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We are communicating this to the highest level people. The line for these ads was drawn to place them on all pages. JPnyc and I already managed to push these back to not put them on the thread pages. We are still communicating you comments.Quote:
Originally Posted by jlou
I use this site too, so I hear what you are saying.
Brad!
We cannot make any changes to the ad whatsoever. We may not affect it in any way. We may only display it as is. To truncate it as you suggest would completely abrogate any agreement. No advertiser would pay a penny if you did that.
If you read my post again you'll see I never suggested truncating the ad.Quote:
Originally Posted by JPnyc
Arjay
Ok, sorry, excuse me, resized, not truncated. No, we cannot resize the ad either.
Thinking an idea aloud...
The big advertisements are a nuisance mainly to people who post often (i.e. contribute to the site voluntarily), but they are really not a nuisance to guests, and visitors alike.
Given this fact -
Say if a member 'X' crosses 150 posts (just a number) then he views smaller ads.Quote:
Is it not possible to have a system by which Codeguru Members who cross a certain number of posts view smaller advertisements?
(like how they were in the good 'ol days...)
This would take away the nuisance factor for those who *contribute* genuinely and frequently to the website, without compromising it's advertisement potential.
This way -
Just an idea... Would like to see a response.
- The guests (who are many), and the infrequent members would see the Ads in their full glory.
- The frequent members (who see every Ad 50 times) that contribute with solutions, etc see them smaller.
"Click Here to Expand Forum to Full Width"
JPnyc and I have gotten agreement to add the above link below the new ads. JPnyc has already implimented the addition this link that lets you close an ad. Granted you have to do this on every page, but I find it makes it a lot easier to look at longer lists of posts.
I know this isn't everything you guys want, but it is a compromise on the part of those we report to. I think it makes the things much, much more usable.
Brad!
Careful with this suggestion.... The "frequent user" is probably more valuable to the people that would want to advertise here because it indicates a persion that is truly interested in "coding". As such, there could be a push to do more ads towards just this group if it could be identified.....Quote:
Originally Posted by Siddhartha
Brad!
True... but, a good Advertisment is a novelty for the first time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad Jones
Such a person would be enchanted, enamoured once. The next 49 times, it will slowly but steadily kill his drive to post, or even to return... The point is now completed.
More than that, the technical logistics would be pretty tough. The ads come from another server entirely, so it would be pretty tough to manage. They're served up randomnly with PHP. Now we'd have to figure someway to pass the value (post total) to that ad server to return a certain size ad, and it's not even part of the vbulletin page request to begin with. We'd have to add that to the query.
I've just tried viewing the forum in 1024x768 and it's pretty much unusable in that resolution :/
Unfortunately, this really is a big change that will impact how much people like being around here. If I were always using 1024x768, I would definitely consider moving to a different forum.
Yes... :thumb:Quote:
Originally Posted by Yves M
And there must be many people here like me who use laptops: in my case an IBM T41 which ain't old, and has a max resolution of 1024 x 768... :cry:
Just see this poll...;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Siddhartha
Timely poll that... :thumb:Quote:
Originally Posted by gstercken
For everyone to see...
I like the new ads.
I think they can be bigger. Like, half a screen size. You only need a little bit of your screen anyway & if you need to scroll, just scroll & thank god you don't have a job using actual physical labour like using a shovel. So what if you click a few extra buttons or scroll a bit more? The managers of CG are entitled to see a bit of extra $$$dosh for all their hard work.
By the way guys, is Jupiter Media publicly traded? If so, can I buy some stocks? ;)
Thanks for the sentiment, and yes, you can buy JM stock.
I would like to ask one question. What is the whole point of these advertisements (from advertisers point of view)?Quote:
Originally Posted by JPnyc
Possible answers can be:
1) Teasing people
2) Getting there attention
No. 1 is out of question, lets discuss no. 2. Like Gstreken, what if everyone block the ad link? will it serve the purpose of paying? I don't know how this brillent idea struck to whoever mind that ads should be placed at sides with this much size. In simple terms, it sucks.
