Ad Blocking

Hi guys. Web publishing and running ads have taught me alot over the years. I will share some things you may or may not know.

There are many ad networks organizations out there with Google being the king behemoth. Their product for this is called Adsense. Most of our revenue comes from it. We are also members of other popular ad networks such as Tribal Fusion, Value Click, Traffic Market Place, 24/7 Real Media, and Fox Audience Network.

There are 2 main types of ads we run are CPC and CPM.
CPC = Cost Per Click, CPM = Cost Per Mil (which means per 1000 impressions). Adsense primary does CPC campaigns and the rest are CPM. The ad networks I listed above generally pay more per impression then Adsense. Adsense guarantee's 100% fill though. (usually with lower paid CPC ads).

I tell each network I don't allow certain types of ads, such as pop ups, pop-unders, interstitial, sound, expandables, and adult stuff. And the one that turns random words in the page into an annoying link with a tooltip. I always get offers for these unpopular ad types and they offer alot of $. I turn them down cause I personally hate them and I know you guys do too.

Also, the networks I listed above are invite only. Not any website can become a member. You need to have alot of unique visitors to even be considered. In the early days of FFXIAH, I just ran adsense with some smaller ad networks. Adsense has always been pretty secure and had Google's name behind it. The smaller one's didn't do a good job screening their ads and routinely ran into problems. I have dropped them all from the rotation. Which is too bad because the networks I do run, take 40-50% of all earnings.

I personally don't run ad blocking software. I can't remember the last problem I had with ads on my site. If I do, I investigate it and where it came from. Fortunately browsers are getting smarter by quickly blacklisting attack sites, adobe actively patches flash, and IE is becoming more safe with each version.

I predict phishing to become a big problem in days ahead.

Thanks for saying that better than I could >.>

The absurdity of viruses breaking down hardware components was the point I was trying to bring across.

If you like the site, but don't want ads, then I suggest you pack your lunch a few days instead of eating out and donate that money. A few bucks won't kill ya.

Thanks Dameshi, and that's another possibility. I didn't want to point it out in my original post, 'cuz there's nothing more annoying than site owners popping out of the woodwork every week begging for money. Some sites put the donation button on every post and every page -- we just have one, and it's rather tiny.

If you want to keep blocking the ads because of safety concerns, (and that's fine), you could consider donating. We even let you put your name and server up there for the world to see if you wish. We accept Paypal, and $5-10 would easily cover months' worth of your usage.

I've been meaning to for a while. Typical procrastination excuses. Even though I don't block the ads, I donated for those of you that do. You're welcome.

Likewise. If the site goes down, I gotta find somewhere else to troll! :O

If you're a troll, urdoinitwrong.

Is that better?

Yes.

Sorry Jaerik but for me my needs/concerns>every one else's.

That's what I was pointing out in my post earlier, yet it seems it wasn't taken that way? I don't know why it was quoted and replied to with a sigh. lol To me, ever since account hacks swept XI and still continue to it seems ad and script blocking were applied in a pretty heavy-handed manner by players, so I expected donations to be much higher given how long this site's been around.

I bet you could get a lot of donations by offering custom forum bars. Maybe different colors depending on how much you donate? Just an idea.

lol pull a gaia and make customizable avatars and then make a monetary system to buy items for said avatars and make special donation items that can only be bought with real money. Gaia is addictive as ***for that very reason.

That doubleclick XSS is likely benign. Not all XSS is bad but it is probably accurate to say that advertisers shouldn't need to put code in a query string. Noscript will give that notice for anything that looks like XSS. Try to put this an any url with noscript:

http://www.cnn.com/?q=%3Cscript%3Edocument.write('hello%20world')%3C%2Fscript%3E

I misunderstood, I'm sorry. By "XI" I thought you meant us in particular being the problem, hence my sigh. =)

Holy ***. Back to back red bar posts.

Damn, I just checked my inbox, thanks for the donations! >.<

I was hoping that would be the result of this thread.

Theres a donate button!?! And why do people hate the little ads on here so much. They are hardly noticeable half the time and are often somewhat humorous

Yeah. I normally go to the main page for the forum so I'm rarely looking in that part of the menu. I actually looked for it earlier and overlooked it a few times before finding it. I was expecting a button like the facebook one.

Any thought on letting users buy adspace?

I can see the HNMLS ads now lol. Server-specific ads for selling and buying R/Ex items. Brilliant!

I hate ads on my interwebs. Personal preference. Most of the time they're annoying and intrusive. I can honestly say I've never clicked through on an ad because if I want to buy something I'll go to a reputable retailer (bestbuy.com, walmart.com, officedepot.com, etc). Same reason I download TV shows: so I don't have to waste 15 minutes watching ads for stuff I'll never buy during a 45 min show.

The point of ads is to generate revenue. If I can donate to eliminate ads then that better suits my preferences.

It's cool, thanks for the clarification. I had a "; ;" moment. lol

I think most rejecting ads are concerned about security as opposed to aesthetics or the ad/content itself.

It can be done although I am wary of the intentions of users that want to advertise. Such as what the ad will look like, what it will say, and what the landing page will be.

All of this will have to be screened. Even then, the landing page can be altered or redirected. I have done some direct advertising deals with FF Radio before.

That's an interesting idea. We already track who makes donations. (Although some prefer to remain anonymous.)

Actually, hell, you've got to be able to make damn good money by renting out web space for linkshell websites and using your domain name to justify a higher price than what you could get at some place like bihira.

Other websites have done user ads with a decent amount of success. It just depends on what kind of community uses the site.

I mentioned something similar to this a few weeks back, though my idea was to eliminate the Consumer Price Index off the front page and replace it with something like a "FFXI Noticeboard" type dealy.

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/?topic_id=7715