Huge mobile ads

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Noticed this today too. Obtrusive as fuck but that's the cost of doing business.
 
nicoga3000 said:
Honest question - is there a reason why NeoGAF hasn't offered a donation service to help cut down on the operating costs? Even something where you can donate 'x' money a year and get a little symbol next to your name or a colored name or something stupid and arbitrary like that.
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The reason is me. ;b

I feel it's unethical to accept straight donations when the site is a business. Research a good charity with high percentages toward meaningful action like UNICEF and donate to them; you'll potentially save someone's life, an infinitely more appropriate donation. Further, I've met many hundreds of NeoGAF members and they're almost universally great people, enthusiastic, loyal, and would support the site in a heartbeat if asked or often if simply just *allowed* to, regardless of what their bank statements look like, and as such I have a personal responsibility to not take advantage of that good will and reciprocate it as best I can, since I'm in an extremely privileged position as founder/owner/operator of NeoGAF by comparison. Gaffers have kept my pint glass full, given me a place to crash, shown me around their city, cooked me dinner, and plenty more. If I'm going to accept any money from a member of my community then they damn well better get something worthwhile in return or it's not happening at all. That's non-negotiable.

As far as the other thing, part of the design philosophy of NeoGAF is to put the community on even ground with each other as much as possible and keep the emphasis on the strength of your argument and the body of your evidence, rather than the number of upvotes or donation stars or VIP emblems or post count or whatever bullshit attached to your account. I'm firmly against that typical forum hierarchy social status crap. Hell, it took years before I relented and felt it necessary to identify the moderation team with red names, even, and more like a decade after the fact before I openly labeled myself as the owner of the site on here. If GAF Gold gets implemented, it'll be such that moderators won't even know if you are or not when they decide whether to ban you. If they're second-guessing when they wouldn't otherwise, that's harming the site. Basically, I'm an absolutely huge pain in the balls.
 
EviLore said:
The reason is me. ;b

I feel it's unethical to accept straight donations when the site is a business. Research a good charity with high percentages toward meaningful action like UNICEF and donate to them; you'll potentially save someone's life, an infinitely more appropriate donation. Further, I've met many hundreds of NeoGAF members and they're almost universally great people, enthusiastic, loyal, and would support the site in a heartbeat if asked or often if simply just *allowed* to, regardless of what their bank statements look like, and as such I have a personal responsibility to not take advantage of that good will and reciprocate it as best I can, since I'm in an extremely privileged position as founder/owner/operator of NeoGAF by comparison. Gaffers have kept my pint glass full, given me a place to crash, shown me around their city, cooked me dinner, and plenty more. If I'm going to accept any money from a member of my community then they damn well better get something worthwhile in return or it's not happening at all. That's non-negotiable.

As far as the other thing, part of the design philosophy of NeoGAF is to put the community on even ground with each other as much as possible and keep the emphasis on the strength of your argument and the body of your evidence, rather than the number of upvotes or donation stars or VIP emblems or post count or whatever bullshit attached to your account. I'm firmly against that typical forum hierarchy social status crap. Hell, it took years before I relented and felt it necessary to identify the moderation team with red names, even, and more like a decade after the fact before I openly labeled myself as the owner of the site on here. If GAF Gold gets implemented, it'll be such that moderators won't even know if you are or not when they decide whether to ban you. If they're second-guessing when they wouldn't otherwise, that's harming the site. Basically, I'm an absolutely huge pain in the balls.
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<3
 
Based on that vg247 piece from a few years back, I'm going to assume that the site more than pays for itself, as is. Seeing a rise in Adblock is certainly going to cut into margins, but I suppose the question then becomes is this meant to be a full fledged business entity that keeps itself afloat, generates an operating profit and pays the primary income of the webmaster and a staff, or is it meant to be a not-for-profit online community for people to congregate.

I've always appreciated Tyler's approach to keeping neogaf free and ad-minimalistic and when that approach is at risk, is when something would need to change. I've run a large forum community on my own dime, so I am compassionate when it comes to operating costs. And with neogaf's size, those costs would be magnified over what I dished out on an annual basis.

