[admin (no pm's please)]

As of now (though it will take weeks to permeate through the system) forums that are totally inactive. e.g. ones that no member, mod or admin has logged into into for more than 90 days will have more advertising displayed on it.

This seems to me to be a harmless way of trying to boost income a little without effecting active forum members.

[kellie]

Sounds like a good idea to me  

[Ask Mr. Religion]

I agree...a reasonable approach.

[admin (no pm's please)]

But a pointless one. Whilst the stats are badly distorted at the moment and will "improve" so far we find that a live forum is visited 5000x more often than an inactive one.
We would be insanely optimistic to think that we could double revenue from a forum by increasing advertising on it, and even if we could then the maths suggest that this would add 0.04% to income  
I think I will see what happens over the next week and then kill this. It is probably better for us that no one sees a myff forum with too much advertising and thinks that characterizes us, than making almost nothing from the exercise.

I probably need to move on to the ideas around hitting guests with more adverts along side a prompt that if they join the adverts will go away. That might be effective and give forums a benefit as well.

[Zudane]

I like that second idea, guests would have more ads which could increase the revenue, plus would give them more reason to join.  And of course if more join than forums get busier, which could lead to an increase in ad-free forums or domain name purchases.

[panther_dust]

win win situation, double wammy oh yeeeeehhhh lol

[Ask Mr. Religion]

[Daniel(u1bd2005)]

Would have to be done right though, a lot of guests may see too many adds and not stick around long enough to read the bit that says "Join the forum to reduce ads" etc...

[admin (no pm's please)]

[Bravo]

It is my personal opinion that there aren't enough ads on the MFF system, I think Admin has taken it too far in his attempt to keep the ads unobtrusive, though I do agree with his reasoning, I just think they are too unobtrusive.  I mean you hardly notice them.

I personally feel that there should be an ad after both the first post, and after the last post on any given thread, this will ensure anyone reading stickies, or searching through threads has a chance to see an ad relevant to whatever they are looking at and therefore finding something of interest to them.

For example, not so long back I was looking to buy a Bible for my wife (who is much more religious than I), if I was reading the forum of AMR then I would probably have come across someone selling the very item I required which would have been useful to me at that time.  More and more people now have the facility to buy online via such sites as Paypal etc, so more and more people would find ads actually useful.

Yes, nobody wants to go on a site and have ads flashing about all over the place getting on your nerves, or when you click something expecting to get more information or whatever, the site forces you to watch an advert.  I would expect MFF to very clearly steer away from that one, but do feel there could be more.

I enjoy forums, I enjoy joining them and chatting on them, I am a member of quite a few and active on a good ten or so on many different subjects, I have seen a number of these debating on whether to go ad free, and the end result has always so far been 'why bother? You hardly see the ads anyway'

[admin (no pm's please)]

I hear what you are saying, and it has to be conceded that people on the forums develop advert blindness and the net result will be that despite the server appeal, we will with absolute certainty need to pump the scarce MarsJupiter financial reserves into a new server if we are to keep the level of service up to standard When that happens it will be the final attempt to keep adverts at the current level, final as there will be no more money there to throw at myff.

Having said that, I'm still reluctant to up the adverts in the way you suggest, the adverts at the moment are not in my view annoying, some people might have a different view on that even now, but I think the large majority would agree the level of advertising is alright and even adds interest to forums. Add more adverts and I think people might drift from the opinion I hope most hold now that we and our customers are on the same side.

[Bravo]

I do feel you are being over-cautious on this issue (would love to hear what others think), you are a great guy, and MFF is truly a wonderfull testament to your character, but you must realise that nobody begrudges the success of your business, and the truth is, it isn't money for old rope, you are providing a wonderful service to a lot of people and it is my opinion that folk would very much be quite happy with the 'extra' ads (though I do feel they would hardly be noticeable).

Perhaps a compromise along the lines of one ad per page, though this would of course be complicated as some forums have 10 posts per page, and others have 50 (which is why my proposal was to have a first and last type system).

I may be wrong of course, always willing to accept that, I just feel that MFF would still keep it's 'ethical' status if the ads were upped in this unobtrusive way.

Thoughts from others?

[Zudane]

I hate ads on the forum, which is why I pay to keep mine ad free, but I am really satisfied with the low level of ads on the forum, and that's saying a lot.

Putting the ads a little more in wouldn't be too bad, I mean a first and last post thing sounds great as I'm sure a lot of guests don't read to the very end, and even then the ad is a the bottom of it.

Adding in those extra ads should help, as I know some of the top forums on myff are not ad-free, that should help a lot!

[Ask Mr. Religion]

[Ask Mr. Religion]

[admin (no pm's please)]

Another way to look at ad levels is that whilst tricks like guest adverts may be useful and worth trying, in general increasing adverts is a game of diminishing returns.

Let's put a ballpark figure on things here and say we could really do with 25% more income, you don't get 25% more income from 25% more adverts! probably you'd need 100% more adverts! Does that sound good to anyone? Didn't think so.

On the other hand you might get 25% more income with 25% more active forums, something that is rather more likely to happen by keeping advert levels down.

[Ask Mr. Religion]

It is hard to argue with your reasoning. But, as I have noted elsewhere, I really don't mind how many ads are pushed at guests as long as they are accompanied by some notice that these ads will disappear if they register at a site that pays for the ad-free experience (as I do and will continue to do).

AMR