@bob_‘s got the right idea. While money isn’t the main point, it’s certainly necessary to the survival of the site. A strong, vibrant and growing community attracts attention.
@Brian1946 You’d probably have to clear you cache (delete the cookies) and restart your browser. Your browser saves the cookie from the last time you were logged in, so you’re essentially seeing a cached page.
I fired up IE, which I’d never before used to look at Fluther, and without logging in, I saw glorious ads for stuff I have actually searched for. So it’s certainly not IP driven.
I needed to stick a copy of Opera on the machine for testing browser compatibility of websites anyway, so that done, I searched on Google from something I knew I’d posted in the past and grabbed this screen shot. Not the loveliest ad, but it is there.