New Side Banner - Comments?

[Jesse]

Hey team,

We've known for a while that the forums are a bad place for top running banners, mainly because so much traffic comes from email links and post-specific links (rather than thread specific links), which jump half way down the page to the post in question, causing our advertisers' banners to be skipped over entirely.

Tonight we added a left-side skyscraper in an attempt to provide some valuable means of advertising on this otherwise very active section of the site. We removed the top running 468x60 temporarily but it may come back...

I'd like opinions. Personally it looks weird but I think I'd get used to it. But what do you people, who are probably here more often than I, think?

Comments welcome as always. If you have comments on the network ads which we've been running recently then feel free to post them here too...

[farafiro]

errrrrrrrrr
feeling like fool, I have updated to Flash 7.2, restarted, opened Opera and got shocked, thought something went wrong with the new update

my openion, it really takes much space off from the page than the top one
I don't like it
maybe you can try it on the right side

[tg]

kinda squishes things down a bit, but i think thats just something all of us can get used to.

the way i see it, the more money the site makes, the more resources jesse and strok have to improve the site. the more the site improves, the better it like it.

keep up the good work guys.... the skyscraper is something we can all probably learn to live with.... i agree with faffy tho, my be easier to handle/get used to on the right side.

[CyanBlue]

Ditto to what others said... It'd be whole lot better if the skyscrapper can be placed on the right side and if the actual forum page stays as it should be... It does take up really alot of space...
But then, it's all good if it can generate some money for the AS.org... The only problem that I have is that we have very little control over what's going to be displayed and it might sometimes mislead others as if AS.org is approving what's on the ads or something...

[Jesse]

I put it on the right originally then realized we'd be in breach of the Google conditions if it went there coz it would get pushed off to the side in wide pages.

I'm not liking it myself. I think I'll remove it for now and keep thinking.

What do you guys think about the other network banners? I'm not keen on the large top running ones. I have gone through and removed all but a few from the allowed list for our site...

[Jesse]

Yeah. I like it a lot more without the skyscraper. It would be especially bad a low resolutions. We're not at all keen on reducing the quality of the site for the sake of advertising. Maybe we should just move to a subscription based site and be done with it all! (joke!!!)

[CyanBlue]

Uh... Put it back online... It won't kill us even if you put it on the left side and we'll get used to it sooner or later...

[Jesse]

Nah. I've put it sitewide instead (like on the tutorial pages and stuff). I've put one of the leaderbaord ones at the top of the page instead. Someone suggested the best placement for them is actually immediately above the quickreply box, which sounds smart but means they would only be seen by ppl who reply and heaps of ppl just read and don't so I'm not so sure.

There's lots of topics on this exact issue at the vB forums. People trying to utilize their forum traffic. no one has the magic bullet yet though

[CyanBlue]

Nah... No magic bullet is produced yet... Lots of people are acutally putting big money to the advertising and they don't really work that well... Oh, well...

[tg]

you need to make the add 'look' like the quick reply box.... that way everyone who replies will actually give you a click thru hehhehheh.