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Posted: 18/7/02 14:19 Advertising and the Free Product Explained
Thank you for taking the time to learn more about the state of advertising on the free product.
Let us start out by saying that we understand that the current level of advertising is far from ideal. Advertising is not the best of situations for us as well. However, we are committed to keeping the free product alive, even if covering costs means more advertising now than before. In a perfect world we’d be able to deliver fewer ads, smaller ads, better ads, all while covering our costs. But the reality of the situation is far from that. The Internet advertising market continues to get worse and there is no end to the decline in sight.
As you have noticed, we’ve recently begun experimenting with different types of ads on your board. A couple months ago the top and bottom banner ads increased in size. Now we’re experimenting with size once again, and will begin targeting ads based on nine major categories. We hope these new ads and category buys will allow us to decrease the number of pop-ups that are currently being served on the site. We’re working hard to find different ways to bring you advertisements other than pop-ups while still sustaining our current advertising revenue. It’s a very difficult task, but we know how annoying advertising can get, which is why we’re committed to finding new solutions that will work for everyone. Our intention is not to inundate you with ads; it is instead to keep the free product alive and well.
We invite you to read the following section about the problems community sites face with advertising, and why there are more ads on ezboard compared with other sites you visit.
Problems community sites face with advertising:
1. User Generated Content. Advertisers do not like user-generated content – which is what the ezboard network essentially is. While it may seem like a no-brainer for gaming companies to advertise on gaming boards they tend not to, simply because they have no control over what is being written and the possibility of negative comments about them is high. Companies are very concerned about their brand image and will opt to advertise on sites that have static content and know what will be published and when.
2. Click Through and Conversion. The click through and conversion rate of ads on community sites are the lowest on the entire Internet. Visitors to ezboard are less likely to buy something than on other sites where commerce and browsing go more hand in hand. People on ezboard want to talk, not buy.
3. Pop-Up Killers. The use of pop-up killers on community sites is widespread. When people use pop-up killers they are in effect cheating and not only hurt the free product but make every honest user see more ads. Please report any boards promoting their use to our legal department.
All of those factors lead to extremely low payouts for the ads we do serve. Consequently, we need to run two to three times as many ads as another site with the same page view totals just to make up for the lower payout. We hope that this helps you better understand what we are doing and why we are doing it. We welcome your comments and suggestions on the subject.
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