Native ads, by definition, are designed to look and feel like a natural addition to a site. As you can see in the image below, the team worked very hard to make the ads feel like a part of the site

That's the problem. A tiny bit of grayscale text saying "Sponsored" does not count as clearly delineating advertisement content and actual content. You are sacrificing the reputation and reliability of the network by presenting ads in the same style as actual content instead of them being clearly distinct.

When this was previously announced to moderators, the native ads had a background that was a different color.

There was feedback that this color was not different enough; it was so near to white that depending on monitor it might not be perceptible as non-white.

Since then, apparently it was just decided to keep no background difference and to make the ad less distinguishable rather than more distinguishable from real content.

Look, I understand there is pressure to make more revenue from ads, but this is the kind of thing that frustrates me about a site and makes me stop using it. If you trick me once and I accidentally click on an ad I didn't realize was an ad, you got your click and lost your user.

Echoing a comment here - adverts that look like SE content looks awful and can be potentially misleading.

If we are to have adverts, they need to be very clearly differentiated from the surrounding content.

The screenshot above is very much a surprise to us mods as it was to the rest of the members here, the mock-up was changed.

Due to the unique way in which Stack Teams works (which hosts the moderator teams content), any questions that are edited do not get bumped to the top - every question is ordered by the date of creation, not modification. This is the default sort order on Stack Teams, it can be overridden, but people miss doing that. In essence, the updated mock-up pictures were added by stealth and without anyone being alerted there was a change. I suspect that the change was made in good faith, but the way the platform works, no one would see the change unless they happened to open a question that's way down the page. Hence, no one knew to offer feedback for the updated image.

There was feedback in the moderator space that the adverts looked too much like the surrounding content and weirdly, this has been changed to make them look more like the surrounding content.

Changes of the mock-up from what the moderators fed back to:

In the previous mock-up, it was clear that the adverts were adverts, and now ambiguity and uncertainty seems to have been baked in.

It should be very clear that ads are ads, not questions

"Tricking" users into reading the ads by disguising them as questions is probably about as shady as you can get, short of placing unmoderated spam on the site.

• Make the background a different colour. This will more clearly indicate that it is something different. For obvious reasons, the background colour should also be different from the favourited tags' background colour
• Respect ignored tags - If I've ignored python, why should I see ads tagged with python? That does your ad partners a disservice too, as its extremely unlikely I'll be interested in anything to do with Python
• By the same token, ad partners should have the same "5 tag" restriction as questions. Otherwise, ads will just end up being tagged with the top 40 tags every time.
• Give 10k+ users tool pages to review ads placed against tags. Ad moderation should be proactive, not reactive. Put the power in the community's hands to apply some level of moderation on the sorts of ads that appear on certain tags.

These changes would be a massive improvement, though I will say I still don't like this idea at all. Build a merch shop and I'll purchase shirts from you instead.

The native ads follow the same strict criteria required of partners who purchase our banner ads

What are these criteria?

Are they the same criteria that permitted this ad on one of the sites I moderate?:

I've seen things that indicate that network activity, like visitors, new questions, and new answers is trending downward. Although I recognize the need to make money for the platform and services, I see this as the kind of change that could drive people away even more. It may not be a huge numerical impact, but it seems unwise to introduce any kind of change that would have a negative impact on activity without doing things to drive that activity up in other ways.

If I can't block ads, I will stop contributing to the network.

These types of ads are extremely deceptive, being designed specifically to misinform users into believing that they are legitimate questions and manipulate them into taking an action that they would not have taken otherwise. The disclaimers have extremely poor contrast, below that of accessibility guidelines, which is designed to reduce the chance that people will notice it before they try to open it. The background is also identical to that of normal questions, further deceiving users.

Far from increasing engagement, this will markedly decrease engagement as new users leave the site the moment they find out that they were being manipulated and taken advantage of.

SE had very reasonable ads in the past, compared to the usual internet standards. The ads got more flashy and annoying over time, but still better than on many sites. This change is pushing the ad freqency up quite a bit. Assuming a 15 item page size, this increases ads on question list pages from 2 (sidebar) to a total of 5 ads per page.

It's still better than a lot of sites, but that's only because ads are often outright terrible on many sites. So I don't think that is the standard that should apply here.

