Disabling in-text ads on Neowin

By Steven P.
in Site & Forum Issues

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Fill in this poll to help us better your Neowin experience  

150 members have voted

  1. 1. Did you disable them?

    • Yep I did.
      97
    • No I didn't.
      53

  2. 2. Do you agree that Neowin needs ads to survive?

    • No absolutely not.
      25
    • Yes I do.
      125

  3. 3. Do you whitelist Neowin anyways?

    • No, I block all ads.
      48
    • Yes, but block in-text ads
      54
    • Yes, Neowin is whitelisted with in-text ads
      48

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

I'll leave them on. I always like to support sites that give me content for free, that's why I never block/disable ads.

What content does neowin provide exactly? This is a forum where the content is made by the members for the members. If neowin is going to use my posts to make money maybe I should be getting a cut. And before anyone points to the front page, backpage news covers the exact same stuff and often before the front page is updated.

Veteran

sweetsam

Posted
Posted

Some good arguments, but we have responded to a few issues with the theme update.

Also there are people who don't mind them, so the happy medium is to show people how to opt-out, meaning the ones who don't have an issue with them can see them.

We also have paid staff on the team already, so not improving development of the site is even more wasteful. Some people might not be aware, but some staff are actually paid monthly for their contributions.

Posted ImagePosted Image

I'm on Facebook too, join the Neowin Facebook group! ? Promoting a healthy community

Theres an app Obama for that. :p

Interesting. Obama is spending at a time when the country is going broke while he should be doing the opposite which would be cutting cost. But you are making fun of him while you are doing the same. Pot calling kettle black ? If the times are tough shouldn't you try to cut cost instead of creating new expenses and trying to generate more income ? The only difference between you and Obama is you are using ads to generate income while he is using taxes. Its all the same in the grand scheme of things. If you have staff on regular payroll may be you should think about hiring them as independent contractors. That way you will not need to pay them on a regular basis.

Grand Master

Simon Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

What content does neowin provide exactly? This is a forum where the content is made by the members for the members. If neowin is going to use my posts to make money maybe I should be getting a cut. And before anyone points to the front page, backpage news covers the exact same stuff and often before the front page is updated.

We provide the servers.

We provide the software that runs on the servers.

We provide the developers who code what runs on the servers.

We provide the moderators who keep the content on the forums on topic and appropriate.

We provide yes, the front page news, including the reporters who do that.

Need I go on?

Grand Master

what

Posted
Posted

So let me get this straight.. You had these in-text ads originally on the front page and for guests. Then you asked users why they adblocked Neowin and the majority of them said due to the in-text ads. So you removed them to get people to stop using adblock, or atleast to whitelist Neowin.

Now you've decided to ignore that feedback and bring them back and this time even subject logged in signed up users to them also?

Obviously this doesn't affect me as I'm a Subscriber-2 but I think you are harming the longevity of the site for a quick few bucks.

Also what was wrong with the old theme you only just got it in the first place. :blink: Wasteful Spending much.

So true... Feels like we've come full circle now.

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

We provide the servers.

We provide the software that runs on the servers.

We provide the developers who code what runs on the servers.

We provide the moderators who keep the content on the forums on topic and appropriate.

We provide yes, the front page news, including the reporters who do that.

Need I go on?

I think you do because servers are a dime a dozen you use Ipb as the forum software the moderators are all members just like anyone, the fron page paid news people are unneceesaru as shown by social news sites like digg.com.-- I think you guys just need to take a step back and utilise the asets you have and sto paying people for unecesary content. Sorry for spelling etc writing this on my phone.

Grand Master

DaveLegg Developer

Posted
  • Developer
Posted

I think you do because servers are a dime a dozen you use Ipb as the forum software the moderators are all members just like anyone, the fron page paid news people are unneceesaru as shown by social news sites like digg.com.-- I think you guys just need to take a step back and utilise the asets you have and sto paying people for unecesary content. Sorry for spelling etc writing this on my phone.

We have 5 high-spec physical servers for which we have to pay power and bandwidth, which trust me, isn't cheap (Not to mention buying them in the first place, and obviously if something breaks, we need the funds to replace it)

IPB isn't free, it has a licensing cost associated with it.

We could go back to not paying our news guys, but I'm sure everyone will agree that the quality of our news has VASTLY improved since we started paying for articles and moved away from the old style of 'copy and paste' news.

Our entire front page and management panel for that, along with other features, have been coded from the ground up by our development team, and their time isn't free either.