That said, if it did indeed monetize, I'd think the site would need to become more transparent around financials.

TLDR; I hate ads as much as anyone and would welcome an open dialog around how best to deal with them without crippling something we all enjoy.
 
I keep getting shitty ads with girls who have big boobs and almost no clothes. Pretty annoying, I can't really browse in public anymore. :/
 
EviLore said:
Very frustrating to say, but it's really difficult to pinpoint malicious auto-redirects, because the person affected doesn't even see the ad that triggered it, so can't provide many useful details, and this sort of stuff is explicitly against the Google advertiser ToS and is an auto-suspension if an advertiser is caught putting it into an ad they run. What's supposed to happen is Google is supposed to have proactive quality control of the ads they serve, preventing malicious ads from being served by them in the first place, or instant catch-and-suspend if not, like in the good ol' previous decade or so. This is pretty much intermittently affecting every site serving banner ads currently, as far as I can tell, unfortunately. Still looking for a solution.
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Are there any alternatives to Google that provide decent revenue, but also police the quality of ads more thoroughly? The only other ad-serving networks I know of are Propeller Ads and Chitika, but I have no idea how good they are.
 
Don't like the big fat ads, but the old ads were so bloody small on tablet I wondered how anybody ever clicked them.

I guess you only get paid per click these days? in which case bigger must undoubtedly be better.

If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold
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I don't mind it, outside of the nastier redirect ads that lead to King Games garbage, the ads on GAF are pretty unintrusive.
 
Yeah, the ads are much bigger now. They were better when they were unobtrusive and as tall as the blue header bar.

Though so far no autoplaying ads or anything. I'll test it out during my work breaks today.
 
EviLore said:
The reason is me. ;b

I feel it's unethical to accept straight donations when the site is a business. Research a good charity with high percentages toward meaningful action like UNICEF and donate to them; you'll potentially save someone's life, an infinitely more appropriate donation. Further, I've met many hundreds of NeoGAF members and they're almost universally great people, enthusiastic, loyal, and would support the site in a heartbeat if asked or often if simply just *allowed* to, regardless of what their bank statements look like, and as such I have a personal responsibility to not take advantage of that good will and reciprocate it as best I can, since I'm in an extremely privileged position as founder/owner/operator of NeoGAF by comparison. Gaffers have kept my pint glass full, given me a place to crash, shown me around their city, cooked me dinner, and plenty more. If I'm going to accept any money from a member of my community then they damn well better get something worthwhile in return or it's not happening at all. That's non-negotiable.

As far as the other thing, part of the design philosophy of NeoGAF is to put the community on even ground with each other as much as possible and keep the emphasis on the strength of your argument and the body of your evidence, rather than the number of upvotes or donation stars or VIP emblems or post count or whatever bullshit attached to your account. I'm firmly against that typical forum hierarchy social status crap. Hell, it took years before I relented and felt it necessary to identify the moderation team with red names, even, and more like a decade after the fact before I openly labeled myself as the owner of the site on here. If GAF Gold gets implemented, it'll be such that moderators won't even know if you are or not when they decide whether to ban you. If they're second-guessing when they wouldn't otherwise, that's harming the site. Basically, I'm an absolutely huge pain in the balls.
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And how!

But really, that's really cool of you to take that approach and stand by it so enthusiastically. It says a lot about you as a person, so good on you. Thanks for weighing in on it and being up front about it!
 
EviLore said:
The reason is me. ;b

I feel it's unethical to accept straight donations when the site is a business. Research a good charity with high percentages toward meaningful action like UNICEF and donate to them; you'll potentially save someone's life, an infinitely more appropriate donation. Further, I've met many hundreds of NeoGAF members and they're almost universally great people, enthusiastic, loyal, and would support the site in a heartbeat if asked or often if simply just *allowed* to, regardless of what their bank statements look like, and as such I have a personal responsibility to not take advantage of that good will and reciprocate it as best I can, since I'm in an extremely privileged position as founder/owner/operator of NeoGAF by comparison. Gaffers have kept my pint glass full, given me a place to crash, shown me around their city, cooked me dinner, and plenty more. If I'm going to accept any money from a member of my community then they damn well better get something worthwhile in return or it's not happening at all. That's non-negotiable.