:thumbd: :thumbd:
I think that al add issue is a very good example of very old paradox: an egg and a chicken.
CG site exists (no question about it) to produce revenue. That is why advertisement is important part of this site.
CG is most popular site of this kind (I think) and is the highest quality (I am sure) site of the kind.
That was a chicken.
Now an egg.
This site exists because people who are willing to use spare time to participate in helping others resolving problems and learn.
Code guru exists because of them, no question about it.
CG has 4,243,859 reregistered members; 5,999 members have more than 25 posts (they are fairly active).
And guess what? There are 39 members that have ratings over 200 and 37 member with ratings over 100; total 73 members with ratings over 100.
Let’s double it to say we have 146 members active much more than others in solving problems rather than posting questions.
It means that 1.22% of active members create traffic on this site making it popular enough for advertisers to consider placing adds here. Whoever is here needs to concentrate. Material displayed here should be easily readable.
Members are coming back mainly because they know they will find help here, not to shop. Huge flashing, obnoxious animated adds that absolutely do not help to focus on relevant to us material.
I am sure that in a long run this may lead to loosing members willing to participate and in turn make traffic lower.
I think that management of this site owns us a little courtesy for work done by us to make this site more and more profitable and reconsider decision allowing this kind of advertisement.
I hate to give away top half of my screen nor third of the width making posts very difficult to read. I am on the road most of the time using laptop and it takes a lot of scrolling toward a bottom of the page to see edit box for a post I am going to write.
:thumbd: :thumbd:
As much as I wish the layout could return to what it was, this option is a lot better than nothing. :) Thanks, Brad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad Jones
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad Jones
Thanx a lot Brad for atleast having an option out there... It really helps.:thumb:
Can we have something like if I click it once then the Ads don't comeup for the rest of my session, untill I clear my cookies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Deniz
In case you don't know Deniz, that was a sarcastic remark.Quote:
Originally Posted by JPnyc
I'm one of those many guys that use a 1024x768 and these ads are very annoying. I always had a feeling that this was to come when the articles were redesign to be spread across several pages just to keep the ads in viewers eyes...Quote:
Originally Posted by Yves M
John makes a lot of sense with his comments, but the CG forum has only 131,137 (at the moment I write this message). However, I'm affraid that the trend of advertising will make members that post on a daily basis to reorient to other sites...
Sincerely, that do not bother me at all.
Just makes me remember the famous poodle from Brainbench that became longer and longer with each answered test question,
i.e. poodle, pooodle, poooodle,..... poooooooooooooooooooooooooooooodle.
Was really nice'n useful. :D
:thumb: :thumb: :thumb: :thumb:Quote:
Originally Posted by vb_the_best
Exactly what I was thinking, surely this is the best way to deal with this? I dont want to have to click this link everytime I refresh my page! This must be a fairly simple solution that will keep everyone happy...?
I like this site, there's a great deal of knowledge on here & people are always willing to share ideas & solutions. These ad's are so annoying tho, I think I'll be spending time elsewhere...
Sorry but no, we can't do that. We must load the ad with each page. It's an obligation.
Personally, I would like the message to get back to the advertisers that their actions in trying to forcibly intrude on me going about my day-to-day business are counter-productive. I don't mind an advertiser displaying their wares: if I'm interested, I'll follow it up, if I'm not, I won't. But floating those irritating flash ads around or muscling in on my screen space by getting bigger and bigger does nothing to endear their company or product to me - quite the reverse, in fact; it makes me all the more determined to avoid them, even if I would have been interested in what they're selling. Basically, it is rudeness of the first order, and I'm old-fashioned enough to react badly to rude people.
