I know the site has to make money to support itself (although hosting with unlimited bandwidth isn’t that expensive) but the ads really are getting to be a bit much. There’s so much flashing and video and general BUY NOW BUY HERE going on that it all just looks, well. Tatty.

Is it all strictly speaking, necessary?

Hosting may not be that expensive (though actually it is!) but they also have to pay the salaries of their staff and clear a profit. And ads really don’t generate a huge amount of cash.

I think the ads on this site are actually a lot more discreet than others. At least they keep them off to the side and away from the content.

they do my tits in too.

I only find the charge one distracting and thats because its so short and repetitive. If it were longer say 15m then I would sit and watch it. It cant use up any more bandwidth?

What ads?

What ads?
+1

+2

Is there any reason for the guys behind ST to make money from it? Wouldn’t it be better for it to be run as a sort of publicly directed collective? After all baked beans don’t cost much. I’ve noticed the same thing happening with the magazine, with all sorts of vulgar advertising appearing. I think I may boycott both unless they’re going to be run on a purely non-proit basis. It really does my head in.

+3

and goodbye

I hardly notice them and as they’ve said time and time again they aren’t going away and pay for more than the hosting.

Can’t see the ads when scrolled this far down.

i don’t mind the ads anyway, they keep the site free

I think we need an ‘ad swearbox’. Whoever moans about them next has to fund the site for the next week. Ironically that could mean a brief respite from the ads.*

*Even tho i am +4.

Is it all strictly speaking, necessary?

The boys have been on many times explaining that unfortunately we don’t click on ads unless they are big and flashing.

+5

+6

andym – I have been putting up the occaisional discrete mention of the Big Bike Bash (a few tickets still available http://www.bigbikebash.co.uk/tickets.php) and people have been clicking on the link even though it doesn;t flash.

Try it, it is a great event.

I do wonder (generally speaking, not just for STW) if there might be a tipping point where the number of ads is increased to a level where so many people get irritated and block them that they would actually be better off with fewer ads.

I think it would be quite revealing to a question to the next reader poll about whether you are blocking ads or not – but I suspect they wouldn’t want to draw attention to that.

In the end, it’s their site and they have the revenue versus costs figures in front of them.

+½ (I block at work to keep my surfing discrete, but it is whitelisted at home and I make an effort to click on some of the ads from time to time)

people have been clicking on the link even though it doesn;t flash.

I’m only repeating what the guys say (personally I’d shop at CRC even if they didn’t have flashing ads).

I’m pretty much “Ad Blind” anyway so very rarely even notice them.

it’s a bit like visual spam. In the same way spam would not work if naive people didn’t respond, flashing ads would be abandoned if people protested by not clicking them – but we must suppose there are hordes of attentionally deficient but cash rich clickers…

I can’t see the ads, not because I have ad blocking software but for some reason they are in the bottom right of the Reply box, with a load of whitespace to the left of them, there is a load of white space to the right of the comments. Odd.

domino: what web browser are you using??

+7 😉

I have stopped clicking on the flashing ones. I used to click on them but no longer do as I find the ads so annoying I do not want to support those companies

Its IE 6.0 so nothing unusual.

The Charge ad gets a massive amount of traffic in terms of clicks!

We’ve just introduced text ads to sit in the bottom right corner under the shop ads. We’ve encouraged advertisers to use animated gifs instead of flash and many have heeded. We have stopped advertisers using the random function in the design of flash ads as this uses up a massive amount of processor resources on the users computers.

The text ads are just £10 a week and are available to everyone, including private sellers. This now gives the ‘helicopter tape’ salespeople a mechanism to trade instead of using the Classifieds which we really want to keep as a free resource to all registered users.

There are fewer ads on the site now than there were in the old version of the website. The ads are now on the right hand side of the page instead of both sides which we think is visually better on the eye of the user, even though Google tell us quite explicitly that we are losing ad revenue by not displaying ads in the top left corner of our website as this is the most responsive position for ads.

So, the ads will remain. Without them we seriously would turn the site into just a big single page ad for the mag with a button to push to subscribe. It seriously would not be economically viable to keep the site running at all without the vital revenue that it brings us. We will always strive to make the ads that do appear as targeted as possible and therefore at least make them as useful as they can be.

So, that’s it really. Ads are a double edged sword. They are here to stay. If you like using this site then that’s the price you pay. Simple.

*very slow clap for BadlyWiredDog* Bravo Sir, a new knee-jerk low.

From the top of the page I count 7 flashing / rotating or video ads. When I scroll down to reply I’m followed by the CRC banner at the top of the page which has an annoying habit of ending up right in the middle of the reply box.

I’m not against advertising raising revenue at all, but there has to be a point of diminishing returns, surely? I didn’t bother to count the number of people using ad blockers on the site but I’d have thought having less ads and the ones they had being of a less intrusive nature would mean they’d be more effective.

Less is more. Applies to advertising as well.

And unlimited bandwidth hosting can be had from £5 / month so really not that much money.

Well said Mark.

domino: Its IE 6.0 so nothing unusual.

Ah, from the future of 2001. You may want to look at updating that at some point (not because of STW weirdness, but because the newer ones tend to have fewer security holes in them).

But yes, the forum should probably have been tested in that browser as it is still pretty widely used.

*very slow clap for BadlyWiredDog* Bravo Sir, a new knee-jerk low

uh, you do realise his post is ironic ?

And unlimited bandwidth hosting can be had from £5 / month so really not that much money.

yeah! I’d like to see that! <runs off laughing!>

Without them we seriously would turn the site into just a big single page ad for the mag with a button to push to subscribe. It seriously would not be economically viable to keep the site running at all without the vital revenue that it brings us.

The forum is one of the reasons that I keep buying the magazine.

unlimited bandwidth hosting can be had from £5 / month so really not that much money

yes, and I bet it’s great. A really busy, dynamic site would just zip along on a server shared with a dozen other sites 🙄

Mark/Tom, just a thought: it would probably be possible for you to get a rough idea what percentage of your users were blocking your ads by comparing the number of page requests for the main page to the number of requests for an advert that always appears on that page.

(I don’t expect you to make the results public but it may prove useful analysis for you)

Do people who post complaints about the ads write to Sky, ITV etc etc and complain about their far more intrusive ads?
Just wondered.

Do people who post complaints about the ads write to Sky, ITV etc etc and complain about their far more intrusive ads?

it’s easier to look away from the screen with a TV, as during the ads there’s nothing interesting to see. I often find I’ve absent mindedly heard an ad dozens of times without knowing what it was for 🙂 TV ads are time division multiplexed, whereas as web ads are there all the time, just beside the content

Dez – Have I ever? No. I was asking what I considered to be a fair question regarding this forum. Don’t really watch much in the way of TV.

Simon – Ironic? Not so much, sarcastic? Yes. Completely missing the point? Totally.

I wasn’t saying the site and magazine shouldn’t make money I was asking (although to be fair I could have made it clearer) whether or not the advertising actually had any effect (IE made them money) or if people (as it seems most do) blocked it or simply ignored it.

My guess would be if it didn’t make them money they’d not have them, just how do you know most people block them or was that just a wild claim?

The ads DO make us money, without that revenue there would be no site. If I was American I would add ‘Period!’ to the end of that statement for emphasis too 🙂

If I was American I would add ‘Period!’ to the end of that statement for emphasis too 🙂

Oh come on Mark it’s STW you supposed to say FACT! as apparently that makes it a fact. FACT!

*reads back the above posts*

Not a wild claim, people have admitted to it in this thread…

Completely missing the point? Totally.

thanks for admitting it!