I think one way to start this is to offer Google Adsense on <a href="http://Drupal.org">Drupal.org</a>.<br>Google text ads are not intrusive and clearly marked as ads. <br>Companies interested in advertising can click "advertise on this site"
<br>and Google automatically handles the back end for the Association.<br clear="all"><br>This can be done for an experimental period (e.g. 2 months) and then<br>reevaluated.<br><br>This serves the main goals of this experiment: expose service providers
<br>
to visitors, and raise money for the association.<br>
<br>It also relieves the Association from the decisions on what ads to run,<br>and all the potential complaints about that. It will be Google's algorithms<br>that are deciding what ads to run in an auction style ad system.
<br><br>Still the downside, whichever way we do it, is that big shops with big<br>bucks can drown out the smaller shops who do not have a large advertising<br>budget.<br><br>The Google Adsense module can be used for this. It offers blocks of
<br>different sizes/channels, and blocks can be made to appear on certain<br>paths only if needed.<br>-- <br><a href="http://2bits.com">2bits.com</a><br><a href="http://2bits.com">http://2bits.com</a><br>Drupal development, customization and consulting.