As far as the other thing, part of the design philosophy of NeoGAF is to put the community on even ground with each other as much as possible and keep the emphasis on the strength of your argument and the body of your evidence, rather than the number of upvotes or donation stars or VIP emblems or post count or whatever bullshit attached to your account. I'm firmly against that typical forum hierarchy social status crap. Hell, it took years before I relented and felt it necessary to identify the moderation team with red names, even, and more like a decade after the fact before I openly labeled myself as the owner of the site on here. If GAF Gold gets implemented, it'll be such that moderators won't even know if you are or not when they decide whether to ban you. If they're second-guessing when they wouldn't otherwise, that's harming the site. Basically, I'm an absolutely huge pain in the balls.
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amazing. i agree 100%
Gaf over all.
 
The end of page ads are kind of awkward on phones. If they're going to stay that size, I feel like buttons need to be moved below the ad. Having a split of like half my screen height between the controls and the bottom of the page just feels weird.
 
One of the things I have noticed though is I'm getting more things I'm interested in, versus creepy looking toenails.
 
I don't really mind them to be honest. The one on the top of the page is smaller than the bottom and it isn't very intrusive anyways.

Having been around 8 or so years and having the same consistency is what draws me back day after day.

One poster commented on having some border around the ads, which is something I would support. I am not sure how feasible that would be to implement however.
 
Won't people just adblock on phone though? Increase of adblock on desktop site is probably because of all the bad ads that have been getting through.
 
Okay, Unicorn in the room...
FzLGpew.jpg
Click to expand...
If you are on Cupertino's latest and greatest handset, which I am on of course, and you can't even see the post number of the first post, something's up.
 
EviLore said:
The reason is me. ;b

I feel it's unethical to accept straight donations when the site is a business. Research a good charity with high percentages toward meaningful action like UNICEF and donate to them; you'll potentially save someone's life, an infinitely more appropriate donation. Further, I've met many hundreds of NeoGAF members and they're almost universally great people, enthusiastic, loyal, and would support the site in a heartbeat if asked or often if simply just *allowed* to, regardless of what their bank statements look like, and as such I have a personal responsibility to not take advantage of that good will and reciprocate it as best I can, since I'm in an extremely privileged position as founder/owner/operator of NeoGAF by comparison. Gaffers have kept my pint glass full, given me a place to crash, shown me around their city, cooked me dinner, and plenty more. If I'm going to accept any money from a member of my community then they damn well better get something worthwhile in return or it's not happening at all. That's non-negotiable.

As far as the other thing, part of the design philosophy of NeoGAF is to put the community on even ground with each other as much as possible and keep the emphasis on the strength of your argument and the body of your evidence, rather than the number of upvotes or donation stars or VIP emblems or post count or whatever bullshit attached to your account. I'm firmly against that typical forum hierarchy social status crap. Hell, it took years before I relented and felt it necessary to identify the moderation team with red names, even, and more like a decade after the fact before I openly labeled myself as the owner of the site on here. If GAF Gold gets implemented, it'll be such that moderators won't even know if you are or not when they decide whether to ban you. If they're second-guessing when they wouldn't otherwise, that's harming the site. Basically, I'm an absolutely huge pain in the balls.
Click to expand...

Question for you. If GAF is a business, does that mean moderators get paid? I know there was a thread on this recently, but I didn't see any proper answer or explanation. I'm genuinely curious.
 
Would a donate option work? I don't think i'd be the only one here that would drop a few on an annual basis just to keep the site running a profit, without the need for increasingly intrusive advertising. I mean, it's the least I can do. And i'm like you, I fucking despise ads.

