A while back we joined Link Exchange banner swap program. Although we started to carry the Link Exchange banners on our site right away, we held out in submitting our banner for other sites to display. After having accumulated close to million credits with Link Exchange in almost one year, we thought it was time to submit our banner and expose the web to Fade to Black. But things did not go as smoothly as we hoped.
We tossed around several concepts for the ad and decided to pay a small homage to National Lampoon magazine with a parody of their popular cover "Buy this magazine or we’ll shoot this dog."
Below is the response our banner ad we received from Link Exchange and our subsequent email conversations.
| From:
admin@linkexchange.com To: mpage@fadetoblack.com Subject: Link Exchange - X020137 Although your web site is acceptable for membership in the LinkExchange network, we are not able to advertise your banner on our network at this time. Our members' banners are displayed on a network of over 100,000 different web sites. In order to insure that each banner advertised is acceptable to that audience, we insist that all banners are generally acceptable to the vast majority of our network members. For example, the banner which you wish to advertise
over the LinkExchange network must not contain curse words or inflammatory content. Thank you, |
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| From:
LinkExchange <admin11@linkexchange.com> To: Michael Page <mpage@fadetoblack.com> Subject: Re: LinkExchange: Banner Submit Hello Michael, While we do recognize the satire in your banner, we are still unable to accept it. The iss  ue is with
the violence represented in the banner. First of all, the gun to the head of the senator,
and secondly, the wording that states you will shoot a senator. While it is meant as
comedy, we still cannot accept it, in jest or not. Banners can appear on upwards of 100,000 web sites, and for this reason, we must be very strict about banner content. Banners must maintain a fairly neutral tone. We hope you will consider redesigning your banner
and submitting a new one to us. If you're already a LinkExchange
member and you'd like to receive |
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| From:
LinkExchange <admin11@linkexchange.com> To: Mike Page <mpage@fadetoblack.com> Subject: Re: LinkExchange: Banner Submit Hi Michael, Those are some nice ideas, and clever as well. However, the issue isn't really with the chosen celebrity. It is, instead, with having a gun pointed at someone (or something). If you have some other ideas, and would like to run them by me, I'd be happy to give you some feedback. Thanks
for taking the time to write, and I look forward to hearing from you. ------------------------------------------------------ |
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| From:
LinkExchange <admin11@linkexchange.com> To: Michael Page <mpage@fadetoblack.com> Subject: Re: LinkExchange: Banner Submit Hello Michael, I have to admit, you are cracking me up. But we still can't accept a banner which uses violence (even if it only stings a little).  We've had a long discussion about it, here in the office, and I'll try to give you some more clear guidelines based on that discussion. Essentially, a banner which says something like, click here or you won't win this prize, would be acceptable. However, one which says, click here or Jesse helms gets it in the face with a water balloon, would not be acceptable. The line here is drawn at the violence (even with a water balloon), and also the use of a public figure. These things would be acceptable
your site, but not for your banner. I hope this makes it more clear. If you have more
ideas, that you'd like me to check, feel free. Have a good one. :) |
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Thus, we decided to give in to Angela and the fine folks at Link Exchange and ran the ad below for our article entitled, "Where's Christ".
Note to our fans: In response to the email we have received, please feel free to swipe the Jesse Helms banner mentioned in this article and display it our your pages. (With a link back to us of course!)
Thanks!
F2B Staff
Round II
But wait there is more. The day after our Linkexchange listing hit Yahoo we received this email message from Linkexchange.
| From:
admin@linkexchange.com To: mpage@fadetoblack.com Subject: LinkExchange - X020137 Thank you for participating in the LinkExchange advertising network. Unfortunately, at this time we do not advertise sites which contain nudity, adult material or links to such content. This includes ad networks if "NC-17" banners are displayed on your site. For more information, please review our Terms and Conditions for membership, located at: http://www.linkexchange.com/join/signup.html If you decide to change your page to meet our terms and conditions, or if you feel you have received this message in error, please notify admin@linkexchange.com so we can review your account.
