Yesterday, a reader wrote to me with the following:

It was a real turn-off to pull up your blog today and be faced with an ad for Viagra. I get enough of that as spam. Please fix this.

The advertisement in question is depicted below (it’s non-clickable, I’m just putting it here for discussion’s sake).

This was an obviously professionally produced advertisement directly from Pfizer, not much different than what’s found in most print publications. It’s not offensive in any way that I can perceive.

My question is that if I were to follow the reader’s suggestion and actually drop the ad, what’s the ethical line that I draw for displaying ads? My current line is that the content has to be appropriate for a family environment and it can’t promote a product that I’m in direct ethical opposition to, which this ad doesn’t violate. I used that rule just a few days ago to eliminate a bunch of ads.

There isn’t really a question to discuss here – I’m already signed up with the ad for a while (it only displays on a tiny percentage of page views) – but it is a worthwhile ethical question to figure out.

The honest truth is that as the author of this site, I deal with many things like this on a daily basis. I get suggestions that are quite good, other ones that are completely absurd, and then there are some right in the middle, like this one.

The Big Breakup: Who Gets What? Sadly, I identify with that scene in St. Elmo’s Fire where the broken couple is splitting up their CD collection. (@ queercents)

Saving For A Home On Your Own: Learning From Those Who Did It Yes, you have to change your lifestyle or else it won’t work. If your spending eats your paycheck, you’re not going to make it. (@ my money blog)

To Start Or Not: The Entrepreneurial Debate My philosophy: dip your toes in as deep as you can before making the leap – if you don’t, you might find the water to be too cold or too hot for you. (@ wise bread)

The Simple Dollar Retro: Seven Reasons To Quit Your Job … And Seven Things To Do To Prepare For The Switch Some great preparatory material for that entrepreneurial debate.