I know this is a little bit difficult to see, but it is Desktop Subeta on my iPhone. Do you see that ad? It is for another virtual pet site, Sylestia.com.

Now, forgive me, but it has been clear to me for the last year that Subeta has been in a less than ideal financial situation. Why advertise another virtual pet site at all? It doesn't even matter if Sylestia is a startup, a threat, successful, or not. The fact that it is competition at all means it would be shrewd to avoid advertising it at all, in my opinion, particularly when ads bring in little enough as it is. But what shocked me even more about this ad is that when I clicked the link out of curiosity, it didn't load in another window or tab. It directed me away from Subeta in my current tab.

I saw mentioned in the news yesterday that ad revenue makes up only 5% of Subeta's income. I don't think we can work miracles here, but would not advertising for competition and then perhaps loading all other ads in new tabs, and not encouraging the use of AdBlock (if that is still being done) raise that statistic a little bit more?

Does anyone else have ideas?

This is really funny considering the Do Not Promote Petsites rule. [edit] Late. Still very ironic though.