:cry: this makes me feel like crying..Quote:
Originally Posted by JPnyc
I do not mind these ads as long as they are disposable with single mouse click (this big one isnt tho, it requres some scrolling). They are very irritating, but I can understand that CG can run because it gets money from those ads. And Graham made a good point: cant advertisers see that adds work in opposite way they meant? If I see small banner with interesting message, I will click it. But if I am attacked with big and flashing piece of you-know-what, I am turning against advertiser. Since today, when I will be forced to choose between 2 products, one marked by chick with bikini and other one marked by guy with boxing gloves, guess which one I will choose :D . I am not going to leave CG or any other site I like because of ads, just browsing thru it will be more difficult.
Hob
PS And please, never, EVER put any ad which is initially small and turns whole screen big on mouse over.... Last time I saw this one I punched my monitor...
So how many people actually click on any of these adverts.
How often?
For me, never.
I did, twice.
Once by accident :D and once to play punch-a-word game, it was too short tho.
Never did, though there was a flash animation that I play with (I was shooting some squares as I moved the mouse... or so I thought...)Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnW@Wessex
I'm currious to know what the clients say about our reactions to their big, intruding ads.
The quickest way to get ads to go away is to not click on them. The advertisers will see no click throughs and they will therefore stop. The reality, however, is there is generally a given percentage that find something of value in the ads and will click through. (Personally, if you haven't looked at some of the ads, you have missed some great opportunities for free software and other things.)
Several people have mentioned going elsewhere.... Jupitermedia is a leading edge internet company. As such, we tend to be on the forefront of change. What happens here -- if it isn't already happening somewhere else, most likley will be. Granted sites like MSN, NYTimes, and others are bigger, so they oftern have things happening even before us. For example, some of those sites now use a full-page ad that comes up before taking you to the page you click on. Very annoying and I'm glad we don't have that here.
If you go to other sites, then the thing to be aware of is this -- if they have any size at all, any traffic at all (CodeGuru has over a half million unique visistors each month), then they are going to have to cover their costs too. They may not have the ads today, but the same issues that hit our sites are going to catch up with them as well.
Someone asked if Jupitermedia is a public company. The symbol is JUPM. Look it up. Look at a 3 year chart. If you'd have bought JUPM three years ago, you'd have a 700% return today.
Wow... That's something. And it must bring some dimes to JM with all the ads... ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad Jones
I believe there would have been people (Guests or members) who have clicked on the Ads, that is why we see more ads. And ofcourse CG is the best place where you can share and learn.. :) , so it is famous and the companies want to post their ads here..
I believe we will have ti live with it, till Brad does a miracle
Why didn't someone tell me this before 3 years, I would have been a Rich guy by now..Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad Jones
Suggestion : The members with more than 3000 posts and a rating of more than 500 should be given stock options. What do you say about that?
Don't you dare to tease me... :D :DQuote:
Originally Posted by vb_the_best
With rating I agree, with number of posts not. That because there are ones with many, many posts of type "I agree with...", "Please clarify", "I don't understand", "Please guru, sample code!!!" and "[Moved Thread]". :DQuote:
Originally Posted by vb_the_best
You know what, I actually wrote 15000 (keeping Andreas in mind, but then I thought I will never reach that figure (and I even thought u will get angry:D ), so that is why I wrote 3000.Quote:
Originally Posted by cilu
//Actually you want to second my suggestion!
In an effort to make things easier for all of you, I've adjusted the page so that now clicking anywhere in the right hand column, below the ad, will expand the forum to full width.
I know you're joking, but if you would have moved 2000 threads from inappropriate to appropriate forums, you would be very usefull for the community :DQuote:
Originally Posted by ovidiucucu
The option to expand to full-width is a good step, you can see Brad and JPnyc listen to us and try to do something, thank you ;)
JeffB
No. Never. And I already stated hating this guy, whoever he isQuote:
Originally Posted by JohnW@Wessex
:D :D :D
It is working...Three cheers for JPnyc :thumb:Quote:
Originally Posted by JPnyc
//You guys actually listen to us, Hats-Off to that:wave:
//Does the posts like "[moved thread]" actually count in the total posts of a member?:confused:
Yep ! That clikcy really helps.. :thumb: :thumb:
Thx.. JPnyc :wave: :wave: :wave: :wave:
All the time ready, to add my humble contribution to the prosperity of community :D.Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffB
That proves they included "client satisfaction" in their Deming cycle. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffB
All my respect,
You're all entirely welcome. We do try to be as accommodating as possible. :wave:
Just my two cents, but I don't find the adds all that bothersome. This may be because I have 19" monitors and 1280x1024 or better resolution on each of my computers. However, I understand the irritation that some have expressed with the ads; even Microsoft's site is an eye sore in low res.
