Ads on the DinoToyBlog & Forum

[BlueKrono]

Oh, thank goodness! It's back to a not-overwhelming level of ads now. A subscription service might work for some, but it wouldn't be the best model for me. I'm a full time stay at home dad with a part-time gig, so my funds are usually pretty limited. When I get a windfall, like my taxes back in the spring, I like to make donations to charities. It would be more irregular times like that that I'd be able to chip in.

[DinoToyForum]

Oops - a very bad typo!!  My apologies @DinoToyForum.  Perhaps I have a new career ahead of me of putting people through the wringer!

I certainly want you to feel uncomfortable or stressed, @DinoToyForum. 

You're so cruel! (typo I think )

Hehe!

[Takama]

I have considered a voluntary donation or subscription model.

I've ruled out (for now) completely removing ads in favour of donations because I'm not convinced enough users would donate for the Wikipedia model to work. Plus, I worry it would put inevitable pressure on me, psychologically speaking, to provide value for money. For example, downtime and technical problems would stress me out (more) if users are paying for the service. I'm also just uncomfortable requesting/accepting 'payments' from users, even if users are comfortable doing so. And I'm uncomfortable letting a subset of generous users essentially pay the way for others – while Wikipedia is more or less faceless, things are more intimate here, so it's all a bit awkward. A lot of this played out for real in the last donation-based diorama contest.

I've ruled out a broad subscription model because I want the content to be free for all and not hidden behind a paywall. So, what I've been considering is a subscription model where individuals can pay to go ad-free, so only those paying would see the benefit (when logged in). That might be less awkward, and less risky because the status quo would be maintained for everyone who doesn't subscribe.

This is doable. On the forum I could set up a new user-group for 'supporters' (or donors, subscribers, however we decide to phrase it), and I could turn the ads off for that user-group. Similarly, 'supporters' could receive a blog account (subscriber-level), so they can log into the blog and experience it without any ads, as blog authors already do. There are ways it could be automated, but it might be simpler for me to do it manually if the demand is low.

So this might be something I can explore.

Ads are the the pests of the modern internent in my eyes. I understand they help out a free service. But sometimes they can get EXTREMLY annoying or worse.  Lead to nasty things by accident (speaking as a guy who has been forced to use a mobile for a year now.

I noticed these un godly amount of ads pop up recently, and i almost alerted you about it on a certain Social Media platform, but thank goodness someone beat me too it.

I would like to subscribe if you do make a service happen.   Just PM me what to do, or how to do it.

[DinoToyForum]

I have considered a voluntary donation or subscription model.

I've ruled out (for now) completely removing ads in favour of donations because I'm not convinced enough users would donate for the Wikipedia model to work. Plus, I worry it would put inevitable pressure on me, psychologically speaking, to provide value for money. For example, downtime and technical problems would stress me out (more) if users are paying for the service. I'm also just uncomfortable requesting/accepting 'payments' from users, even if users are comfortable doing so. And I'm uncomfortable letting a subset of generous users essentially pay the way for others – while Wikipedia is more or less faceless, things are more intimate here, so it's all a bit awkward. A lot of this played out for real in the last donation-based diorama contest.

I've ruled out a broad subscription model because I want the content to be free for all and not hidden behind a paywall. So, what I've been considering is a subscription model where individuals can pay to go ad-free, so only those paying would see the benefit (when logged in). That might be less awkward, and less risky because the status quo would be maintained for everyone who doesn't subscribe.

This is doable. On the forum I could set up a new user-group for 'supporters' (or donors, subscribers, however we decide to phrase it), and I could turn the ads off for that user-group. Similarly, 'supporters' could receive a blog account (subscriber-level), so they can log into the blog and experience it without any ads, as blog authors already do. There are ways it could be automated, but it might be simpler for me to do it manually if the demand is low.

So this might be something I can explore.

Ads are the the pests of the modern internent in my eyes. I understand they help out a free service. But sometimes they can get EXTREMLY annoying or worse.  Lead to nasty things by accident (speaking as a guy who has been forced to use a mobile for a year now.

I noticed these un godly amount of ads pop up recently, and i almost alerted you about it on a certain Social Media platform, but thank goodness someone beat me too it.

I would like to subscribe if you do make a service happen.   Just PM me what to do, or how to do it.