The core idea behind Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange network is to prioritize the signal-to-noise ratio of our content. Ads are by definition not signal, they're noise. You're adding a significant amount of noise to the site, and there will be a point where this compromises the usefulness of the Q&A system. Doesn't help if we offer concise and high quality answers to specific questions if you have to wade through tons of ads to get there.

The “reduced ads” privilege only applies to leaderboard-style ads.

Leaderboard-style ads being horizontal strips shown in the main (central) column of the site?

These native ads are clearly leaderboard-style ads, for the purposes of the “reduced ads” privilege. It should apply to these, too.

Users with enough reputation to have earned the “reduced ads” privilege are the reason anyone's looking at these ads. Exposing them to irritants is an exceptionally short-sighted move, just from a naïve profit-seeking perspective.

It is a rational profit-seeking move if you think the network's got absolutely no future, and pennies now is worth thousands later. But I really hope you don't think this.

Native ads, by definition, are designed to look and feel like a natural addition to a site.

This is a preternaturally honest statement. It means that native ads are designed to look like they are part of the site, meaning that they deserve as much trust as the rest of the site, and can be clicked on as freely as the rest of the site.

In other words, they are designed to trick people into clicking on them; they are designed to override people's inbuilt filters that discriminate between "this is site content that I'm here for" versus "these are some other thing that someone else wants me to see even though I don't."

In other words, they siphon value from the trust people have built up over the years. It's an effective strategy — in the short run. (It's not the same, but I'm reminded of the sorry practice of asset stripping.)

I assume that ads are not going to be displayed on MathOverflow, as per the terms of the agreement, see eg https://meta.mathoverflow.net/a/4296/ regarding ads, but also What is MathOverflow's "agreement" with Stack Exchange? for the full text of the agreement. The relevant paragraph is:

5. It is understood that MathOverflow shall consider in the future the placement of certain announcement serices like job listing in the future. Stack Exchange shall not run advertisements, including internal advertisements, on MathOverflow 2.0 (or any subsequent version thereof), without specific and advance written consent of the MathOverflow.

I, speaking in my personal capacity and not as an MO moderator, would consider SE Inc running ads on MathOverflow in violation of the agreement as a reason to leave the network. This is not personal preference or bucking against SE changes for the sake of it, but a legal contract between SE Inc and MO.

The “reduced ads” privilege only applies to leaderboard-style ads.

How much marginal viewership of these ads do you expect to get from making these always visible to users who have earned the privilege to hide ads? Given the exponential/log-like distribution of reputation across the userbase (not even mentioning those who don't have an account), is this decision worth annoying people who opt out of ads by their earned privilege?

... To be up front, I feel unhappy that you have decided not to honour the privilege to opt out of ads. I'm going to block these ads to the fullest extent possible anyway, so I don't expect your decision here to be material to myself, but I'm still unhappy that this is what you decided to do.

I am all for ads - I have repeatedly said that this is the only viable way to fund the site in the long run. But please don't slip them in with the Q&A posts, keep them on the side panels.

And please curate ads before they hit the site. There's a great potential value in targeted ads of products that are actually relevant to for example programmers - you can sell such ads for much more and the potential for recurring advertisers is much greater.

Instead of begging the scammer company "Google Ads" for a pittance, in order to display their snake oil/pornographic/animated trash on the sites. Every living soul on the Internet has nothing but bad experience from Google Ads. "Report this ad" - no, that's your job as the publisher. If there are inappropriate ads like for example giving dangerous medical advice, we should report them indeed. To the police.

Let me be frank with you here @Dalmarus

We all recall the forced-attention-grabbing ADs - the neon green flashing, animated, noise emitting, "punch the monkey" ads that were often the final straw for those users still on the fence regarding adblocking.

The thing you call "Native ADs" is - while less overtly aggressive - even worse, in a sense, because it poses as genuine content, only to be an ad instead.

There is already a name for advertising content that tries to blend in as "normal" content in order to increase click rates: SPAM

So, simply said, you will deliberately post SPAM on SE. And while it might - temporarily - boost your revenue for a few weeks, I must ask you: How dumb do you think your users are? Because adding those kind of concealed "You thought this was a question, but clicked on an AD, LOL" traps on the website are NOTHING but a negative experience for the user - driving genuine users away, worse, driving those away that might try to genuinely answer your questions.