With a donate option, the regular GAF user gets their familiar ad-free GAF experience and the real enthusiasts can chip in a buck here and there to keep the site going strong financially. I mean, the community in here is huge and really not that stingy.

Edit: I see that this exact same question is asked -and answered- on this page. I'll shut up now.
 
HUELEN10 said:
Okay, Unicorn in the room...

If you are on Cupertino's latest and greatest handset, which I am on of course, and you can't even see the post number of the first post, something's up.
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Dearest unicorn, the leaderboard ad gained an entire 50 vertical pixels. Seems like your phone may need to hit puberty.
 
I don't know what you're complaining about. Every time I click a thread I'm the 1,000,000th visitor and win a prize. This is not a joke.
 
HUELEN10 said:
Okay, Unicorn in the room...

If you are on Cupertino's latest and greatest handset, which I am on of course, and you can't even see the post number of the first post, something's up.
Click to expand...

Do you always browse GAF with the menu always opened on Cupertino's latest and greatest handset?
 
Pinko Marx said:
At the very least change the size of the ad at the bottom. It's fuggin giant on mobile.
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This initial test deployment is pretty much following Google's current suggested mobile layout for minimum user experience impact at maximum ad efficiency. The obnoxiously sized rectangle ad is specifically there *only* because it's in the footer out of the way of everything of relevance and therefore not actively contaminating user experience. Looking at the live metrics so far, people only even see fat rectangle ~20% of the time because it's out of the way of the content, yet despite that it vastly outperforms the leaderboard ad that has 100% visibility at the top of the page. Because it's one seriously fat ad, which matters disproportionately more when it is seen. Three of those regular leaderboards -- one in the current spot, one just below the first post, and one after the content -- would most likely turn out worse than the current setup of one leaderboard + the fat footer rectangle, and the leaderboard trio would arguably be more obtrusive overall since you'd always hit the first one still, also always hit the second one below the first post, and hit the third one about as much as the fat-rec.

The current test run is not the only way of setting things up, and further testing and tweaking can be done until solid conclusions are drawn about what the ideal balance is with the available options -- I'm not going to officially deploy an ad layout that I can't live with constant exposure to myself, mind you -- but this Google-suggested setup makes solid sense after you get over the whole "holy shit this rectangle thing is so fat" shock angle (which I experienced too). It's not something you're scrolling past 100 times a session to get to content or to change pages or anything, though. This is the main reason I didn't dismiss it outright as ludicrous and awful. It is legitimately out of the way. Could also potentially add a line break or some such beneath the footer navbar and the fat-rec so that it's less visually disorienting when there's an open-ended visual flow between the rectangle's visuals and the navbar, which has briefly messed with my perception a couple times so far.
 
dity said:
I don't adblock everywhere, but it's something I only experience here. Being legit here. This is the only site where I've encountered weird audio-only adverts and full-page redirects. It's weird and I don't understand it.
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I believe you; that sort of thing can often happen in some particular international ad markets where quality control standards can get ignored entirely. If you'd like, PM me your country and any specifics you can about the malicious ads you're getting (screenshot, or destination url in particular is the main way to target them) and I'll try to get it sorted out for you. By all means, though, if we're serving you malicious ads consistently and we're the only site doing it (meaning it's unlikely to be a virus or something), that's not cool for you to endure, not my intent whatsoever with the advertising presence on the site, and I've taken every feasible measure to prevent bad ads from being served on NeoGAF, so seriously just adblock NeoGAF at that point. You're having a very atypical but seriously messed up experience with our ad serving that I don't want you to have to deal with in order to enjoy the site.
 
RoyalFool said:
Don't like the big fat ads, but the old ads were so bloody small on tablet I wondered how anybody ever clicked them.

I guess you only get paid per click these days? in which case bigger must undoubtedly be better.
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I clicked the tiny ads in error so many times. Pretty sure I won't have that problem anymore.
 
Just gotta get a bigger phone? In all seriousness they are quite obtrusive. At least they are not pop up ads.
 
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