NOTE: ADS ON THE FORUM (updated 26/10/21)

poopot

@digitalscream ;So here’s another issue… with everyone installing ad blockers etc just to remove the ads you’re not going to get any ad revenue at all…

go with the subscription… £X/month to log on and have full access to the forum with no adds and the ability to post everywhere subject to the rules!!!!!

Snags

I'd continue to bung the odd few quid in the pot, particularly knowing what the actual hosting costs are, without even accounting for time spent.

Even if you run a subs service, anyone who objects to paying will just not sub and use an ad-blocker regardless. So encouraging a culture of ads if you don't want to pay, subs if you do, and if you use an ad-blocker it would be nice if you have the means to do so for you to toss £20 in the pot once a year or so is likely to get a good balance between maximum retention and maximum running cost revenue.

There will always be some people who get the hump about some aspect or other though, because humanity.

Philly_Q

digitalscream said:

poopot said:

£4/month is reasonable…it’s the cost of a pint down this way!…

would there be a reduction if you paid for a year upfront? Or six months upfront etc… I’m guessing if folk don’t want to subscribe they can poke up with the adverts…

I certainly hope I could put a discount in there for longer periods - it really depends on whether Patreon/whatever-platform-I-use supports it. £4/month is the right kind of number, because that'd work out at (for example) £24 monthly or £20 annually, which seems like a sensible kind of approach.

The option of an annual fee, discounted or not, would suit me - I've got so many monthly subs with Netflix, Disney+ etc, I could do without yet another one.

poopot

Of course after the weeks ad trial is up… @digitalscream you could always run another weeks trial where you turn the site completely off… just to show what could happen when the fun of running the forum for everyone for free is overtaken by the joy of funding the running costs from your own pocket!…

Why is this even up for debate??? £20/year/member job done…

digitalscream

poopot said:

guitarcookie1 said:

It would be nice if they were relevant to the content on the site though, otherwise why would you bother to click through?

This is a good point!… my ip is in Exeter, all I keep getting is ads for Nando’s down that way!!!

That's a problem - the point of AdSense is that they're personalised to the user (assuming no opt out etc).

The issue I have is that I can't figure out a way to make a positive choice in the control panel - ie only show these categories, rather than block these categories.

No other advertising provider will touch forums of our size, unfortunately. It'd be different if we were TGP-scale, but...we're not.

Roland

poopot said:

@digitalscream ;So here’s another issue… with everyone installing ad blockers etc just to remove the ads you’re not going to get any ad revenue at all…

go with the subscription… £X/month to log on and have full access to the forum with no adds and the ability to post everywhere subject to the rules!!!!!

The question here is how much ad revenue comes from the 90% of visits that are from non-members. Comparing the different trial weeks might give an indication. 

Mellish

That's a very good point @poopot makes about members installing ad blockers. Subscription would seem the way to go  

ICBM

Ha… I got a new phone yesterday and spent ages trying to work out why Adblock wasn’t working on it . I can live with them to be honest. I’d prefer without, but compared to another forum I use they’re really not that invasive, and as already said if it’s necessary to keep the lights on it’s a small price to pay. A small request - is there any way of making announcement posts even more obvious, like flashing text or something? Doesn’t matter if not…

ICBM

That’s supposed to say ‘flashing’, but now the editor seems to be broken, as are paragraphs…

digitalscream

Fixed it for you - all part of the service

EricTheWeary

I do keep telling the Nandos as that I don't want it and it keeps reappearing. Although I've never really tried doing this with ads before so maybe it just doesn't work on any site. 
On a laptop the ads hardly noticeable at all, bit harder to ignore on my phone although they don't interfere with anything. 

@ICBM I really liked the use of the phrase dashing text, had a bit of class I thought. I do agree that Announcements don't really leap out. 

Bridgehouse

Well, the relevancy function appears to have improved for us modmins.

I just went into the Flags sub forum (where all the flags from flagged posts are) and the first advert I saw was for ear plugs… 

Yep. I clicked on that.

Roland

There’s a feature I do like. On some websites the page won’t load until the ad auction has finished, with consequent delays. Here the page loads. Then the adverts appear later, after the interesting parts have loaded. In fact I’ve frequently scrolled down past the banner advert position before an advert displays. 

Philly_Q

EricTheWeary said:

I do keep telling the Nandos as that I don't want it and it keeps reappearing. Although I've never really tried doing this with ads before so maybe it just doesn't work on any site. 

It never works, there's always something to take its place....

I've been using an adblocker for a few months because loads of ads started appearing on a site I frequent (Blu-ray.com), where previously there'd been minimal ads so long as you were logged in.  But now the ads seems to be learning to defeat the adblocker...  Another site which was suddenly overwhelmed with ads recently was Blabbermouth.net.