I agree. I'm open-minded to ads in principle and I'm happy to put up with a small number of non-intrusive ads on the sites I visit, but we all have a tolerance of what we think is acceptable, and many sites/platforms have overdone it. I avoid certain sites that exceed my personal 'ad tolerance limit', so I can relate to people finding the ads here annoying. I hope the DinoToyForum is below most people's limit. For clarity, I didn't purposefully flood the site with ads recently, that was an accident.

[Sim]

@DinoToyForum, today on the forum and blog there are large pop-up ads that don't go away unless one clicks to close them.  They are terrible.  Are they necessary?

[DinoToyForum]

I'm experimenting with a different ad provider for the blog and forum (Infolinks) so please excuse any obtrusive ads while I get used to the system - at the moment they're being automatically inserted all over the place!

[ceratopsian]

You need to be very precise closing them. I've managed to open by accident more than I've closed so far.

[DinoToyForum]

You need to be very precise closing them. I've managed to open by accident more than I've closed so far.

I'm sorry I've been a bit taken aback how many there are, and I certainly don't like the ones the pop up from the bottom of the page (I won't keep them). The idea is that Infolinks could replace Adsense going forward and I may be able to reduce the number of ads overall in the process. At the moment I have them both running alongside each other but this is only temporary.

[DinoToyForum]

One day into my experiment with Infolinks and the bottom line is pitiful - earnings per 1000 ad views are more than ten times lower compared to Adsense (which isn't much to shout about in the first place!). And many of the infolinks ads are generally way more intrusive. I'll give it another day or so to see if it settles but it's looking highly likely I'll stick with Adsense after all. Thanks for your patience while I test the water.

[ceratopsian]

On my phone the bottom ad obscures a quarter of my screen. Worth a try from the financial angle but it's not a great experience when viewing.

[DinoToyForum]

On my phone the bottom ad obscures a quarter of my screen. Worth a try from the financial angle but it's not a great experience when viewing.

Yeah, in fact I'll remove those intrusive bottom ads that stick to the edge of the screen now, I wouldn't keep them in the long run anyway

[ceratopsian]

Thanks @DinoToyForum!

[postsaurischian]

 Also thanks from me! I'm glad that the intrusive bottom ads are gone now.

[DinoToyForum]

I've given up on Infolinks altogether and removed all their ads.

[Gwangi]

For visitors who are not logged in, a single ad appears at the top of each review, as shown in your picture. This ad used to be above the title, but I moved it down just before the article proper begins, so that first thing visitors see is the article title and details rather than an ad. Wherever it goes it's intrusive. I can move it back above the title.

No other ads appear within the body of the article itself.

I also kept two ads between reviews, after posts 5 and 10. This is less than before but I can reduce it down to one per page. I'm still trying to find a balanced ratio of content to ads.

But @Gwangi, you shouldn't see any ads yourself so long as you're logged in.

Ads are now appearing within the body of the article itself, @DinoToyForum. I don't know how many people I speak for but I'm sure I'm not alone in finding these ads obnoxious. I'm just reading and scrolling through a review, trying to admire photographs, and a gigantic ad for Temu shows up. It cheapens the blog. I remember you leaving YouTube due to ads, I hope you can relate to my frustration.

[DinoToyForum]

For visitors who are not logged in, a single ad appears at the top of each review, as shown in your picture. This ad used to be above the title, but I moved it down just before the article proper begins, so that first thing visitors see is the article title and details rather than an ad. Wherever it goes it's intrusive. I can move it back above the title.

No other ads appear within the body of the article itself.

I also kept two ads between reviews, after posts 5 and 10. This is less than before but I can reduce it down to one per page. I'm still trying to find a balanced ratio of content to ads.

But @Gwangi, you shouldn't see any ads yourself so long as you're logged in.

Ads are now appearing within the body of the article itself, @DinoToyForum. I don't know how many people I speak for but I'm sure I'm not alone in finding these ads obnoxious. I'm just reading and scrolling through a review, trying to admire photographs, and a gigantic ad for Temu shows up. It cheapens the blog. I remember you leaving YouTube due to ads, I hope you can relate to my frustration.

You shouldn't see any ads at all if you're logged in?

I left Youtube (DinoToyBog channel) mainly because they demonetized my channel and rubbed salt into the wound by continuing to put ads on my videos to make money for themselves. As a visitor to Youtube I also have a problem with the volume of ads that appear before and during videos - the ratio of content to ads has become unbalanced and off-putting - but I don't have a problem with ads in principle, in moderation.

