it it just me ?

[Xeef]

don't know but the forum seams over addvertiesed

i see nothing else then Flash Gallery component
all over the place

best is the first post

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woud by nice if this coud by reduced !!! :mad: :mad: :mad: :(

[Flash Gordon]

Yeah, I have noticed it. On a 800x600 screen it must be a nightmare. But all of the ads aren't the same size. Some will take up half of my screen and 1024x768 res. That is a big ad.

But i vote for these rather than the "kontona" style ads. I think i can deals with these. Of all the ads tried there thus far, I perfer the HUGE ads to any of the others.

[CyanBlue]

I get to see Easy Flash Training ad right now... :D

[Cota]

A agree, it is rather annoying, but I'm assuming its a necessary evil..

[Jesse]

OK don't freak out. As always it's a trial. I didn’t bother to post about it this time; I thought I’d just wait for a thread like this to pop up, so thanks Xeef :).

This trial will last about two weeks and every page will continue to have 3 ads on it until the trial is done. Why? Because there are three ad units to trial (we need to see which two perform best). That’s 6 combinations. Testing each combination takes 2 weeks plus an hour of changing vB templates. That’s 6 combinations, 12 weeks, 6 hours... Time I don’t have.

Facts:
- None of us want too many ads on the forums; honestly.
- Yes, you, our users are our main concern in these matters and we care about your experience and onions.
- Without effective ads the forums are black hole which we throw bandwidth (read ‘money’) into. This the current situations.
- Google and Kontera are the only companies which allow ads on Forums.
- Both these companies rely on content rich pages, so they work well with forums.
- Kontera still seems to have issues with the forums so that leaves Google
- Google ads have been on the forums for the last year and people have become ‘blind’ to them. You should see our nice graph of performance declining day by day.
- Ads all pay on performance now. If they aren’t seen, they don’t perform, we get nothing.
- The ads are relevant, you’ve got to admit it. And over the last week lots of people are expressing interest in them.

I've had a couple of emails so far asking me to put the ads back in the old spots because people are bothered by them in the new... Does anyone else see the irony there? “Please put the ads back where I don’t notice them.” If we places ads in "ad blind-spots" we might as well not have them at all ;) Think performance not exposure.

The one big ad instead of lots of little ads is a Google thing. I don’t know if we can even control it but I’ll look into it if it’s annoying.

To conclude:
We won’t continue to have 3 ads. Give us a chance to evaluate these placements and in a week the pain will be over. We probably will maintain two of the current placements, because anywhere else is literally useless. At the moment I’m thinking above the quick-reply and under the navigation. Actually the one between the first two posts performs better but people seem to hate it. (In case you’re interested, “by perform better I mean the click through rate is higher”, which shows actual interest in what is being advertised IMHO. The new click rates show that a considerable percentage of people are actually interested in what these ads are advertising, but they just haven’t ever noticed the ads before).

I welcome your comments on:
- Which 2 of the 3 placements are least evil.
- Whether or not we should carry Google image ads
- Whether we should (if we can) force 2 – 4 little ads per block instead of one big one.
- Anything else you want to talk about. This is a democratic forum and we won’t oppress your opinions.

Phew. Now back to work before I lose my day-job for posting on my forums!

[Jesse]

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Hmm this is my fault and I take ownership of it. I only tested the look and feel on threads with lots of posts. Didn't consider those with few. I'll try to make adjustments tonight so for the first few posts there are fewer ads, coz that really is unreasonable.

As you can see, when threads get longer (like this one) the ads are much more reasonably spaced out!

[Jesse]

OK in thinking about it, I don't see any way to make there be fewer ads on short threads, so I've just killed the ad in b/w the first two posts. Comments on the above points still most welcome.

[Cota]

Personally I find them annoying, but I have kids, so I can over look them with out getting distracted.

[Jesse]

Maybe what we needs are ads which say:

"Dad look. Daddy. Dad. Daaaaaddy. Dad! Look dad! Daddy?"

[Cota]

Or an ad that shows your 3 year old daughter cramming chunks of cheese into your USB drives. Yeah, that was fun.

[Xeef]

jeh now it's better

i think what was mostly hurting me eyes was

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cheers rick

[CyanBlue]

There are three things that's bugging me with this trial... :D

The graphic ad in the thread makes me feel like I am not in the right place because the color scheme is just way too off... The most vibrant color in the thread used to be the avatars but the graphic ads just throw me off and I lose focus very easily...

There sometimes are ads not showing up correctly... I do see the box that says Sponsored Links but there is nothing in that box...

That tall ad in the forum main page makes me not to scroll down to the bottom of the page cuz I know it's there and it looks ugly...

That'll be my 2 cents... ;)

[tg]

Or an ad that shows your 3 year old daughter cramming chunks of cheese into your USB drives. Yeah, that was fun.

heh. when my youngest daughter was 2, i lost my drivers licence and one of my credit cards.... my floppy drive happened to stop working about the same time.

when i took drive appart, i found both the credit card and the license crammed in there..... put it all back together and i was a happy camper again.



and so i don't get accussed of hijacking this thread....
for some reason when i look at this site on my laptop at work, i don't see any ads, but when viewing from my desktop at home, i see them all.
they are easy to ignore. so keep them there jesse, altho we could forego all ads on this site if the folks who are complaining about them just fork over a nice healthy donation every 2 weeks.

[Flash Gordon]

I vote if Jesse is making money after the first post with an ad, then go ahead a keep it. With all the work you (Jesse) do, you deserve a little money (but not too much :D )

The only thing i vote to get rid of is when there are 2 or more ads back to back. That gets a little rediculous

[Flash Gordon]

p.s. Is it just me, or has AS[org] been running extremely slow lately?

[Cota]

I think they're doing stuff on the server. This place is ever growing....

[Flash Gordon]

The servers has always been down all day apparently.

BTW, as a consumer I feel much more conmfortable clicking on a Google ad (and I have before) than any kind of flashing ads, like the one right above the post box currently. I would never click on one of them. Might as well be advertise free X-Box 360s up there.

[Cota]

Yeah, the server's seemed to be down most of the day. Must mean Jesse and Strok are tinkering in the kitchen..

[Jesse]

I feel much more conmfortable clicking on a Google ad ...
Well at the moment the only ads on the Forums are all Google ads. Even the image ads... We can turn them off any time though.

The server slowness is an issue. Apache just freaked out and our security restrictions backfired, stopping me from being able to get in to fix it :) Anyway, both issues are resolved now.

[Cota]

heh. when my youngest daughter was 2, i lost my drivers licence and one of my credit cards.... my floppy drive happened to stop working about the same time.

when i took drive appart, i found both the credit card and the license crammed in there..... put it all back together and i was a happy camper again.


After things like that, all one can say is, Good times.....too bad they grow up.

And yes, my anti-hijacking attempt, the ads on my machine dont really get in the way...except for that graphical one that usually ends up being bright.

[Flash Gordon]

My favorite ad thus far:

For when those long hours of flash just don't make you look your best :rolleyes:

[Jesse]

Oh my. I wonder what keyword magic saw that ad appearing on a Flash site...