Boss, I have a question. So when a non member is looking at a post of one of our vendors. We can use me as example. And the post is a for sale thread about wood or damascus etc. Will the pop up adds be geared to direct these non members to another seller who advertises with whatever add form your using? If so. That sucks.
good question Randy...If you google "kitchen knife" images and then bounce around the internet to different sites, you will see kitchen knife banner ads pop up all the time on all those sites you visit. The ad banners are based on tracking cookies in your browser. You can turn cookies off but then you will lose the benefit of them and the adword banners will still pop up
Everyone will see the google adwords banner at the top of the page. This banner ad used to be up top awhile ago. We moved it to the bottom of the page to make room for our "local" banner box which we use or sell to "local" knife related businesses. We moved that box back to just under the header to replace the local banner.
We are shrinking the "local" banner to half size and moving that to the very top of page next to the header logo.
Everyone will see both of these, just like it has been for a couple years.
Now (new), the non-paid user will see a google adwords box (displayed in the first message of a post) with the content depending on what is in their tracking cookies, just like the ad at the top of the page. This banner won't "mine" the post that is being displayed for relevant ads. It will post relevant ads based on the cookies in that persons browser. In most cases, everyone will see completely different ads.
Using you as an example since you volunteered, you sell (great) damascus. If someone has been browsing around for damascus, they may see a banner ad follow them around the net either here or nearly every place else they browse on the net. The ad they see is based on the bids of advertisers. Let's say there are ten guys selling damascus advertising with google adwords. (I've never seen even one but this is an example.) One of the damascus competitor ads might be displayed or it may be out bid by another vendor selling something that is knife related (or what ever happens to be in their tracking cookies). Google will display the ad that is a combination of highest bid to be displayed and most likely to be clicked on based on the tracking cookies of that person seeing the ad.
so, no "new" marketing aimed at competing here with you, or the wood guys or the knife dealers or supply guys like me. It will be the same ad content that has always been displayed, there are just two more boxes for non-paid members showing up with more of the same.
Does that answer your concern?