This is a terrible idea for the users (because it is a pure worsening of their experience), this is a terrible idea for the website (because it drives away users), and this is a terrible idea for you (because once the users are driven away your metrics will look even worse). For sanity's sake, don't do it!

Edit: Here's a mockup of the type of ads I'm certain we will see sooner or later: Company name *51 asked 3hr ago (a flimsy disguise - and if clicks to shady sites is the goal a recognisable name is a liability) and as a logo is the + sign followed by the number 712 in an off-grey colour (perfectly blending in with the vote counter). I don't like that future.

If advertisers wish their advertisements to 'blend in' to the sites on which they are shown, I do not think the 'native ads' described in this post go far enough.

To blend in properly with other questions, such pseudo-questions should behave in the same way as regular questions. Members should be able to

• vote them up or down;
• vote to close or delete them;
• mark them as duplicates;
• edit them;
• flag them.

Both pseudo-questions and their authors should be subject to moderation and sanctions in the same way as authors of other questions.

I'm not inherently against a website using ads to earn money. But...

1. The ads are specifically targeting contributors to the site. Those who are looking over the list of questions to help improve them or provide answers. The people who are holding your site up on their shoulders. Those are the group of people you don't want to be targeting with your ads.
2. You've been gradually increasing the flashiness and quantity of ads over time. When is it going to stop? Yes, it means you can hire more people, but more people to do what? Create things like "discussions"? Or your AI chat bots (which in turn is just another ad)? Given the choice, I'm sure most of the community would rather Stack Overflow have fewer features with less ads.

I'm seeing this happen all over the place - websites that used to have a moderate amount of ads realized that they've got a monopoly on their niche and have the power to ramp up their ads, so they start doing it, more and more and more, turning the site into an absolute mess. It's this kind of behaviour that encouraged me to start using an ad blocker, after trying to avoid it for such a long time (I want to support the sites I use, but it's been getting unrealistic).

It's also this kind of behaviour that alienates your userbase from you - when a new, better competitor comes up, the more ads you use, the quicker people will be to jump ship and flee to the competitor product.

we’d be doing a disservice to ourselves and you by not trying to find responsible means of maximizing that revenue

Mingling ads into content in a way that makes them look like content is a very short-term strategy for revenue. This will be very harmful to the usefulness and reputation of Stack Overflow, and will turn people away from the site forever.

I guess the higher-ups figure that Stack Overflow is going down the drain anyway, so they might as well squeeze as much as possible out of it while they still can. It's a shame.

The background color was removed from the early mockup image the moderators saw because it causes more issues with readability/accessibility.

Okay, but now you're violating WCAG 2.2 Success Criterion 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast. SC 1.4.3 has an exception for "incidental" material (which would include native ads), but SC 1.4.11 has no such exception. Both are level AA. Given this, SC 1.4.11 takes precedence, and you should revert to your previous design at minimum.

Additionally, native advertisements that take you off Stack Exchange violate Success Criterion 3.2.5 Change on Request. This is level AAA, but I personally do need this. Not having it makes me viscerally averse to interacting with the computer system, in a way that I cannot compensate for; and makes it difficult for me to concentrate when I am interacting with it, because a large portion of my attention is involuntarily occupied keeping track of any system feature that might result in a change of context, and modelling the destination contexts.

I suspect that this accessibility need is overrepresented in your contributor population, making it higher priority than the average level AAA SC. Given that this behaviour is central to the current Native Ads proposal (as opposed to design changes, which are half a month's work and can be done at the end), and also has security implications, I think it's rather urgent.

These days, it seems that you're constantly bringing up "accessibility" as an excuse for objectively bad design decisions. Frankly, I'm fed up with it. Do better.

My 2 cents

I agree with most answers here, in particular with Mithical's answer that:

Native ads, by definition, are designed to look and feel like a natural addition to a site. As you can see in the image below, the team worked very hard to make the ads feel like a part of the site

That's the problem. A tiny bit of grayscale text saying "Sponsored" does not count as clearly delineating advertisement content and actual content. You are sacrificing the reputation and reliability of the network by presenting ads in the same style as actual content instead of them being clearly distinct.

this kind of design makes accidental clicks far more likely, something many(including me, who has difficulty seeing details sometimes) had enough of.

