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Some thoughts on the Project Wonderful Ad Network and web advertising in general

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app103:
I have been a big fan of Project Wonderful for a long time. After hearing mouser's repeated complaints about Google Adsense over the years, I am glad to see he finally decided to take my advice and give Project Wonderful a try. I knew he wouldn't have the same complaints he had about the quality of advertisers and lack of control that he has with Adsense.

The quality of the advertisers is so high, that I have come to regard the ads on my sites as more of a "sites of the day" feature that I get paid to display, rather than just mere ads.

My only complaint with Project Wonderful isn't really their fault and would probably be fixed in part by them becoming much more popular. And that is, you just can't earn as much displaying their ads, compared to other ad networks.

But they are the only ad network where I have actually placed ads of my own because they are the only one that doesn't seem like a rip-off. The transparency, amount of information available about the sites you can advertise on, the data available about the performance of your ads, how they have eliminated most of the fraud by not using the traditional pay-per-click or pay for impression models, doesn't leave me with the feeling of handing my money over to a "used car salesman" with a big gold tooth grin saying "trust me".

I think most of mouse's advertising wishes would probably be satisfied if he were to roll his own, and accept direct advertising through this site, rather than trying to rely on a 3rd party ad network. He could also encourage DC members to contribute more of their credits towards supporting the site by making those credits the only accepted method of payment for advertising. Maybe then he might not feel so negatively towards ads on the site, if they were mostly ads for sites owned by supporting members. I have discussed this with him a little, privately, including the idea of DC using something like this to advertise our own apps on the site, to call attention to lesser known projects of merit, advertise fund raisers, and events like NANY, when there are no paying advertisers to display. (That was why he switched the default ad on Project Wonderful, to point to our About page)

It might be something to think about for DC 2.0.  ;)

grandpastan:
These sound like great options for a trial.

Tinman57:
  I don't mind ads at all except for a few exceptions:
1.  GoOgle, I don't click on GoOgle ads.  If I wanted to be spied on and tracked I would go to the FBI or HLS websites.
2.  Over adding, you know, the websites that have a full page of ads and only a couple of links other than ads.
3.  Pop-ups and scrolling ads that show up in your browsers status bar, and other similar ad tricks.
4.  Scammy (tricky) type ads like "Click Here To Scan Your Computer" only to be taken to some antivirus website, usually telling you there's something wrong and they will fix it for $X.

  If DoCo goes to ads I will be more than happy to disable my ad-blocker and click on a few that interest me, maybe even if they don't interest me.  ;)

  I think Mouser has pretty much spelled out the pro's and cons and looks like there won't be any of the above mentioned ad problems, as long as he stays away from GoOgle.....

allen:
It would be smart to serve ads. Add a setting in a user's profile to opt out of them if they want. Some members will leave them on to support the site, others will turn them off--but all incoming new traffic will have no choice but to help support the site through ad views.

I've seen this done a few times. DuckDuckGo is one that comes to mind (and I've left ads on--I want to support the search engine and their ads are tasteful)

TaoPhoenix:
It would be smart to serve ads. Add a setting in a user's profile to opt out of them if they want. Some members will leave them on to support the site, others will turn them off--but all incoming new traffic will have no choice but to help support the site through ad views.

I've seen this done a few times. DuckDuckGo is one that comes to mind (and I've left ads on--I want to support the search engine and their ads are tasteful)
-allen (May 31, 2013, 11:24 AM)
--- End quote ---

Be careful Allen. In other threads I have remarked on the explosion of the "Opt Out" abuse. The internet public subconsciously notices ads vs lack of ads, and you can't easily just make it an "opt out" that someone has to hunt down. It creates ill will.

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