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We assume they were referring to an article we did entitled "The Hottest Feminist Contest" which had a picture of some frontal nudity. To see if this was really the reason for losing our Linkexchange account, we placed small black boxes over the picture in question and contacted Linkexchange.
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| From: LinkExchange
<admin@linkexchange.com> To: mpage@fadetoblack.com Subject: Re: Re: LinkExchange - X020137 Hi Mike, I will reinstate your account again. The woman on your front page was questionable but we decided it is not pornographic in nature. I'll have to submit your banner for you this time, but you'll need to submit it via me as an attachment. If you have any questions, please let me know. :) Sincerely, -Mari |
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Then for some reason we got the same message back from Linkexchange after submitting our banner.
| From:
admin@linkexchange.com To: mpage@fadetoblack.com Subject: LinkExchange - X020137 Thank you for participating in the LinkExchange advertising network. Unfortunately, at this time we do not advertise sites which contain nudity, adult material or links to such content. This includes ad networks if "NC-17" banners are displayed on your site. For more information, please review our Terms and Conditions for membership, located at: http://www.linkexchange.com/join/signup.html If you decide to change your page to meet our terms and conditions, or if you feel you have received this message in error, please notify admin@linkexchange.com so we can review your account. |
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After this email our banner became reinstated.
A few days later we got this email from one of the principals of Linkexchange, who was extremely nice and sent us a very kind email. (Something which we appreciate since it was not something he had to do.)
| From: Ali Partovi
<apartovi@linkexchange.com> To: mpage@fadetoblack.com Subject: linking to you Dear Mr. Page, Happy new year! I am Ali, one of the principals at LinkExchange. I just had the pleasure and honor of reading your page at http://www.fadetoblack.com///linkexchange/ and I actually remember seeing the email exchange which was forwarded within our office back when it happened as an example of how difficult a job our member services staff has. At any rate, first I wanted to apologize in retrospect for the frustration you seem to have felt during this email conversation. Second, I found the web page, including the layout and the choice of pull quotes, quite entertaining. I went on to "find Jesus" and browse through several pages of "Fade to Black." (some humble comments about your site: I love the name and how it fits the fading effect. I was surprised to see you don't have a masthead at the top with the memorable "Fade to Black" brand name and link back to the home page) Anyway, I was wondering to myself if it would make sense for us to link to your "LinkExchange EXCHANGE" page, as part of better educating people about our policies. Your case really illustrates the often funny but difficult decisions we have to make. I don't want others to go through the trouble you went through designing a banner that will be rejected. I haven't brought up the idea with anybody here yet, but first I thought I should ask you what you'd think. This could mean a few hundred to a few thousand additional visitors to your site from our new members join pages. By the way, I noticed that you have a LinkExchange banner on your front page. Would you consider putting the banner "above the fold" on your site if we link to you? Also, for your own benefit, have you considered pasting it on multiple pages in order to get more credits? With content like that, I doubt you'd lose many visitors through the banners. Your humble servant, |
So it looks like we are back in cahoots with Linkexchange..... at least for now.
Back to FADE TO BLACK comedy magazine
ercise a certain amount of
control over the banners which get viewed by millions of viewers through out the Internet.
If you believe that our current banner might be found offensive by some we have no problem
in resubmitting a new one.
ssible
simulated death due to the picture of the gun and not necessarily the person in the
picture. (If I misunderstood please let me know)
u examine our site you will find that we
took the time to cover parts of the anatomy which are considered obscene with little boxes
similiar to the ones you see on the TV show Cops on the Fox Network. We currently are in
full compliance with our contract, and ask that our account be reinstated. 
over a year and a half, I am
inquiring on the direct reason for our termination. Since there is currently no nudity on
our site, and there is also no links from our site to any pornographic material. Our
content is adult oriented but contains no pornography and our use of words such as "
Mongoloid", "Autoerotic-asphyxation" and "Drooling Retard" are
used very sporadically and only when needed.