=][= ADVERTISING EXPERIMENTS ONGOING =][=

[LameBeard]

So I think we can use the spoof ads as a fundraiser? If everyone donates enough, they see the spoof ads for Corpse Starch Crispies or whatever their favourite cereal is, but if we fail to make the amount needed - we get punished with the real ads. 

[Gederas]

On 9/27/2022 at 10:58 AM, Brother Tyler said:

Some things to keep in mind:

• We haven't decided to do advertising - we're just experimenting right now.
• As we experiment, the locations of the advertisements will change periodically - this is to see how they look/feel in all of the option areas. Once we've gone through all of the locations and everyone has gotten a feel for the realm of the possible, we'll discuss what works/doesn't work (and your input will be solicited).
• Advertisements, if done, will only be an augmentation to our usual donations and will work in conjunction with them. This means that members that donate to the site, perhaps at/above a certain amount, won't see advertisements.
• If we choose to incorporate advertising, there will be a manual vetting process. You won't see ads based on web-based analytics, and you certainly won't see advertising for anything that isn't related to the WH40K hobby or general tabletop miniature wargaming. Nor will you see dating sites, political ads, etc. Basically, anyone wanting to advertise will have to request to advertise and the mods/admins will make sure that they are relevant to our hobby and consistent with our site rules.
• Advertisement locations will be fair to the advertisers - this means that they'll be given fair visibility. After all, they'll be paying their hard-earned money to advertise so we want to make it worth their while.
• The staff is exploring a range of options for raising funds for the site, with advertising being just one of those options. As I stated above, donations will remain our primary form of fundraising. We're also looking at merchandise (e.g., dice), but merchandise has historically given us far too little return on investment, so it's just a nice-to-have (and who doesn't want dice, t-shirts, stickers, etc. with the B&C logo?).

My only comment is, based on other forums I lurk on, if ads do become a thing, avoid doing the google ones. Because The Grand Alliance has an issue where ads for.... Okay I'm just gonna say it: TGA had an issue where for months ads for a porn comic website would be their banner and break ads. Nothing was shown but it was very clearly obvious what they were for . Took them half a year to get those to stop appearing. Now they just have issues where underwear and "UNCENSORED 19xx's photos here! I can't believe she wore this!"

[Emperor Ming]

What about approaching 3rd party retailers. Like wayland, darksphere, goblin games, element games etc for advertising. 

At least then ads will be Warhammer themed sort of. 

 

[Brother Tyler]

If we decide to incorporate advertising, if a company wants to advertise, instructions will be provided. The company and the images it provides will be vetted - you won't see random advertisements popping up.

[Felix Antipodes]

Frankly, a sub to the B&C would be better value than my Warhammer+ one… 

[Sete]

I'll pay not to have adds.

[Brother Tyler]

Some new ads have been added. All of these were modified from or inspired by Regimental Standard and Warhammer Community posters.

 

If we do ads, the trick will be in making them visible (and worthwhile for the advertisers), but not problematic. In this, we need to balance height for PC users with height and width for mobile users. The new adds still use the basic heights that we were using before (100/120/150 pixels), but use varying widths.

 

Again, we're not dead set on having advertisements. If we can sustain the site through donations, that is preferable. If donations don't bring in sufficient funds (and with a dwindling member base, that's a risk we face), advertisements may be a solution.

 

The B&C will never sit behind a paywall. At worst, members that donate (perhaps at or above a certain amount) might have increased capabilities, but those will simply be enhancements of what all members can do. For example, we might limit gallery sizes for non-supporting members, increasing those gallery sizes for members that donate (that was just an easily understood example that I came up with off the cuff - it's not necessarily something that will happen).

If we do ads, it's likely that members that donate at or above a certain amount won't see those adds.

 

Getting back to the ad experiment, we're still playing around with the "below the header" location. There are other locations that we'll examine, too, and some of those might require different dimensions (i.e., if we adjust our format to have a sidebar). For now, imagine that everyone will see the ads and figure out which ones are least egregious to you. PC users and mobile users will probably have very different ideas on this, so we're working towards the overall compromise between the two.

[Halandaar]

On 9/29/2022 at 10:34 AM, Kastor Krieg said:

Willing donations are OK, but if you put any part of the Forum behind a paywall, it will die out immediately.

On 9/29/2022 at 11:05 AM, lhg033 said:

Personally the imposition of, some hopefully considered and well placed/not too obtrusive, ads that allows everyone to keep the same access seems a good/fair balance for the community vs some people missing out.

Nobody at any point has suggested that there be a paywall. Even my suggestion for a subscription option is really intended as "regularly scheduled low-value donation".

