Ads On The Website

[mouser]

After much discussion on this forum, and after getting approval from you guys+gals, we have incorporated google ads onto the website.

We thought a lot about whether this would be a good or bad thing, and we're still not 100% sure, but it did some like something worth experimenting with.

We had one major requirement before even considering the ads, and that was that donating(charter) members and honorary members, should not have to ever see such ads.

Hopefully we have accomplished this, and assuming you're recognized via your forum login, you should not notice any difference in the website, and you should not see any ads.  [of course if you are curious, just log out of the forum and browse around].

I look forward to hearing feedback from people about the new system.

As per requests, we will try to set up a system so that those who are members who want to enable ads for some unholy reason will be able to.

IMPORTANT:

To our supporters - please keep in mind that the ad system we are using, Google Adsense, is very aggressive about detecting people who are clicking just for the sake of generating clicks and revenue for the site, and they will probably not only ignore you if you start clicking on all the ads, but count it against you and the site.

So please do not start clicking on ads like crazy in an attempt to help us, because it won't help us.


One of the things we are really excited about with the new ads is the possibility of being able to easily and directly reward people who want to add content to our site, by sending them all of the revenue generated from their page.  We are committed to fairly compensating people who add value to the site and our intention is to send 100% of any ad revenue from a review or program page to the person who created that page.  I only regret we didn't have such a system set up in the past.


We look forward to any suggestions, comments etc.

[mouser]

reviews and software written by others on the site have now been tagged with special channel ids, so those authors will now receive 100% of all ad revenue from those pages.

and in keeping with this spirit, we realize that this forum community is important to all of us, and we are going to try to find a way to automatically share any of the ad revenue coming into the forum with those who help out here.  just have to figure out a reasonably fair way to do it.  it probably won't be very much but you can always donate it to a charity and it will be a nice feeling

[mouser]

A few members expressed their curiosity about the advertisements and even a desire to turn on ads in their account even though they are members, and asked for an option to turn them on or off.

We have now added such an option.

Members can go to their forum profile options page (http://www.dcmembers...file;sa=forumProfile), the same place you set your yearbook quote and avatar image, and set the percent chance of displaying an ad on a page.

You can set this to 0 to NEVER EVER see an ad, or to 100 to always see ads.

As an experiment i've set the value to 5 for all members (i.e. 5% chance of seeing an ad).

Please do not hesitate to set this to 0 if you are bothered by advertisements.

For the rest of you who occasionally might find an ad interesting, set this value to something that you are comfortable with, and if you see an ad that strikes your interest, by all means check it out, it helps us and you might stumble onto something useful 

[but remember, please don't just click on a lot of ads you don't care about in an effort to benefit the site; google frowns on this and it will actually end up hurting us in the long run!]

[Renegade]

One of the things we are really excited about with the new ads is the possibility of being able to easily and directly reward people who want to add content to our site, by sending them all of the revenue generated from their page.  We are committed to fairly compensating people who add value to the site and our intention is to send 100% of any ad revenue from a review or program page to the person who created that page.  I only regret we didn't have such a system set up in the past.

We look forward to any suggestions, comments etc.

-mouser (October 16, 2005, 03:15 PM)

I've seen sites that do this. Of course I forget where now, but what they do is dynamically generate the AdSense code with users' AdSense ID.

Ah... I remember - DigitalPoint or SitePoint forums - one of those I think.

[noth(a)nk.you]

Will just _looking_ at a lot of ads benefit the site?

I rarely buy things from ads, but I don't mind loading them.

[jgpaiva]

To our supporters - please keep in mind that the ad system we are using, Google Adsense, is very aggressive about detecting people who are clicking just for the sake of generating clicks and revenue for the site, and they will probably not only ignore you if you start clicking on all the ads, but count it against you and the site.

-mouser (October 16, 2005, 03:15 PM)

noth(a)nk.you: I'd say it depends if you really are interested in the ads or not.

[noth(a)nk.you]

Allow me to rephrase:

Will just looking at the ads inter-mingled with DC stuff benefit the site at all?

That is, I probably won't click on any--is there a benefit to setting "ads" to 100%?

[jgpaiva]

Oh, sorry, i misunderstood you, now that i read better, i understand.
That, I don't know. i guess it'll have to be mr mouser to answer you.

[f0dder]

Google Ads is fine, I just wish you could make it not show up suggestions when it doesn't actually have any...

[mouser]

we get no money when people view ads, only when they click them; so if you don't find them useful enough to click on occasionally, you might as well turn your add chances to 0.

[momonan]

I don't really see how ad-based plans work, since I never click on ads at a site (except here, to add a little revenue to DC ), but somebody sees a future in it.  Read how AOL proposes to go to a free, ad-based service:

http://www.nytimes.c..._r=1&oref=slogin

[mouser]

from the ny times article:

The great deluge of AOL discs is finally going to end.

AOL is putting the final touches on a plan that would stop marketing its subscription service, which for more than a decade has been the most popular way that Americans connect to the Internet, according to a senior AOL executive close to the plan's development.

Instead, it will redouble its efforts to build a free, advertising-supported business on the Web, offering current and former members access to the most popular features of its paid service — including e-mail addresses at AOL.com, free virus protection, and use of AOL's software program.

The plan would save hundreds of millions of dollars a year in marketing costs and involve layoffs of thousands of AOL's 19,000 employees, said the executive, who would not speak for attribution because the details of the plan have not been completed.

fascinating.

[Carol Haynes]

The only reason they are doing this is because they are haemoraging users at an alarming rate. I read a Reuter's article about this and basically the consensus seems to be that a lot of AOL customers only stay because they are tied in to "AOL" email. A lot are making the move to free Yahoo email, and once that step has been made what is the point of staying with AOL?

Personally I find it hilarious that AOL are suggesting they will go to an ad supported model - do they seriously mean that the current AOL isn't ad supported! Having seen AOL on other peoples' systems it is hard to work out where the ads end and the 'service' starts in the subscription version - if they up the advertising in the next version it is going to be horrendous and unuseable!

[app103]

Personally I find it hilarious that AOL are suggesting they will go to an ad supported model - do they seriously mean that the current AOL isn't ad supported! Having seen AOL on other peoples' systems it is hard to work out where the ads end and the 'service' starts in the subscription version - if they up the advertising in the next version it is going to be horrendous and unusable!

-Carol Haynes (July 07, 2006, 08:46 AM)

They are moving to a free ad-supported service...as opposed to the current paid ad-supported service. If it gets any worse it will be a clone of Juno 4.0 with the big always on top ad filled bar that blocks you from accessing your desktop. (I really hope I am joking and not predicting the future here).

This is one of the reasons why I use their tray dialer instead of the traditional software every other AOL user connects with. I get just a strong stable connection that's even compatible with my other pc's ancient X2 modem, without all the extra crap. I have to use external applications for everything...just like normal people do.