Breadcrumbs

[CodenStuff]

Hello Coders,

Last month we enabled banner ads for all members and guests on the site including those members who chose to disable them and we did this as an experiment to see how effective they would be at generating some much needed revenue for the site. So far this month the revenue generated from the ads has been small but a big difference compared to how it was before the ads were enabled for all.

The end of our month long experiment is almost upon us and I WILL be deactivating the ads as promised for those members who originally opted to remove them but that then brings a problem...with the ads once again disabled the revenue generated will return back to near zero as it was before and even though the revenue generated this month has only been small its better than how it was so how can we continue to bring in this extra bit of revenue without p*ssing off people who opted to remove ads and those who just hate seeing ads (I am one of those people).

Over the last week I have been playing with ads of different sizes in a lot of different locations around the site to try and find the best balance between showing ads and annoyance and I tried at the top of the page, bottom of the page, down the side of the page, in the middle of the page and even within the content of the page and found nearly all of them to be extremely annoying. In the end I began thinking about which area of the site gets viewed the most by members and guests because the more ads get viewed the more revenue will be generated and a topic page is where all the action is and those are the pages that get viewed the most.....Sooooo then I had to find a spot in there to place an ad instead of the big banner that is currently there and it also had to be somewhere that wouldnt bug people but still get viewed.

I decided on a small square ad placed at the bottom of the page squeezed in next to the similar topics block....



I feel this is the best way of showing ads without annoying people because it doesn't distract from the topic and you dont even see it until you get to the bottom of the page at which point its easy to ignore anyway if you dont like ads lol.

So from the 1st December 2012 this new small square ad will be enabled on the site for everyone including those who opted out of seeing ads. The large banner ad currently shown under the first post in topics will remain on the site and will be displayed as it was before to members and guests. Any members who have chosen to disable the large banner ad will NOT continue to see the large banner but the new small square ad will remain - you can not opt out of this one.

We do not share any of your personal information with these advertisers (we don't share it with anyone) but the advertisers themselves do use cookies and collect information about you while you surf the internet in order to target specific ads that may be of interest to you. You can opt out of this tracking behavior by clicking the top-right corner of the ad or by removing cookies from your browser history.

A slightly larger ad than the new one that will be added on 1st December has already been placed on the sites home page so you can get an idea of how it will appear next month. The home page is currently undergoing a re-design so the ad may be removed or relocated at some point.

Thank you cooll;

[Shim]

interesting btw i dont think you can earn at least 10$ if you place the ads at that place

ads at top left will make alot CTR

[CodenStuff]

The problem with having ads at the top is they get really annoying ...they would get more views and more clicks but they would p*ss me and loads of other people off :lol: and thats why I decided on a small ad at the bottom. It probably wont bring in much revenue but it will bring in something which is better than nothing

[comathi]

The ads at the very bottom of the page are, in my mind, a very good idea. It's out of the way for those who don't like ads, but still present to generate a little bit of revenue, and besides, a few ads here and there never hurt anyone :lol:

[Usman55]

I agree, a few ads here and there don't make any difference, not to me at least. I don't have any problem with ads as long as they don't pop up or distract me from what I'm doing.