One thing I have found - the Daily Mail website (yeah I know, why was I looking at the Daily Mail website...?) basically doesn't function at all if you have an adblocker and pop-up blocker.

digitalscream

Philly_Q said:

One thing I have found - the Daily Mail website (yeah I know, why was I looking at the Daily Mail website...?) basically doesn't function at all if you have an adblocker and pop-up blocker.

Yeah, that won't happen here. The primary purpose of this site is to serve content, not make money, so that would be totally defeating the point.

Similarly with the "overwhelmed with ads" thing - as an example, the sidebar was actually the best-performing ad, but since it was causing problems reading content on tablets in desktop mode, then I'd rather get rid of it.

Philly_Q

digitalscream said:

Similarly with the "overwhelmed with ads" thing - as an example, the sidebar was actually the best-performing ad, but since it was causing problems reading content on tablets in desktop mode, then I'd rather get rid of it.

It was particularly bad on Blabbermouth, obscuring content all over the place - and that was on a desktop, god knows what it was like on mobile devices.  That's what tipped me over into getting the adblocker.

TTony

Back in the days when we (I, mainly) did the fund raising stuff, in a year we might raise;

• a t-shirt - probably £15 ea.
• a calendar - probably £10 ea.
• a couple of raffles -  probably  £20 per person.

Those amounts are what our core members would pay - core being those who regularly put their hands in their pockets to support the forum by  participating.  It was probably 50 or so people who'd regularly contribute to any one fund-raiser, and maybe 100 or so who'd contribute to at least one of them during the year.

So, those 100-or-so people were putting in ~£30 each, (though our coffers obviously only benefitted from the profit on sales, not the gross amount).

On top of that, the wonderful BigJon used to remind everyone once a year that we funded on a donations basis, and that'd prompt some more donations.  And - to be perfectly  honest - some people would also say "I don't want one of those poxy t-shirts, but here the £15 anyway because you've reminded me that I've not donated for a while"!

If we're to move to an ads, or pay-for-no-ads, model then the payment is probably around that same £30/yr, although they'd be paying NOT to receive something (ads) rather than paying to receive something (the much valued annual t-shirt!!) and feel the warm glow of contributing to keeping the forum going (and ad-free).



A formalised payment model  changes the relationship between the forum and its members.   IMHO that relationship would be a dangerous thing to experiment with ... 

guitarfishbay

If the ads are only going to be top and bottom of page on mobile then they don’t bother me at all.

I don’t personally have an issue with them but I could see gambling/vice ads potentially being an issue for some, I have no idea if it’s actually possible to stop those appearing 

digitalscream

TTony said:

If we're to move to an ads, or pay-for-no-ads, model then the payment is probably around that same £30/yr, although they'd be paying NOT to receive something (ads) rather than paying to receive something (the much valued annual t-shirt!!) and feel the warm glow of contributing to keeping the forum going (and ad-free).

Just a small correction - although I haven't explicitly said it yet. The subscription will be going towards development - and the first benefit of that will be Imgur integration into the editor. There's a Vanilla plugin for it that's broken (as pretty much all Vanilla plugins are), so my first job will be to rebuild it so that it actually works, and that will be additional functionality for subscribed members.

If the coffers build up sufficiently, then the next iteration of that will be fully-hosted images, at which point the Imgur integration will move to the non-subscribed members. And the next iteration from there will be hosted media - particularly audio files - but that will definitely be a subscription-only function because of the costs involved in storing those files.

There's also the idea of video/audio meeting areas on the site.

The latter things will probably all require a replacement for Vanilla, which - whether it's existing software or something I build myself - will require a huge amount of effort.

However, the point is that not having ads will definitely not be the only benefit of subscription. In fact, as time goes on, it will probably become more of a happy bonus than the main feature of it.

Teetonetal

poopot said:

Of course after the weeks ad trial is up… @digitalscream you could always run another weeks trial where you turn the site completely off… just to show what could happen when the fun of running the forum for everyone for free is overtaken by the joy of funding the running costs from your own pocket!…

Why is this even up for debate??? £20/year/member job done…

It's up for debate, because there is a big difference between a free service and a paid for service and how you approach the need to provide content to non members (you have to have good content on show to encourage new members) is probably critical.

I've been thinking about would I pay for this site.... honestly, I don't think I would. not on a monthly basis. I've given donations via the various raffles in the past, but I suspect the only reason I am here, is because it is free.

Plus. I hate subscription services, the only ones I have currently are my phone and netflix (and that's because the kids insist and swiss TV is crap).

The way the ads currently are is unobtrusive -  so long as they don't become popups, I would vote for this.