[Halandaar]

38 minutes ago, Brother Tyler said:

Getting back to the ad experiment, we're still playing around with the "below the header" location. There are other locations that we'll examine, too, and some of those might require different dimensions (i.e., if we adjust our format to have a sidebar). For now, imagine that everyone will see the ads and figure out which ones are least egregious to you. PC users and mobile users will probably have very different ideas on this, so we're working towards the overall compromise between the two.

Is it not possible for the site to load different sized ads based on whether they're viewing on the desktop of mobile skin? Because I think the ads that are appearing now feel fine on the mobile skin but push the content down a bit too far on desktop, although that may be a matter of orientation.

I was thinking for desktop, something like this might be a bit better. Two smaller height adverts side-by-side, both because it's a bit less in-your-face, but also allows more ads to be displayed at once which presumably generates more money, which is the point?:

(banners were stolen from Fauxhammer's blog)

Edited September 30, 2022 by Halandaar

[Emperor Ming]

Is there a date/estimate for when donations need to resume?

It would be interesting to know how much online forums cost per year to upkeep

 

[skylerboodie]

Perhaps the ads can replace the Sumpheap Scrap location at top of page. And/or banner line at bottom of a page before you move on to next page of posts

[LameBeard]

If we need adverts I’d prefer that they rotate with the site’s existing “adverts” for events like the Sumpheap Scrap Challenge or a Bug’s Life etc.

Good for advertisers: it’s right there in an attention-grabbing place. Good for us, there is no extra clutter. I realise this isn’t necessarily practical though.

[brother_b]

Advertisement heavy websites are a necessary evil usually but the out-of-control adverts on BOLS, etc have driven me away.

Now goonhammer has adverts as well.

 

Banner-based advertisement that’s specific to gaming sounds like a very mild intrusion so I hope that’s the route it goes.

[Dudley Nightshade]

I don't know that I have seen this said, so I wanted to pop in and give what I hope is a frank assessment of the prospect of adding advertisements, without coming down strongly on one side or the other.

I suspect that part of the reason the B&C is still on the fence about accepting advertising money, in my experience, the admins and moderators are very conscientious about the site's relationship to the community. Paid advertisements may seem like a mild inconvenience, but they fundamentally change that relationship. At the moment, the community members are value creators and consumers. We post content (creating value for other hobbyists, and let's be honest, for ourselves) and we consume that content. We occasionally pay for the consumer portion when we contribute monetarily during donation drives. The introduction of advertisements makes the community the product. Community attention is sold to advertisers, and the best way to sell something is to have a lot of information about the people you are advertising to. In practice, we may not see much change, but philosophically it is huge, and I believe it is right to weigh the pros and cons of that change and take it slowly.

This said, I have a personal preference to support the site by donation, but I would not begrudge anyone for accepting advertising dollars, nor would it stop me from lurking here frequently (and posting once in a while).

I have faith that whatever the B&C decision makers do will be what they truly believe to be best for the continued health of the site.

[RWJP]

1 hour ago, skylerboodie said:

Perhaps the ads can replace the Sumpheap Scrap location at top of page. And/or banner line at bottom of a page before you move on to next page of posts

This. If we have to have Ads, they should be in a far less obnoxious place than they are right now, especially with how "tall" the header section of the forums is already. On any regular laptop screen the Ads make the header so tall that you can't even see the first line of a post, which is an absolute failure of website design.

[aa.logan]

I’m liking these fake adverts, and I’ve donated before and will more than happily donate again.

 

But…

Is the ‘come and take it’ one a bit close to real-world politics? I’m aware the phrase has literally ancient roots but when combined with the star and bolter it feels like a definite statement.

[Brother Tyler]

26 minutes ago, aa.logan said:

Is the ‘come and take it’ one a bit close to real-world politics? I’m aware the phrase has literally ancient roots but when combined with the star and bolter it feels like a definite statement.

Fair enough (I had concerns about it being seen as such). I've added the chainsword to make it more clear that it's about fierce loyalty to the site.

[Evil Eye]

Just seen the corpse starch one. Mmmmm, delicious cadaver-y goodness!

[Kastor Krieg]

There seems to be a lot of space wasted now.

 

 

vs

 

[Brother Tyler]

Putting advertisements in the header is an option, but not one we're likely to take for the following reasons:

• The Advertisements function tracks "impressions" (the number of times the advertisement appears on users' screens) and "clicks" (the number of times someone follows the link). The Header (where the Sumpheap Scrap and other site event images/banners are seen) doesn't do that. Those analytics are important for advertisers, allowing them to assess whether or not the return on investment is sufficient.
• It is likely that we would create a process whereby members that donate at or above a certain amount won't see advertisements. That would not work if the advertisements were moved to the Header area.

