As an example, from LWN.net's FAQ under Advertising

"What happened to text ads? The text ad facility allowed readers to place simple, text-oriented ads on the site. Use of this facility had been dropping over time; when we realized that nobody had bought an ad in over six months, we decided to remove the feature."

LWN would still sell you banner advertising, but they don't do text any more. As with other features that were killed because nobody used them, the interest of a single small buyer won't bring them back because it doesn't make any economic sense.

That's very interesting that you used that example because LWN.net was one of the content providers that we approached.

I figured someone at their organization had the wherewithal to open a regular file in vi and paste in two lines of HTML ... in exchange for money ...

Nope.

> I also would like to know why there is so much resistance to this, which was the original model of ads on websites

My objection to advertising on the net is primarily the tracking that comes with it. I don't use adblockers specifically, but I do block things like Javascript and tracking pixels as much as possible.

Given the nature of modern internet advertising, I would assume that the tracking would be happening regardless of whether the ads were being relayed through the host website or not, and it wouldn't change my security stance.

It would make me much more suspicious of the website, though, as I'd wonder if the site were sharing its log and other data with the ad network. This is pure speculation, but I wonder if websites might be nervous about bringing that cloud of suspicion over them.

I know that if I were asked to include a barebones ad (I assume that it's text-only and doesn't link to an image you host) like you describe on my websites, I'd decline.

"Given the nature of modern internet advertising, I would assume that the tracking would be happening regardless of whether the ads were being relayed through the host website or not, and it wouldn't change my security stance."

I think I'm not describing the proposition I made - it was, literally, paste this line into a page:

<a href="https://rsync.net">rsync.net</a> - Cloud Storage for Offsite Backups

No tracking. No engagement. No stats. No performance tracking. Nothing. Open up a regular file in 'vi' and paste that line into it.

Impossible.

I fear that I didn't make my point very clear. I apologize. I was speculating that perhaps the resistance you're receiving from websites is about a fear of what the website's users may perceive rather than anything wrong with what you're really doing. That's why I would decline the offer on my websites.

If ad-blocking really takes off I expect this to become the norm. It is technically more complicated than just adding adding an adwords element to a web page or something like that, but I do think it'd be considerably more resilient to ad-blocking.

I once had the idea of delivering ads by dynamically injecting them into a video stream. As in, when you load a youtube video it prepends the ad into the same video stream as the main content. Ideally the transition from ad to main content is between key frames so that the ad-blocking software can't fully strip out the ad without screwing with the stream itself.

I figure for your one line of advertising, there's going to be campaign design work, setup effort, teardown plans, ongoing owners, monitoring, coordination internal to the business and external, legal and compliance... Much of that is fixed costs whether they go banner or one-liner.