The thing is though that the driver for the traffic on the site is the forum
Just to add some more info on this point. While it’s true that the majority of traffic sits in the forum that doesn’t make it the place where the most ad revenue is earned. A content page earns far more revenue for us than a forum page, so while there are more forum impressions each content page is much more valuable.
High value advertising is always delivered capped. This means an individual user will see that ad only a few times each period (usually a day). This means that with each page view that user is worth less to us for that page impression.
Having 1000 people read a single content page and then leave the site (bounce) (Content pages are what we call stories on the front page) on our site is worth far more than 100 people viewing 10 forum pages per visit. Same number of page impressions but very different in terms of revenues earned.
When you start seeing the rubbish ads, like the B&Q one I’m looking at right now, it’s most likely because you have now exhausted all the high earning ads and are now having the network ads thrust upon you.
If we can at least book more brands into our ad system then you will see more relevant bike industry ads rather then the irrelevant network ads. Ads that are more suited to the audience they are presented to annoy you less and earn us more.
In the grand scheme of things, when brands bypass this simple concept by creating ads that are actually presented to us as ‘sick edits’ or the like it undermines that system and we see fewer of the relevant brand ads and more of the crappy network ads. We earn less and the spiral downwards continues.
There is no blanket ban on videos that contain logos – we are just going to be more careful with our editorial filter. Before we run one we will ask the simple question, ‘is it newsworthy enough to be run as a story?’. This is in lieu of the more common thought process of, ‘everyone is running this so we should too or we’ll miss out on page impressions.’
An example of where that is the case is with the recent Sealskinz funded video telling the story of how Traharn Chidley used mountain biking to escape an abusive relationship. It was funded by Sealskinz and featured their brand but it was a story we felt was worth telling.
If it doesn’t pass the editorial test then we won’t run it. If the brand involved pays us to run it we probably will but the fact they’ve paid will be made very clear to you, the viewers. there will probably be a clear ‘Sponsored’ label/category displayed on the story somewhere – we are working the details on that one.
Clearly there is an element of subjectivity involved in what is newsworthy and what is not and I suspect many may examine what we do next very carefully indeed and point out what they see is hypocritical or otherwise. That’s because there really is no definitive line as to that judgement call – or rather we would all probably draw the line in different places. But from our point of view the critical point to make is that judgement will be made by editorial staff and not sales/marketing staff. And their motivation will be less traffic chasing and more editorial worthiness.
That’s kind of what we are going for 🙂