A little diagram to show what this is all about

On the ethical part of these "native ads"

• Is this a good-faith ad?

I wouldn't call ads good faith, if they achieve the following(which the native ads do check)

• [x] camouflaged (inline ads in questions place)
• [x] difficulty to adblock (inline ads in questions place)
• [x] increasing accidental clicks
• [x] increasing difficulty for people who might have difficulty seeing details (a small, small, gray text "ad")

I don't think this is in "good faith". Which is why its so much more important to at least, try to find ways to fix this not just "do it". Practically? one can just "do it" but - if people can't block the ad without also blocking questions (cuz of "inline/camo ads") - then people might actually leave the site or at least, use it less often. Both of these outcomes = decreased engagement which, ironically speaking, ads is for increased engagement (in some sense).

Why is this a problem?

Because this will make users feel tricked:

In 2 different ways.

1. (More known) Accidental clicks = hence tricked
2. (Lesser known) Psychologically = tricked, psychologically(in the context of trust)

I think (1) speaks for itself, but (2) needs expansion: What do I mean by psychologically tricked? Well, trusted, long-term users here, might feel tricked in the sense of, "having built this place through contribution" and then "just to see it get turned into a ad site".

What happens when someone gets tricked?

When users get tricked - They might not like the site as much as they would have before (and, in my honest opinion, should have, because I believe ads can be done, but it has to be done the proper way.)

The goal of Ads - is already to get paid.

The goal of ads is to get paid already, so maximizing it (especially this way) doesn't really make any sense, in my honest opinion. I mean in the sense of making users less likely to want to engage with the site.

Note, one exception where I "am okay" with "Maximizing ads" is: IFF (If and Only If) Its done in a appropriate way.

For example, an AD (imo) which is acceptable (to me) should be:

1. clear it is an ad.
2. not intrusive (say, a big ad taking up content).
3. not malicious in some way ("the user will click more here so place it here").

Note: "malicious" here is a strong word, I know, it's mostly to express how users feel that these ads would be.

The natural reaction is either:

1. they simply turn on ad-blockers. Not because they dislike the site or the ads, but because they can't reliably tell the difference between real posts and inserted ads. Or
2. they leave the site or use it less, (less likely if you was here much before, but if you are new? Maybe.)

Analogies

I like analogies because they often explain in a more easy-to-read manner.

Analogy 1:

You go to a site to download a file, and all ads say "Download here!" It becomes very very difficult to see where to click.

Analogy 2:

Imagine we walk into a grocery shop (or some other shop) where half the price tags look identical, except some are actual prices, and some are ads, pretending to be prices(for, maybe a product, which is very "small text" hence "camo ad").

Now..This analogy isn't so good but it hopefully still gets the point across.

Outcome

I guess there really are 2 outcomes:

1. People continue and is not bothered (which, based on this thread, is not likely.)
2. People are bothered and either use site less or use adblock or if its very intrusive/problematic ads, leave the site and try to find alternatives - hence doing the opposite of what the goal with the ads was.

Smaller outcome

• I don't know if this is how it goes but maybe some might get adblock right now just to be prepared, so they don't have to "wait" for some decision, (maybe psychologically? It would be perfectly understandable if people do that).
• A hypothetical, yet scary (though purely speculative) outcome of this, might be that the decreased engagement, might reach a (critical?) threshold where, its not good for any one (not good for the company, but also not good for the people needing help with programming questions) again, purely speculative. See the diagram above, as it explains the cause n effect already.

Take care!

Let me approach this from a different angle.

You may remember this old post of mine: link. Back then I told you that:

You are not different from the thousand other companies out there doing the same. But this also means you get no "special treatment", you don't get to be the "friend we trust and can make an exception for".

Your ads will be blocked, it doesn't matter if they are 15 second animations, if they use sound, if they try to stalk the users by abusing should-be-illegal-if-not-already hacks so dear to the advertisement world.

Since I posted that answer, not only didn't you reconsider your already not-so-great policies. Today, you managed to get even worse.

