Ad Bard was a breath of fresh air in the already crowded advertising networks arena lead by behemoths like Google Adsense. In 2009 when Ad Bard network first came into existence, FSF proudly proclaimed , "The Free Software Community now has an ethical alternative to ad networks that promote proprietary software." Ad Bard was a truly promising venture. But it's all going to end in another month or so. Ad Bard is finally shutting down.





Tech Drive-in is more than an year old now and Ad Bard ads has always been an integral part of our blog. See the block at the bottom of the right side panel with the title "We Proudly Support Adbard". Even though the pay outs were much less compared to other ad networks and a customer service that can be called average at best, Ad Bard carried lots of potential, especially for blogs like ours catering to open source crowd primarily.





Along with the Ad Bard earnings report for May 2011 came this announcement, "Thank you for your participation in the FLOSS-focused Ad Bard Network. We regret to inform you that we have decided to shut down the network on July 1st, 2011. We've greatly enjoyed working with all of you, but unfortunately we've had far too limited time to focus on improving the network and selling advertisements."





Ad Bard had a good start but there was not even a single major upgrade or improvement of the advertising network over the years. I just hope that they are able to revive the project someday and concentrate more time and energy on it.