The Disadvantages of Advertising on Web Pages

Customer Defection

Most visitors to a website will not mind a few ads to support the website. However, certain ads are considered especially annoying. Pop-up ads are one type of advertisement that discourages visitors. In addition, banner ads that automatically play sound are also disliked. Advertisements that users find obnoxious could lead to defections to competitors' websites.

Search Engine Penalties

Placing too many ads on a website, with not enough content, may harm your Google ranking. In 2011, Google started taking action against 'low quality' websites, which are characterized by a low ratio of unique content to affiliate links. The algorithm classifies these kinds of websites as 'spam' and punishes their Google rank accordingly. Although the details of the algorithm changes are not publicly known, Google announced that it does not treat its own ads any different from competitors ads, so running Google ads will not negate ranking penalties.

Customer Resistance

One disadvantage of relying on advertising for income is that a certain segment of the consumer demographic has a strong distaste for ads, even unobtrusive ones. Some are willing to pay money to make them go away -- hence, the rise of subscription services that remove advertisements among other benefits -- but some will respond with ad-blocking programs such as NoScript. These ad-blockers can hurt advertisers and websites that sell ad space.

Malware And Trojans

Some ad providers do not sufficiently screen ads for potentially malicious software. Hosting these ads on your website may infect visitors to the site with malware. If the infection is traced to the specific site, your website may be blacklisted by search engines and Web browsers -- to say nothing of the damage to your reputation. Sites can remain blacklisted for days while the origin of the malware is tracked down, discouraging new traffic.