You simply cannot run a site of the size Neowin is for $0, it's just not feasible.

Grand Master

DaveLegg Developer

Posted
  • Developer
Posted

So let me get this straight.. You had these in-text ads originally on the front page and for guests. Then you asked users why they adblocked Neowin and the majority of them said due to the in-text ads. So you removed them to get people to stop using adblock, or atleast to whitelist Neowin.

Now you've decided to ignore that feedback and bring them back and this time even subject logged in signed up users to them also?

Obviously this doesn't affect me as I'm a Subscriber-2 but I think you are harming the longevity of the site for a quick few bucks.

Also what was wrong with the old theme you only just got it in the first place. :blink: Wasteful Spending much.

We never removed the in-text ads. We have however, just switched to a different provider that offers am opt-out option, where one wasn't present in the past. This means you can choose not to see those adverts, whilst still supporting Neowin through the other adverts that are displayed on the page. Before the old myth gets brought up again, we get paid per-view as well as per-click on the adverts, so simply allowing the adverts to display earns us money. We work very hard with each update we do to make the advert placement as unintrusive as possible. This is one major reason for the update we launched today, previously the banner advert at the top was contained in its own section, pushing the actual content down the page, now that it is included in the header, that no longer happens.

Grand Master

Simon Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

I think you do because servers are a dime a dozen you use Ipb as the forum software the moderators are all members just like anyone, the fron page paid news people are unneceesaru as shown by social news sites like digg.com.-- I think you guys just need to take a step back and utilise the asets you have and sto paying people for unecesary content. Sorry for spelling etc writing this on my phone.

Ok, since you just demeaned pretty much everything the staffers on this site do, I'm going to try and reply to this without getting too involved.

Servers are not a dime a dozen. They are a few thousand dollars each - we have 5. Add on top of that mammoth bandwidth costs, as well as server maintenance, and you've got one hefty server bill.

We use IPB, yes. But if you haven't noticed, it's not a vanilla IPB install. We have a custom theme - ask Tim, that wasn't easy to do - as well as countless modifications made by myself, Redmak, and DaveLegg.

The moderators do not have an easy job. They are subjected to abuse from rowdy members, as well as rules we have in place - they are heavier than what the members experience. They are in no way "members just like anyone" - this forum is huge, and they have to keep an eye on all of it.

Our news operations have proven successful enough that they are feasible, too. Sure, you don't like it, but we get thousands of hits on news articles every day.

I don't mean to be unfair to you, but you obviously have no concept whatsoever of what it takes to run a community and site of this size. Some sites do just throw up a message board, get 3 or 4 moderators, and roll with it - and they do fine. But at Neowin we focus on the quality. I like to think that that's why we have such a vivid and active member base. The developers - sure, I'm biased, but whatever - focus on making everything look beautiful and work flawlessly. The moderators put in hours every day dealing with members who can't read a simple list of rules. The newsies do their research and present our own kind of news - we're not just news aggregators, contrary to what you say. We do investigate our news.

Why are we fighting about this, anyway? This thread is about how to *disable* a source of Neowin's income. We're offering a way out - if you can complain about that, I don't know what to tell you.

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

I don't mean to be unfair to you, but you obviously have no concept whatsoever of what it takes to run a community and site of this size. Some sites do just throw up a message board, get 3 or 4 moderators, and roll with it - and they do fine. But at Neowin we focus on the quality. I like to think that that's why we have such a vivid and active member base. The developers - sure, I'm biased, but whatever - focus on making everything look beautiful and work flawlessly. The moderators put in hours every day dealing with members who can't read a simple list of rules. The newsies do their research and present our own kind of news - we're not just news aggregators, contrary to what you say. We do investigate our news.

Actually I run a community of 250,000 odd active users daily. We do quite well and I have a great concept of how much things cost as I pay the bills at the end of each month. And yes I know that the site runs a custom theme and that worked out great didn't it? (How many days was the site down before reverting back to the old theme? - I think it was 3-4 ?), but I digress.

This site is no different from the others. Guru3D, HardOCP, MacRumours (Which is now larger than Neowin by Posts etc) they all have the same costs, they all have the same users, same posts. Neowin is different because the spending is out of control. It is not like all these years the site has been operating that the server costs were to high to handle. Only recently since you've been paying people to re-write news from other sites have the costs become to much. I say cut the fat and go back to copy and pasting or just have volunteer moderators who can propel back page stories to the front page.