So... I have to ask you...
EXACTLY what makes you hope that we won't just block your invasive and now misleading ads like we did so far?
Let me give you an idiotic, stupid, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot suggestion like the ones you always loved in the past few years. Try to implement some server side check that requires viewers to watch animated ads in order to see the answers to a question. This still won't make you much money but could finally end up completely killing of the site and end this pathetic death tantrum spiral that you initiated when you attempted to sacrifice quality for fast money and AI nonsense.

You are increasingly bullying away the people who contribute the most to this website.

Can you imagine, a highly active community users, one of those who've kept this website running for years, will need to 'filter out' the almost impossible to distinguish looking ads, as soon as the third post and then every 5 more?

Please extend the ‘reduced ads’ privilege so that the people who contributed the most (100k+?) won't have to deal with this nonsense.

First interaction - to show an ad?

... at a rate of one ad every five posts, with the first one being slotted between the 2nd and 3rd post of a site.

So after you've added the 3 useless widgets- then the ai-assistant, this has become my current view of the home page on my 14-inch laptop:

So my first interaction with the site IS JUST TO SHOW AN AD?

If I can't block ads, I will stop contributing to the network.

@philipxy's answer - 2025-12-09 02:41:15Z

Most traffic to Stack Overflow is to individual Q/A pages from a search engine. If you're not actively trying to answer questions, there's no reason to browse the Questions page; most users only go to that page to login and go to a specific page they actually want.

Now put yourself in the shoes of users who actually scroll through the Questions page - users who answers questions. There are very few answerable questions in there as it is (whatever happened to improving onboarding anyway), adding more noise in there (an ad every 5 questions, really?! even Reddit has fewer ads lol) would make that page downright unusable. Why would I have to tiptoe around a landmine to compete for points with an AI Assist?

The “reduced ads” privilege does not apply [to the new native ads]

I still hope this is a joke¹. If not, goodbye. I'd like to take my answers with me, thank you, please.

_{1: the rational part of my brain knows this is still the denial stage of grief over a death announcement.
Rest in peace, StackOverflow.}

I don't like this. But there is a Native Ad category I would accept, which:

• displays in the questions list;
• doesn't get filtered out by the Reduced Ads privilege; and
• the community might even appreciate.

That is: high-quality Q&A pairs about the products. Essentially, sponsored spam. Hear me out.

• The questions get the native-ad (or paid-advertisement, etc) tag, hardcoded to show at the beginning of the tags list.

  • This tag also appears in the <title> element, when you visit the question page.

• The questions are posted on the site whose scope they best fit.

  • If they're off-topic for all sites, they go on a specially-created hidden site (like the edX sites). Users can gain reputation here as normal, but – due to the bizarre scope – everyone is pre-emptively question-banned. Questions can only be posted here through the special "submit an ad" flow.

• While the ad's being paid for:

  • The questions may be inserted into question lists on any site, not just the site they're posted on.
  • The accepted answer is pinned to the top, regardless of the site-wide setting or sort order.
  • The "question is closed" banner is displayed at the bottom of the page, not the top. No closure indicator appears in the question's title.
  • The Q&A cannot be deleted, except by a moderator – but they can be flagged.
    • The "spam" flag category is replaced by "report this ad", and goes through your normal process.
    • "Rude or abusive" should go through your process, but also
    • All other flags can be handled by moderators.
  • Certain editorial standards are suspended, in favour of a stronger "respect authorial intent" policy. Edits to fix typos, formatting errors, and clumsy sentences are still allowed. (Advertisers might provide guidance in HTML comments, such as if a misspelling is deliberate.)

  Once the campaign ends, the questions lose their privileged status, and are treated as any other question. (Perhaps implemented by replacing native-ad with inactive-native-ad.) If the community really likes the Q&A pair, they may even remove the inactive-native-ad tag and preserve a version of it as ordinary Q&A.

• Users can contribute new answers, which (aside from never being displayed above the accepted answer) are treated as normal answers: voting, flagging and deleting works as normal. These answers are shown as normal.

• An advertisement's score is shown in the usual position.

