

Could this be made opt-in, or at least give communities the option to opt-out? I notice that, currently, the per-site meta announcements for Anime & Manga, English Language & Usage, Literature, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Geographic Information Systems, Physics, Space Exploration, Chess, Constructed Languages, Puzzling, Role-Playing Games, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Worldbuilding, and Bicycles are downvoted.

I truly do think that some communities would opt-in, or not opt-out. Out of the 50 communities mentioned in this post, yes 16 of their per-site meta announcements are negatively scored, but 34 aren't. 29 of them have a score of 0, including 2 with an upvote, 2 with 2 upvotes. 8 of them have score above 0, and 2 of them have a score of 2. Of the 16 "First Phase" sites, 9 announcements are negatively scored, although they all have an upvote, 5 have at least 2 upvotes, and 2 even have 3 upvotes! Of the 34 "Second Phase" sites announcements, only 7 are downvoted, and of those 2 have an upvote. While obviously not every community would opt-in/not opt-out, I think some definitely would choose to keep the advertising test.

I understand this might be an unrealistic request, but I really do think this would be much better if it was opt-in/opt-out.

Worldbuilding Says NO

We don't want your ads. Remove them from our community and get rid of them from StackExchange.

That is all.

If you're going to add ads, at least put the ads to the side so it's not so distracting. Imagine you are scrolling through an answer and a colorful ad pops up. How annoying is that?

I don't know if other communities landed in the same situation as Arqade, but I'll quote a portion of the answer on our Meta post.

Given that it has been Jan 13 for several hours already (by UTC time), you've given Arqade's community what, 10 minutes heads up on this experiment?

At the time of writing this answer, Arqade was not listed on the Phase 3 list (and wouldn’t be for multiple hours*), and other than a passing discussion about potentially supporting ads back in July last year with the mods, no info has really been shared with us.

You read that right - SE included us without (a) meaningfully notifying our mods about it and (b) did so before phase 3 had even been edited into the post I'm creating an answer for.

*Yes, that part was edited in later.

It seems problematic to me to add a large number of phase 2 sites to the list only in an edit to the question, without an announcement advertised separately in the "Featured on Meta" sidebar. This phase 2 will go unnoticed by many users, in this way. At the very least, I suggest adding "updated with phase 2" to the title of this question (I'll do it myself!).

(Of course, I am assuming that it wasn't an intentional decision by SE to try and sneak in more advertisements without pushback. Am I right?)

I see you have now added a phase 2 and a phase 3...is this just going to keep going? Is the end goal here for these ads to roll out to all sites?

Why not do this on Meta Stack Exchange itself? It seems like this is where the announcements about limited advertising tests are being posted, so IMHO it would be a good idea to at least test it here.

I will just proceed and delete my profile from any site where ads are scheduled to be displayed. SE already profits, in fairly shady ways, from the time and work volunteered by its users, adding ads on top of that is not something I will support.