Charter Should Have Family Friendly Advertisers

Posted Tue April 22, 2008 12:00 pm, by Alison D. written to Charter Communications

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There is an advertiser on my Charter.net email page whose content is clearly inappropriate for children and teens. It is called "True" with the sub-caption, "Live, Love, Learn" and solicits users for its own website via the use of alluring young women sucking on lollypops, leaning forward and beckoning. They silently "talk" to you - in motion at all times to attract attention. They appear to be call-girl types. When you click on the ad, it takes you to a message page with a girl in her panties and bra lying on a bed typing on her laptop. The message screen says something to the effect of, "Hey hot stuff! I'm new here - just joined yesterday. Wanna chat?"

I have teenagers and younger children who all use Charter.net email addresses. (When I shifted all of my phone service, cable tv and high speed internet to Charter last year, I took email addresses for everyone in my family at the recommendation of the agent.) I do not like that my children are exposed to this temptation while involved in something as benign as typing an email. I think that Charter should only have family-friendly advertisers on its webpages.

I have been on the sales and buying side of advertising for 25 years, and I can only assume that Charter is not aware that their ad agency has placed an adult styled ad on its email webpage (and its homepage as well). I would appreciate seeing Charter take action to remove this ad immediately. I also believe that the offending ad agency should be admonished for this blunder and asked to carefully guard ad content on Charter's webpages in the future.

Furthermore, I would very much appreciate receiving some form of communication from Charter confirming that they will/have handled this matter. While I recognize that the internet is fraught with illicit opportunities for anyone who seeks them, I believe that your webpages should be safe for all ages.

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Re: Charter Should Have Family Friendly Advertisers by Corlyss Posted Thu April 24, 2008 @ 12:43 PM Ads are geared to the age group accessing the site. I am not opposed to this kind of ad, though I am opposed to any ad I don't want to see. I have safe guarded my own internet browsing (though mainly to free up space on the webpage and create faster loading times) by using FireFox and the add-on Adblock Plus. The feature also allows one to right-click on any image and flag it as an ad, creating a memory and further prohibiting images of that nature from appearing again. However, I would also suggest that if this is offending, the ad from True, that you prohibit your children and teenagers from watching anything but family programming, steering clear of prime time t.v. as their ads are just as sexual, even if it's for a burger. Unfortunately, sex is what sells products, regardless of what the product is above a certain age-group. Reply Re: Charter Should Have Family Friendly Advertisers by KenPC Wed April 23, 2008 @ 10:38 AM That's great advice by ♪♪Venice♪♪ Wed April 23, 2008 @ 5:32 PM I disabled it on IE by ♪♪Venice♪♪ Wed April 23, 2008 @ 5:48 PM Cool, V! by RedheadwGlasses Posted Wed April 23, 2008 @ 6:24 PM I hope this trick works for you. Reply It helped, but by ♪♪Venice♪♪ Posted Thu April 24, 2008 @ 1:32 AM the bad news is I can no longer see the feed on PFB's home page. But that's okay, I get the feed on Firefox, too. It's not the moving widget thing, but it's good enough for me. I have noticed the pages on MSN are loading a bit faster now. I'm so glad I read that suggestion, and the best part is I can change it back anytime I want. Reply Re: Charter Should Have Family Friendly Advertisers by RedheadwGlasses Posted Wed April 23, 2008 @ 9:09 AM I like Tech Angel's answer. But also: I'm 40 and I live alone, no kids, and while I'm certainly at the opposite end of "prude" on the Prude Scale, *I* also don't want to see those ads on benign websites such as email, myspace, etc. I just find them stupid and annoying. Reply It's not Charter by Tech Angel Posted Tue April 22, 2008 @ 11:14 PM Blame the teenagers. I also have Charter.net email. After about 5 minutes of refreshing, the only ads I got were for Universal Orlando, Levis and a mortgage company. What you have is adware. It replaces ads with its own. Download, install and run Spybot Search and Destroy and Lavasoft's Ad-aware, and start supervising your teenagers online time. Reply That's exactly what I was thinking as I read it by Gino Tue April 22, 2008 @ 11:54 PM Re: Inappropriate Ad on Charter's Email Webpage Warrants Immediate Removal to Protect Children by RowdyRetailer Posted Tue April 22, 2008 @ 10:40 PM Very well written, to the point, and I couldn't agree with you more. Good Day Reply