  • I can imagine modifications, such as showing positive scores, but replacing negative scores with the neutral word "Ad".
  • You could provide a service for improving the Q&A pairs before they're posted.
    • The statistics you gather on ad performance would probably support the upsell.
    • You could even pay skilled users to do it! This would help if you're not sure you have the in-house expertise for that particular site, and would provide the advertiser with insight into product-market fit (by engaging a member of the target market who understands how other members of the target market think).

• Advertisers can include Q&A written by other people in their campaigns. These are handled subtly:

  • An entry is created in the post timeline, to show that they're being used in an ad campaign.
  • When injected into a question list, they are displayed as though they have the native-ad tag.
  • When they're visited from the advertisement (as determined by the URL query string), they have the native-ad tag in their <title>, and at the beginning of their tag list, and any other visual features that distinguish them from ordinary questions, but do not receive any native-ad-related changes to functionality (e.g. answer sorting behaves normally).
  • When they are visited normally, they do not receive the native-ad treatment.
  • The advertisers do not have special control over the content of the Q&A. If they want to edit it to be spammier, they should expect those edits to be rejected.

For illustration, I'll provide some examples.

• One of the cloud computing companies posts a native-ad asking "How do I do [complicated thing] with [cloud product]?", and answering with a detailed description of their latest feature. They ask it on Stack Overflow, but advertise it primarily on Server Fault. The question is a big hit, gaining 15 upvotes, and while the answer isn't great (general marketing copy instead of a specific solution), a user provides a separate answer with a clear and concise description of how to solve that problem. Following advice from a comment, the campaign manager changes the accepted answer: the original answer sits on a score of -1. Once the campaign ends, this serves as a useful resource for future users. The original answer is deleted seven months later, after a user flags it as "not an answer".
• Some alcohol startup asks "What drink maximises programming productivity?" on Beer, Wine & Spirits, answers with their caffeinated alcohol nebuliser, and advertises it on all of the programming sites. Everyone finds it extremely annoying, but being able to downvote the Q&A pair, and upvote the answers saying "the Ballmer peak isn't real" and "nebulised caffeinated alcohol is a terrible idea", acts as a vent for that annoyance. There's an uptick in questions about various dangerous drinking practices people are engaging in with their friends: these receive good answers, and many reach the Hot Network Questions list. A few months later, the startup gets done by the FDA for Deceptive Drug Advertising (among other things), and folds, having funnelled a not-insignificant portion of its VC-funding into Stack Exchange's advertising department. The question is deleted immediately after the campaign ends.
• A scammer posts a scam all over the cryptocurrency sites. It slips past Stack Exchange's review process (understandably, given how hard it is to distinguish cryptoscams from ordinary cryptocurrency behaviour), but gets caught by the community, and is swiftly deleted by the moderators as per policy, disabling the advertisements. Stack Exchange refunds the scammer's unspent advertising fees (or maybe holds them?), and reports them to the police.

As I see it, this is a win-win. Advertisers get all the eyeballs of a native ad, and perhaps even organic engagement with the subject of their product line (user-provided answers and follow-up questions). Readers get access to the ads that were actually useful, while only being exposed to the rubbish ones while the campaign's taking place. Stack Exchange gets money, and more "Q&A can be useful" mindshare among its advertising clients (which might help sell Stack Internal).

It is an additional burden on us contributors and curators (albeit one we want to take on), but not anywhere near as much of a burden as the current proposal would be. I do not want the risk of accidentally clicking on a phishing link when I think I'm interacting with the site's UI. It's vital that clicking on native ads keeps you on the site, at least until you click on links in the body of the advertisement.

Y'all at Stack Exchange have gone through great pains to highlight the elements that identify these ads as ads. In the screenshot and text of this announcement, you've pointed out (as far as I can count):

• "Logo"
• "Sponsored"
• "Clear Ad Language"
• "Partner is clearly designated"
• "Partner logo is on the left to clearly indicate a sponsored post"

Of those five callouts, three were in giant boxes accompanied by giant arrows. The other two include some form of the word "clear". Obviously, you understand that ads should be immediately recognizable and distinct from regular content.

So why on Earth would you disguise them as Q&A?

I think it is very telling that you had to use big red arrows to point out the "disambiguating" elements in case we miss them.

