Ad Changes

[Scott Greczkowski]

Here at SatelliteGuys we hate ads as much as you do. If we didn't have any bills to pay we wouldn't have them, but since we have bills to pay they are a necessary evil.

With that said over the past 3 months we have seen an uptick in our ad revenue which has been very welcome! So because of slight increase in revenues we have been having I have decided to REMOVE a number of the ads bening shown to registered members! Ads were removed from a total of 5 locations around the site! (When's the last time you saw a site do that?)

Going forward we will keep an eye on things and hope that by removing these ads we do not hurt what gains we had. From my statistics the ads removed were the lowest paying segments on the site. It is my thought (and I could be wrong) that by having less ads it could actually help us improve our click through ratio and possibly even earn more.

Remember for the best Ultimate Experience here at SatelliteGuys we ask you to consider becoming a Supporting Pub Member which gets rid of all the syndicated ads plus gives you a bunch of additional features such as:

* A larger Private Message box, store 2,500 Private Messages instead of only 25!
* The ability to have your own ANIMATED Avatar!
* Ability for you to post FOR SALE items in our Classifieds Section!
* Access to our Pub Members Forum, a great place for the community to hang out!
* Many More things as well!

For more information on becoming a Supporting Pub Member please CLICK HERE.

We have been working on improving our SEO over the past few months and you can help us with this. If you see something interesting here at SatelliteGuys and want to tell people about it at other websites we ask that you PLEASE include a link to where you saw the info. Please do not say "I saw at another site..." instead be proud and say "I saw it at SatelliteGuys!"

In addition if you see something and you want to share with your friends on your favorite social network such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn please do it by clicking on the social network links above the messages on each page.

We can only keep growing if you help us spread the word about SatelliteGuys! There is no other community on the Internet like SatelliteGuys so please help us spread the word!

Thanks for your support!

 

[Teehar]

Kewl thing to do though,thanks Scott.k:

 

[Mr Tony]

cool

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Additional changes made today which should not only cut down on some ads seen by registered members but should also get rid of most (if not all) the refreshing ads that registered members to see.

A big THANK you to everyone who has become Supporting Pub Members since I started making these changes! To those who did please enjoy the additional benefits you are now getting.

 

[Peter Parker]

This is great news and i applaud it but how goes the fight against ads with sound?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

There should be no ads with sound that plays automatically. (user initiated ones however are fine.)

However if there is one, you should take a screen shot of the ad, and click on the ad and give me the url it takes you to. I will then send it to our ad agencies and have them block it from being shown here.

One of the big issues I have is people being shown ads based on their viewing habits, these ads are not shown in my ad control panels as they are not in regular rotation to run here at SatelliteGuys, however they are shown to members because the ads are targeted by other sites you have visited.

I try to keep the site as clean as I can from annoying ads, but unfortunately as I posted it above some ads are out of my control and I can't do anything about them until someone reports them.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I have some more changes that I am going to make, but I have a few appointments so I will be out of the office the rest of the day.

But I am happy the way things are going now.

 

[thiggin2]

Why am I getting these ads. I just started noticing within the last week. They only show up in the first post of each page.


Edit: Will it looks like I'm not considered a "supporting Founder" anymore , even thou it states that I am under my user name. I also noticed I have no access to the pub section. Man I must have been a bad boy .

 

[Mr Tony]

I fixed that for ya. I show you now as supporting founder and your name in that weird dark yellowish gold color

 

[thiggin2]

Why thank you sir. I thought I did something bad .

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Nope vBulletin does strange things at times.

Sorry for the trouble!

 

[Mr Tony]

nope nothing you did. Dont know why it changed like that. But it was pretty easy to change back

 

[thiggin2]

Well I knew it was something silly like that. I don't post much anymore to get in trouble, but I'm still on here almost every day. I do need to give some more support since its been awhile. Whats the best way as a founder to pay up, just use the normal support link?

 

[thiggin2]

Nevermind. I found the proper link

 

[Mr Tony]

Well I knew it was something silly like that. I don't post much anymore to get in trouble, but I'm still on here almost every day. I do need to give some more support since its been awhile. Whats the best way as a founder to pay up, just use the normal support link?

no then you'll lose you're supporting founder title

You might want to PM Scott about it but I think its just PayPal the money to Scott AT Satelliteguys DOT US with a note.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

A follow up...

Today I worked on the ads more and made a number of changes. For registered members a number of the syndicated ads have been switched over to Google Adsense Ads. This should hopefully cut down if not stop ads with sound that play automatically. (Note I have been in contact with all of our ad agencies and they tell me that none of them are running those types of ads... I don't believe them. I hate ads like that am sorry if you got any of those.)

In addition for unregistered and registered members, when you click on a link that has been posted that tries to takes you offsite that warning page I have replaced all the ads from box ads to wide leaderboard ads. Again this was done to help get rid of the ads with sound. The reason for this page is to help pay our bills and also to make you aware that the link you have clicked on is taking you off SatelliteGuys.