 

And though this hasn't been suggested, I'll get ahead of it just in case. Moving the site event images (e.g., Sumpheap Scrap) to the advertisements area (wherever those might end up if we decide to include them) would mean that, following the second bullet above, members that donate over a certain amount wouldn't see those images and their awareness of such events might diminish as a result.

 

Something I'm considering, regardless of whether or not we decide to include advertisements, is examining whether or not we can reduce the vertical dimensions of the Header area. Reducing the height of the logo and the title image would free up some space. Reducing the height of the main buttons (e.g., "Browse" and "Activity"), or possibly moving them, might similarly free up some space.

 

As we've seen with the images used in the experiment, images can be of varying sizes. One of our goals with the experiment is to find the "right" sizes. The tallest images we currently have are 150 pixels, but some are complaining about that. Conversely, images that are too short won't be fair to advertisers, who would rightfully want to have sufficient space to craft attractive images that might entice you to click the link. My gut feeling is that 100 pixels is about as short as we should go. On top of that, those same images will have to render well for mobile users, so the relationship between the height and the width will be important. My guess is that we'll see a ratio of height:width at around 5:1 or so, but we really need to experiment to conduct a proper analysis. In this, I'm relying on our PC users to figure out the height that works for them. Once we have that, we'll play around with different widths to find the right ratio. We might not dictate specific dimensions (aside from a maximum height), but might make recommendations for potential advertisers.

 

The Advertisements function only allows for a single image to be displayed at a time. Up to this point we have only looked at one location (the staff is looking at another location, but you can't see that yet). We'll adjust to other locations over time to figure out which location would work best (i.e., give appropriate visibility to meet advertisers' expectations while being minimally intrusive for our members).

 

To reiterate a few points (because posts have been made voicing these concerns):

• All requested advertisements* will be screened to ensure that they are related to the hobby. You won't see advertisements for dating sites, automobiles, or whatever Google AdSense or other engines say about you. You'll only see things that we approve and which could help you to better enjoy, understand, and participate in the Warhammer 40,000/tabletop miniature wargaming hobby.
• The purpose of incorporating advertising* would be to ensure that the community is able to raise/maintain sufficient funds to support the site. These wouldn't be profits - no one here is going to benefit from these (e.g., this money doesn't compensate staff members for their time/effort). The cost to advertise would be set at a level that supports that (i.e., we're not going to be charging an arm and a leg for companies to advertise).
• There will be a mechanism that enables members to not see the advertisements* - most likely by donating at/above a certain amount. This would last for 1 year (we're examining whether or not it should be a specified year - 1 January through 31 December - or if it should be 1 year from the time that the donation is made - that requires a bit more work on the part of the admins).
• Advertisements* will only be an augmentation to donations - donations will remain as our primary method of funding the site. The staff is currently discussing those, too, and we will renew the donations system in the near future.
• The current "advertisements" that you see are for experimentation purpose, determining where they should appear* and what dimensions they should be. In addition, this gives us time as a community to get accustomed to seeing them. Everything is most objectionable when it first happens. Over time, however, people adjust. This experimentation also gives us time to adjust so that we can have more measured input later. We have avoided advertisements for years, and we would really like to continue avoiding them if at all possible. As participation in online discussion forums dwindles, however, we no longer have total assurance that donations will sufficiently fund the site, in which case we will have to turn to other forms of generating revenue unless we want to just call it quits (and we definitely don't want to call it quits). We can't and won't try to force people to donate, nor will we put capabilities behind paywalls. Advertisements, annoying as they might be, are the best balance for our limitations.
• This is the most important one and all of the asterisks (*) above point here > We haven't decided to include advertisements yet. If we can avoid them, we will. That will depend upon our ability as a community to consistently raise sufficient funds to keep the site running via donations (or maybe if I win the lottery).

[The Yncarne]

Thanks for the well reasoned response Brother Tyler

[skylerboodie]

Just wondering whether, if you do go down the advertising route, if we might have the option to be able to donate over the set-threshold and still choose to see adverts? Not trying to be awkward but as all adverts would be hobby related i would find them more useful than normal adverts (which I avoid / block), so would probably prefer to see them anyway,  whilst still be willing to donate to the site as its a great community. Thanks 

[Brother Tyler]

9 minutes ago, skylerboodie said:

Just wondering whether, if you do go down the advertising route, if we might have the option to be able to donate over the set-threshold and still choose to see adverts? Not trying to be awkward but as all adverts would be hobby related i would find them more useful than normal adverts (which I avoid / block), so would probably prefer to see them anyway,  whilst still be willing to donate to the site as its a great community. Thanks 

Sure, we can easily allow members to see the advertisements even if they've donated X+ amount.

[Brother Tyler]

The advertisement location has moved. You'll now see them below the first topic in each forum.

[Trokair]

Sorry, don’t like that position at all.