The green ads on Squidoo - a good thing?

As a bit of background, Squidoo are trying out text adverts. Certain keywords in the text are highlighted and linked to adverts. They are trying it for one week, and have promised that there will only be three on each page to stop them being overwhelming, and that the green double underlined links will be discreet.

I wasn't going to blog until the week was over to give them a chance, but frankly my mind is made up at this point with one day to go. Despite a neutral outlook initially, a few issues that have occurred have decided me against. I'll cover the issues with an example of each below:

a) Lack of relevance Not just bad advertising but offensive. The Lancastria lens is about a war grave. Advertising diving holidays is in very poor taste.

b) Ads in the intro The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight lens had all three ads in the intro. Two timeshares and a broadband host. Clustered like that it takes people off the lens before they've had a chance to read it.

c) Overriding links Ads have replaced existing links in Amazon or eBay modules. On the TJX data theft case lens they overrode my links to the articles I was citing.

d) No back button Once someone has left your lens, that's it. They can't get back.

e) Opening in the same window This would not be such a problem if not for d. As it is, if someone clicks on the link they get a fullscreen ad with no way to go back.

I can see d and e irritating users as well as lensmasters. There is also the issue that lensmasters' content is being interfered with and isn't appearing as they intend.

Overall, I don't think the ads are a good thing, and will probably opt all my lenses out. This is a pity as at the start of the trial when three discreet ads appeared, well spaced, and even relevant, on the GWR lens I honestly thought they would work out.

ETA: I've just realised what they remind me of: CoolWebSearch, a rather nasty browser hi-jacker/malware program which I had to clean off a client's machine. CWShredder is probably the best way to get rid of it.