I guess my point is I run a personal forum and host it through iPowerWeb hosting, I don't require any of my users to pay for the forums and I don't allow any ads on the site, I pay for the annual service myself along with the domain name renewell.
You can't compare a small website with a larger one. Most shared web hosting companies would shut down larger websites immediately, even some claim to have unlimited traffic or web space. You find usual a clause in their AUP about CPU and memory usage.
The only alternative for such sites are dedicated servers, which are much more expensive. I am sure most review websites on the front page are running on dedicated servers.
I don't block google text ads (because I don't noticed them anyway) phillip and I don't bother to block the amazing annoying popup ads here @ ntcompatible...mostly because I'm too lazy....although I'll be reading someone's post and getting a stupid box popping up getting in the way of my reading is insanely annoying.
Those are not popups but IntelliTXT. I find these ads quite acceptable after the links are marked with double lines and the ad will only show up if you move the cursor over the link. I use them only on two locations, one are the forum threads.
Heck, I don't even have cable TV or over the air TV because I hate advertisements. I do dish out the money on TV shows on DVD and movies.....waaayy too much money.
I have cable but also some Pay-TV channels
