Testing Some New Ads

[Scott Greczkowski]

If your not a supporting Pub Member then you might have noticed some new ads appear that the top of the screen today.

We are testing some new advertising called TWIG.

The ads are non intrusive and feature some great high end sponsors.

I am going to be testing these ads over the next few days and it is my hope that with these ads we can make enough to eliminate many of the other syndicated ads that you might be seeing.

The Twig ads are neat, if you see one point your cursor at it for 3 seconds and you will then see the full ad. Many of the ads I have seen had some great funny or interesting videos.

It is my goal to try bringing down some of the ad clutter non Pub Members see. I am hoping that these new TWIG ads will allow us to do that.

Thank you for your support!

 

[The Insider]

Yea your right its really non-intrusive to have an ad follow you all over the site while you scroll around.

 

[The Insider]

Thanks for removing them. Its much appreciated.

There comes a time when a site just seems more interested in making a buck then making it pleasant for the users who make it what it is. Glad you decided to remove that ad.

 

[Mr Tony]

there is still ads at the top that pop up

 

[hdtvtechno]

IMO.. it doesn't bother me

 

[hammerdown]

Yea your right its really non-intrusive to have an ad follow you all over the site while you scroll around.

x2

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

No ads here follow you around when you scroll around the pages. If you are seeing anything like this check your computer for adware / spyware.

 

[The Insider]

I dont see it anymore. not after the "thanks" post. And i know it was from here.. It was a "trig" ad like you explained above. It stayed at the top of the browser and was always visible even when you scrolled.

 

[The Insider]

The ads showed back up Heck I see them as I write this.





Are they from the site ? As you can see it follows you where ever your scroll up or down.

 

[meStevo]

Yup that's a twig ad.

VideoEgg, Inc.

A ton better than the inline google ads that mess up post formatting though.

Edit: for some reason when I was editing this post, my buttons were x, first, next, previous instead of save, go advanced, delete, cancel.

 

[The Insider]

They still have those MrStevo in the first post of the thread.

I guess scott should change his post to say "We do have ads that follow you around"

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Ahh interesting...

I was using Safari on the MAC and it was not staying at the top there, but is in Firefox.

Its not bad though, as you scroll down the ad is not jumpy.

I have seen some ads with a big box that jumps down as you move the page, this does not do that.

I am going to TRY to work on the ads today and get rid of some of them for the registered member. Its been crazy here for the past few days at the office and at home.

 

[Coop1979]

Scott, I love the site and can appreciate the need to monetize it (as a fellow large forum owner), but the ads on here are getting a little out of control. I'm counting 5 ad locations (not counting the Gold Sponsors area) in this thread as a signed-in registered member. This causes the pages to load very slowly and in a "piecemeal" fashion. The whole page will load and then hang until these TWIG ads render. It's become so frustrating that my visits to SG.us have definitely decreased over the last week or so. I swapped to the iPhone-formatted skin to avoid the lengthy page loads and annoying ads.

I know you're not asking for it, but if I were you I'd go down to 3 ad units and only accept ads that have an acceptable CPM for you. I personally use AdsDaq to set my CPM prices for advertisements. Then if AdsDaq can't serve anything at my price, it falls back to Google Adsense or other ad networks and serves an ad from them.

I would hate to see you lose active members and the strength of this site for a few low-performing ad units. It's not worth it in the long run.

 

[EatMyVolts]

I just logged out and came back in as a visitor. WOW! The modest cost of Pub membership is well worth it not not see all those ads, ads, and more ads.

Seriously, there's an awful lot of ads there. I know it costs to keep a site up and running (that's why I pay) but there's sure a lot of ads.

One really bad thing about these Twig ads. I often access the site using a netbook. I love it but on a small screen real estate is precious. The constant Twig banner just takes up too much space. Scroll down, scroll up, it's still there. I fear the added clutter might well keep some people away, the see the plethora of ads and figure too much noise to signal.

But then again, pay up and it goes away.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Ok I have made a number of changes to the ads today. (And I am not done yet still have some coding to do.)

But for the unregistered members, I have cleaned up that mess (yes it was a mess) I have recoded things so that the ads are better laid out and are the last thing to load on the pages. This means the important part "the site" is viewable and usable without being slowed down by the ads.

For registered members I have optimized the ads and removed some of the columns and ads that were being shown. The number of ads being shown now is much better, which will hope get us better targeted ads from Google.

In addition the new TWIG ads are no longer being seen on every page, they are now only on the homepage. (I am still working on the homepage) The Twig ads are neat, but it only has a limited amount of ads. I got to admit I actually enjoy the Twig ads some of the videos shown are great, the big issue is the ads are the same over and over again. Because we only get paid when people watch a video the views is going down since most folks have seen many of the videos already.

Thanks for your feedback and again the work is not done yet.

 

[Coop1979]

Great to hear, Scott. Take a look at AdsDaq, you'll definitely see a bump in revenue. PM me if you have any questions about using it. I've been using it pretty effectively for a year or so.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

We use Adsdaq now for unregistered members. We use to use them more for unregistered and registered members but had some problems with them late last year that left a sour taste in mouth.

The issue was many of their ads had hidden payloads such as trojans and virus's and in addition some really bad adult ads were also snuck in there as well.

I contacted ADSDAQ support and was told they had no control over their external ad providers. In addition sometimes the Adsdaq ads were REALLY slow in serving their ads. Now with the new coding I did today speed is not an issue since all ads but google ads load after the SatelliteGuys site loads.