I guess, as long as you don't start throwing in pop-ups we'll eventually get used to the new changes.
From a cost perspective, this site wastes a great deal of bandwidth. The money saved from streamlining this site to a w3c standards validating site with xhtml/css would save $1000s of dollars a month, possibly equivalent to the ad revenue taken in to offset the bandwidth for all the embedded table and formatting tags. Granted, most of these ads probably exist not for the clickthroughs but for the branding exposure and maybe that is actually big money, i dont know.
vBulletin is not the only forum board. You would think that a company that does mainly tech sites would be able to produce an inhouse forum of decent quality. When the site was redesigned (two years ago?) it seemed to be a step backward and just an addon/patchwork to the existing structure. I don't even visit the main site page anymore. The days of embracing netscape4.x and IE5 are OVER. Embrace the standard and save yourself time, money and user aggravation.
I would rather see these 3x4 inch ads interspersed vertically between thread posts like they are commonly done in web articles.
I thought about this too, since I also agree with Graham -- I never click annoyingly intrusive ads, even if the product looks interesting, simply because I don't want to encourage that kind of advertising -- but it occurs to me that large companies with big advertising budgets probably have a far, far better grasp of how effective specific advertising schemes are than I do. No matter how strong our negative reactions may be to these things, our own experiences are still only anecdotal evidence. If no one out there has been clicking these ads, I doubt that so many companies would still be blowing money on them. It's the same situation as telemarketing, I think. I, along with just about everyone I know, find telemarketers to be obnoxious and would never purchase anything from them, but you know someone out there is buying from them, or telemarketing wouldn't be around anymore.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hobson
This doesn't work for me... I can only make the ads go away if I press that "Click Here to Expand Forum to Full Width"...Quote:
Originally Posted by JPnyc
I'm afraid it had to be removed. Sorry about that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JPnyc
WHAT---???
WHY???
I had already grew used to making the add dissapear by clicking anywhere in its column... Don't tell me... "we can not escape the ads... it's obligation"... I'm getting too tired about this and I have only two or three days experience eith this ads problem.
If what I've said ss true (you had to remove the remover because it went against he obligations), then it's time to seriously consider the choice of increasing the width of the pages in such a way that the forum contents are in the visible part, and any ads column will be thrown far to the right, where the user has to slide the window to see them... I don't see it is going against regulations as you said that, in short, you're obligated to display the ad, not to show it.
Thet was The Revenge of the JupiterMedia. Let's hope soon comes here A New Hope...
You can still remove the ad by clicking the text below it, as before. The "click anywhere in this column" is what I had to remove. It was interferring with other scripts.
Then it is easier than expected:
Just increase the text size (because it is normal text, I think) of the "click to expand forumns in full width" message. I think the message is too small sized, in fact it is hard for me to have to scroll down a little for each page and then find and click the text, if it would be 3 or 4 pts taller it would be a GREAT help. Please, the text is SO small that even the normal HTML text my browser displays is better than that. Another, easier choice, would be to replicate the text over the ad, as there it will be easier to see.
And, seriously, don't even dare anyone to come with the "we can't have big links/buttons to move the ad away, it is against obligation" story. This is the FIRST forum site EVER for which I had to scroll horizontally do make an ad go away... I don't think this is an honour you CG managers would like to have.
Admin: text removed for suggesting a violation of the acceptable usage policy