The only issue I have with the ads are the square ads that you might see in the first or last post. These box ads have been the ones with the sounds and video that I hate. I would like to remove them but those are the highest grossing ads we run. If I can figure out a way to put other size ads such as a leaderboard in there I will try to do it. I have more emails in to our ad agencies about the ads with sounds so hopefully they fix it and I don't need change anything. This is something I am keeping a close eye on.

Some members might have noticed that the number of posts per page has changed from 10 to 6. I will be 100% honest this was done on the advice of one of our ad agencies who feel less posts per page = more page views, which in turn equals more ad revenue. More ad revenue means we can show less ads! Unfortuantely this change is a global change meaning it changes everyones default number of pages down to 6, it does not unfortunately let me specify the unregistered usergroup to make this change for. But the good news is you h ave complete control in your user control panel to adjust the number of posts to your liking.

But because of these change in my ad optimization work today I REMOVED MORE ads from unregistered and registered members! This makes the second time this month ads have been removed for our registered members! It makes me happy when I can do this!

Of course when making changes like this to our ad system it will take a few weeks to make sure we did no harm, as with no ad revenue there is no SatelliteGuys. So I will keep a close eye on it.

Finally the other change I made for registered members is by some ads I posted links on how to become a supporting Pub Member. One of the common PM's I get from members is "I can't find any information on how to become a Pub Member, can you help?" so hopefully this makes it easier those who want to support the site, get rid of the ads plus be able to use our server at full speed without the ads bogging you down and get access to all the other features and goodies by being a Supporting Pub Member!

So there we have it. Moving ads around like this is like playing chess and you really got to think about your upcoming moves before you make them.

Thanks for being SatelliteGuys and thank you for your support!

 

[Peter Parker]

I don't necessarily stay logged in. So some of this is my fault but I am getting the sound again. Sometimes i do not even seea corresponding viual ad. I am not saying I will go away for good over it but it is annoying. I know you need ad revenuew to keep the site up but if it starts to be bothersome to the users maybe it is time to rethink the business model.

 

[stardust3]

For the most part my time here has been as a pub member, which has been extremely positive. I did have a short stint within the last year when I was a registered non pub member. The ads were overwhelming. The sound ads were evident and annoying to say the least. The thing that bothered me the most were the shear volume of ads. It was without a doubt an unfriendly experience to enjoy the site this way. There were so many ads it was impossible not to accidentally click on 1 occasionally while navigating or responding to a thread. On top of that the slowness of the site constantly had me checking internet connection thinking there was a problem with my isp.
For new registered members there should be an ad free introduction to the site for a designated period of time, without access to the pub of course. This would help to ease the minds of perspective supporters that this is a legitimate site & not a scam like the overwhelming ads might lead 1 to believe otherwise.
If this post is offensive, I apologize. I truly am trying to post constructive criticism. I understand the need for ads on a site like this, but, also believe the financial obligations could easily be obtained with a different approach & simply by asking for the funds on a as needed basis. That is my opinion.

 

[Bobby]

As needed basis? Do you have any idea how much it costs to make this website available? Scott has shared with us, from time to time, the enormous amount of money he spends here. Maybe he'll enlighten you again. Then you might understand that it is always needed.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

maybe it is time to rethink the business model.

We are not a business so there is no business model.

You have lifetime an ad free SatelliteGuys membership, login and use it.

My feeling on things is if someone decides to leave SatelliteGuys because of the ads then I say GOODBYE to them. Since I pay for all the bandwidth for everyone someone leaving because of the ads is someone who is ultimately saving me money. (Not that I want anyone to leave.)

With that said you hit upon something I didn't mention in my earlier email. I have noticed that sometimes ads are displayed wrong... I have noticed sometimes in a box or skyscraper you will see the wrong size ad being displayed in it. Today in a box I saw two leaderboard ads in the space, leader boards are the long ads that go from left to right. In addition I have seen the ad agencies send two ads for one ad space (side by side) so that you don't see the second ad... but sometimes you hear it. I have notified Say about the issue and they say they are aware of it and are working on a solution. I noticed this happening earlier today on AVS as well

As the internet continues to expand I expect us to be at the mercy of the ad market. A lot of the ads we have had issues with are 3rd party ads. The sad part is everyone is using 3rd party ads now... even Google. Third party ads are ads served by a 3rd party companies who are supposed to operte within the same ad guidelines as the ad agency sets. However as we have seen this is not always the case. And sometime it is very hard to track down the bad 3rd party ads and servers even for the ad agencies themselves. I think sooner or later the ad agencies are going to need to clean things up as if they don't its lots of lost money for them as well.

As I said I am keeping a close eye on them and will make what changes I need to. But the good news is as of today there are less ads for non members and members then there were yesterday.