Don't make ads look like questions. Reddit already tried that, and it's near-universally hated. I expect that people will hate disguised advertising even more here, as it excessively dilutes your signal-to-noise.

EDIT: That said, I'm not entirely against ads. I get it, you have to make money. My point is that you shouldn't do user-unfriendly things with them such as disguising them or (at the opposite extreme) making them impossible for users to ignore if they aren't interested (e.g. YouTube's 2"+ unskippable ad breaks full of snake oil, pornography, and pornographic snake oil.)

EDIT 2: As other people have mentioned, have you considered doing merchandising instead? I, as well many other users, would be very interested in SE-branded merch.

Stack Exchange should run sidebar advertisements on the question pages instead of native ads in question lists and search results.

These kinds of people use Stack Exchange:

1. Volunteers who are curating and answering questions. Based on meta posts over the past few months, they are already largely annoyed and looking for somewhere else to volunteer. They make Stack Exchange a lot of money, so we don't want to irritate them further. They probably mostly browse recent questions and questions with specific tags.
2. People searching specific Stack Exchange websites. I don't know who would do this or why. They would use the search box.
3. People arriving at Stack Exchange websites from search engine links. They view only question pages. They might well be at work and thus willing to suffer whatever is necessary to find answers to their questions.

As bolov points out, running native ads will raise friction for user types 1 and 2. You should be focusing on user type 3.

I know because I am myself type 3. I never use the site search boxes or view tag lists; I arrive at Stack Exchange questions from DuckDuckGo. I use an ad blocker; I had no idea that Stack Exchange websites ran ads until I saw this post. I use Stack Exchange websites mostly for work, so I will probably keep using it even if I see a few ads. But I'll never see an ad anywhere except on the question pages. Build your own advertising service so that my ad blocker won't hide them. I look at the sidebar sometimes; that's how I found out about this change.

I am asking myself this question: who is using SO and SE and how are the new native ads affecting the experience.

The way I see it there are three uses of the site:

• seeking a solution to a specific problem you have
• phishing for interesting problems for fun and engaging your brain
• and contributing to the community by answering questions.

When you are searching for a specific problem you are not browsing the questions. You search (either internal search or external search) and/or ask a new question. You don't really interact with the main page and the questions page. So these native ads don't affect you, almost not at all. (until it's decide to put them between answers [sigh]).

But in the other two cases you actively browse for interesting questions. With the mindset and expectation of finding something interesting to either tease your brain, learn something new and or give back to the community by giving an answer.

This search of interesting questions already had two frictions:

• filtering questions not relevant to you - fair enough and expected, no algorithm can know what exactly in my particular languages and tags I am familiar with or I find relevant. No big deal.

• filtering bad questions. This is a big point of contention on this site for a while now. It's already generally a big deterrent to contributors the fact that we have to deal with a pretty big ratio of questions that waste everybody's time.

And now you introduce new friction:

• filtering ads. When I am looking for interesting Q&As or when I am looking to help another dev now, I also have to navigate the land mines of native ads. I do not what to go to a site where someone is trying to sell me something. I just want to find new interesting Q&As and to help other programmers.

This to me shows that the heads driving this ship do not understand the ship they are sailing, nor the community. Stack Overflow community is one of the most tech inclined audiences on the web. I bet this community has one of the highest percent usage of ad blockers. We are more ads adverse than the average internet user. We have a more hostile attitude towards intrusive ads.

So these native ads only add friction for users that are looking to contribute to the site.

I understand that the site needs to become profitable. I want this site to be profitable and self sustained for years to come. But I think this is not the answer and actually hurts the site in ways it wouldn't hurt other sites. I do not know what the solution is to becoming profitable, sadly I don't even know if it's possible at this point in time and in this world context. But native ads that look like questions ain't it.

The number one problem with the site: less people are using it (something like a tenth of the traffic at peak).

Solution: let's make it harder to find useful content.

Do I really need to explain why that's a bad idea?

If you differentiate between human and (Artificial Intelligence) AI-generated content, you can sell that content (and meta data about the content) to AI model trainers. That seems a much better monetization plan than embedding ads in already noisy content. I.e. it is hard to find content now. You are making it harder.

Most people are already consuming the old content through AI. What's your plan if this drives away more traffic?