The thing that really gets me the most is when the Intellitext ads were axed last time the staff all were like 'This is great, I never liked them. This is a good move' they come back and the staff are like 'This is great, this is a good move' I think you guys just want to support Neowin regardless.

If you knew people were going to want to turn the Intellitext ads off in the first place why not just make them opt-in instead of opt-out. :rolleyes: -- I support Neowin by buying a sub, which I've done twice. Perhaps you guys should just stick a donation bar at the top like Wikipedia does and actually see how many people donate to Neowin. The current donation page is so hidden I never knew about it until quite recently and I bet no one else knows about it. Put a bar up and let us see what people think Neowin is worth, maybe you could get rid of Ads entirely and pay to send writers to more trade shows and create some unique content.

Also you know 100% that these Intellitext ads are going to make people Adblock Neowin even more than they do now, and send other people away. How many users do you think will read this topic on how to deactivate them? And in a couple weeks when this thread is no longer bounced to the top no one will know how to turn them off = Adblock. It might work to make some money now but in a few months your be back where you started.

Grand Master

DaveLegg Developer

Posted
  • Developer
Posted

And yes I know that the site runs a custom theme and that worked out great didn't it? (How many days was the site down before reverting back to the old theme? - I think it was 3-4 ?), but I digress.

What does that have to do with the theme? The issue was google was reindexing the site (because the new forum software changed all the URLs) far too fast for the forum to handle. We went back to the new theme as soon as we diagnosed and fixed this issue.

You know nothing about the internal operations here, or our finances. Who are you to say our spending is out of control?

As to why we don't make it opt-in, if you run a community of this size as you say you do, you will realise that 95% of members will be apathetic towards something like this, and will not seek out the option to opt-in, thus we lose out on the revenue from a lot of people who wouldn't mind the adverts, but don't actively seek out the ability to do more to support the site.

  • Jeston and +hedleigh
  • Like 2
Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

You know nothing about the internal operations here, or our finances. Who are you to say our spending is out of control?

It doesn't take a genius to recognise when spending is out of control when the Admin says 'We need more money to pay for our writers'. He clearly said what the cost is and that they need more money to pay for it. He also mentioned how this new theme wasn't cheap. I mean why even get this new theme? There was nothing wrong with the old one.

It's like changing things for changing sake. Everyone hates these Intellitext ads it was the number 1 reason ad blockers said they blocked Neowin. Why don't you just listen to what the polls say?

This doesn't affect me because I pay but I still think it is a stupid decision for all the users you will lose and the revenue from those users who will stay and use Adblock.

Grand Master

shockz

Posted
Posted

Thanks for explaining.

We really don't need to air our internal operations, however I'll tell you that we don't have set payments or paydays. Certian thresholds must be met before a payout can occur, and the majority of the staff do not get paid anything. Most of the money the site earns goes to server operations and development.

Grand Master

DaveLegg Developer

Posted
  • Developer
Posted

It doesn't take a genius to recognise when spending is out of control when the Admin says 'We need more money to pay for our writers'. He clearly said what the cost is and that they need more money to pay for it.

It has nothing to do with spending. If you run a large site funded by ad revenue, than you will have noticed too that the income from web advertising has plummeted since the global recession as companies are less willing to spend money in online advertising whilst cutting back elsewhere. Advertising budgets are normally the first to be slashed.

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted

It has nothing to do with spending. If you run a large site funded by ad revenue, than you will have noticed too that the income from web advertising has plummeted since the global recession as companies are less willing to spend money in online advertising whilst cutting back elsewhere. Advertising budgets are normally the first to be slashed.

Okay I will take that as a legitimate argument for more intrusive advertisements but can you at-least put the idea of a banner donation bar to the other staff. A tasteful one with like a goal and a scale showing how much has been donated to the months goal. To be honest I would donate every month with no incentive just for that. And I think a lot of people here would. I don't care much for the front page but I do care about the forum.

Guest

Posted
Posted

I think he's looking for more transparency to be honest. Servers, bandwidth, staff cost, subscription revenue etc.

If neowin is really struggling then I would be more willing to donate...

With the introduction of Tier 2 subscription, extra ads and now this, it just seems that the management are getting greedy.

Veteran

Unrealistic

Posted
Posted

In his defense, his idea is pretty sane and thoughtful, albeit a bit over bearing.

I went to that link, which had a link to https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/636453-donate-to-our-beer-fund-via-paypal/ . If only five people have donated, it proves his point about people not knowing where it is.

  • Vice and ccuk
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