I think the balance of ads on the DinoToyBlog is reasonable. I began experimenting with the in-article ads a few months ago. I've been taken aback by how incredibly well the single in-article ad in the body of a review performs compared to all other ad positions. Here's a graph showing the performance of the top 10 ad positions across all my sites over the past 30 days (numbers redacted). The top line is the in-article ads on the blog. This shows why I'm reluctant to remove the in-article ad. When I did remove it for a while it led to a substantial drop in earnings. I concluded that one single ad in the body of an article (for visitors but not logged-in users) is fair.



(Edit - I moved some relevant posts from the Blog Changes topic to this Ads topic )

[Gwangi]

You shouldn't see any ads at all if you're logged in?

I know that. But as I've said before, I don't log into my account on my mobile device. It doesn't matter anyway. I'm not concerned with my own blog viewing experience, just how it appears to readers as a whole. I think it looks cheap and ugly to have ads all over the place...on any site. I don't even bother with STS Forums because of their ads. I spend a lot of time writing these reviews, taking pictures, editing pictures, resizing pictures, changing the file names, uploading it all and putting it all together (you know the process) and then after all that hard work the first thing I see below the review title is not my first paragraph, or a picture of the toy I'm reviewing, but an ad for Hardee's chicken tenders. Then half way through the review there's the same ad again, and then at the very end of the review there's an ad for cheap crap on Temu. There was a time when I could sit back and look upon the presentation of my review with pride and that's not the case anymore. And I know, I don't have to see them when I'm logged on, but knowing that's what everyone else will see is still depressing. 

I left Youtube (DinoToyBog channel) mainly because they demonetized my channel and rubbed salt into the wound by continuing to put ads on my videos to make money for themselves. As a visitor to Youtube I also have a problem with the volume of ads that appear before and during videos - the ratio of content to ads has become unbalanced and off-putting - but I don't have a problem with ads in principle, in moderation.

So you understand my frustration then.

I think the balance of ads on the DinoToyBlog is reasonable. I began experimenting with the in-article ads a few months ago. I've been taken aback by how incredibly well the single in-article ad in the body of a review performs compared to all other ad positions. Here's a graph showing the performance of the top 10 ad positions across all my sites over the past 30 days (numbers redacted). The top line is the in-article ads on the blog. This shows why I'm reluctant to remove the in-article ad. When I did remove it for a while it led to a substantial drop in earnings. I concluded that one single ad in the body of an article (for visitors but not logged-in users) is fair.

(Edit - I moved some relevant posts from the Blog Changes topic to this Ads topic )

Well, there it is then. Look, it's your site and I don't want to step on your toes. I'm grateful for the community you've created and maintained and for giving us a place to host our reviews. At the same time, I've been writing for the blog for over a decade and have consistently supplied it with content during that time. I feel like the opinions of your content creators should matter to some degree. But if a drop in your earnings means no more blog then I guess I'll just have to endure these ever increasing ads. I just hate watching the blog, which I clearly do care about, slowly get overtaken by them. But I'm only supplying content, not footing the bill, so feel free to tell me to hit the road. And you say that you think the balance is reasonable but it seems like there's more and more of them every year. When does the balance tip?

[thomasw100]

I have Ghostery installed and active and I do not see any ads.

[Takama]

I will admit

I have not visited the blog in ages due to not only being restricted to a mobile.

But also the ads I have to endure when I do visit.

My 2 cents on it.

But i would pay "something"  just so i dont have to deal with them at all in this community.

[DinoToyForum]

Thanks for the screenshots, I think it does look overbearing on mobile, and the ads shouldn't be that tall - I've set them to max 140px but the ones in your picture look taller than that. So something is wrong.

I almost never browse the internet on a mobile so I'm a bit oblivious to this.  Generally speaking ads are less imposing on a laptop screen, and that's how I experience the ads.

This has motivated me rationalise the ads and tidy it up a bit.

By the way, Youtube is not a good comparison because video ads demand your time (minimum of 5 seconds for skippable ads, and much more time if unskippable). I've also given up on STS forum because of the big full screen ad that constantly appears that you have to click off to skip.

At least all the ads on the blog and forum you can just scroll past.