Ads on the Site

[JonDMiller]

I am toying with some options on how to significantly reduce the number of ads on the site.

I am always searching for companies that can provide the best CPM yield that also allow some control as to what sort of ads are shown.

All of the revenue this site produces stems from advertising, which allows us to keep it free...while we have recently made moves to make the site load faster with the present number of ads we have, I think the number of ads we have right now is taking away from the overall browsing experience on the site.

So there are a few routes I am exploring that will allow us to decrease the number of ads we show, while not significantly hurting us on the revenue side...There will be a revenue hit for sure, but there has to be a better balance and I will keep analyzing that over the next few weeks.

By the time football season starts, I will implement a new solution that will decrease the number of ad network ads we show. At present, we are at seven on the forum landing page loads, and eight within forum posts. I may be able to reduce that to 3/4 on the forum landing page and 4/5 within posts, which would be nearly a 50% reduction or more.

I appreciate your patience as well as your patronage to the site. We have some pretty cool stuff in the works before 2011 is finished and want to make sure we find the right balance of ads to support our current efforts and future growth plans, while having a mutually acceptable level of advertising on the site.

 

[JonDMiller]

After tinkering around with some ideas and revenue balancing, I believe I will be able to remove all but one of the 300x250 ads which are more square like (and there are three of those), one of the 160x600 network ads (and there are two of those), two of the 728x90's (and there are three of those) and move the local ads back into a top of the page position, which will eliminate the tool bar.

With the changes I intend to make and a new relationship I have established, I will be able to eliminate over 50% of the network ads that are shown on each page, get rid of the current toolbar at the bottom of each page and not take a large hit to revenue.

I am doing my best to make visits to the site as aesthetically pleasing as possible for all users while still being able to pay the bills and continue to reinvest in the site as I have been doing, as well as the plans I have along those lines in the next 6 months.

 

[JonDMiller]

As of 8/9, we have removed five third party ads. There may be a few pages were I spot some stragglers that were not taken out that were intended to be gone.

Again, later this month we will be reintroducing a Hawkeye highlights video player to these pages...but I have been assured that the audio will not play on this unless you choose to make it play.

Now working on moving the local ads which are in the toolbar back towards the top of the page, and removing the toolbar entirely.