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Forums - Website Topics - Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love

oldschoolfool on 08 March 2010
the2bears said:
What's the solution for a) those blocking JavaScript for security reasons, and b) poorly written Flash/JavaScript ads that start using up clock cycles and have huge memory leaks? These are real reasons, never mind how long it takes a site inundated with ads to load. I love how this is painted as "damage" and such. There are very legitimate reasons for running something like NoScript.


this^ to ioi.



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jdelanoy on 08 March 2010

There was a thread a while ago speculating about how much money you make from this site. You mentioned something about adblockers destroying your ad revenue, (which I did not know previously) so I whitelisted your site.
However, when I get a TA all but ready to throw me out of the lab for looking at pr0n on the school's connection, when all I want to do is look at some charts, I draw the line right there. If you can guarantee (or did you already? This thread is epic long) that this site will never show ads like those horrible Evony ones again, I would definitely whitelist the site. I really do like this site, and I want to be able to help you get more money so that you will be able to keep it up. But I am not willing to do that if it will compromise my ability to use my school's internet connection.

That's why I have the blocker on in general, because I never know if I'll follow some link posted on FB or somewhere and get solicited by a hooker ad (or worse. I apparently have some weird friends). Also ditto what other people said about popups. POPUPS ARE F****** HORRIBLE. KILL WITH FIRE.



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Red4ADevil on 08 March 2010

After reading almost every post on this thead, I fully understand, why I and others shouldn't block ads; Im a slow learner honestly.(which is why I can relate to the Onion Knight in a way :P) So far still its deactivated. For the past 3 years of using vgchartz, I never had a problem until your previous ads caused my IE and Macafee to block access to your site completely.

I knew that ads make money for the owner but I didn't know that, that was such of a problem financialy. They dont really bother me; Its just the ones that keep insisting that get on my nerves. Next time I will be more informative when a problem with the ads happen.



oldschoolfool on 08 March 2010
ioi said:
superchunk said:

However, why did you ignore my post regarding the once existing donate button and/or the better promotion of the amazon shop feature?

I didn't ignore it, there's a lot going on in this thread!!

I'm not keen on a donate button as I don't see it as a donation. We're not a charity so it's not like Wikipedia where we are asking people for donations - we are a business so I would feel morally wrong asking for donations! In reality it is a membership fee or a subscription.

The Amazon store has made about $500 in 2 years so it's pretty much been dropped - the amount of work it takes to maintain and promote far outweighs the revenue it was bringing in.


That's just spliting hairs. There's nothing wrong with a donation button,we know what it would be used for. What's wrong with donatating to a site that you support.? What's morally wrong about that?



superchunk on 08 March 2010
ioi said:
superchunk said:

However, why did you ignore my post regarding the once existing donate button and/or the better promotion of the amazon shop feature?

I didn't ignore it, there's a lot going on in this thread!!

I'm not keen on a donate button as I don't see it as a donation. We're not a charity so it's not like Wikipedia where we are asking people for donations - we are a business so I would feel morally wrong asking for donations! In reality it is a membership fee or a subscription.

The Amazon store has made about $500 in 2 years so it's pretty much been dropped - the amount of work it takes to maintain and promote far outweighs the revenue it was bringing in.

lol, yeah you are pretty busy with this thread.

I can understand your logic with the donate button. However, the idea of a membership fee for no ads is a good one if it is broken up appropriately. Meaning, instead of a base membersip and a premium w/no ads, why not have any membership with a really cheap option to no have ads. You'd probably get A LOT of users willing to spend $5-$10/year to have an option where the only benefit was the ability to have an ad blocker installed.

Also, what about scenarios like mine where my employer makes it mandatory to have an ad blocking tool installed? At home I can control whatever I want, but I work I cannot.

RE: the amazon feature, the problem with that may be it was always increadibly hard to find. Last time I tried to use it, it took me about 30mins just to find where it was located. idk, I have no clue what goes into providing it, so it may not be worth it, but I tried to use it.



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cdude1034 on 08 March 2010
ioi said:
cdude1034 said:

this site cannot survive without the community. Conversely, the community can survive without the site - we can just move to a new site.

You assume that VGChartz is just a forum and ignore all the other aspects that make up the site. The fact that there are normally 4-5 times as many guests as members on the site should show you that VGChartz is more of a passive site than an active site like Facebook or a forum. I don't see the survival of VGChartz as being dependant on the forum community - as great as the community is, the forums are just one small part of the whole VGChartz business.

What seems to be emerging here is a power struggle. "Hey, i've been on this site for years, I post loads and helped to build this site - you should be greatful to me and let me do what I want!" That's fantastic, and I'm certainly greatful that you've stuck with VGChartz and enjoyed coming here but at the end of the day we've provided the service to you, not the other way round!! We're creating, running, hosting and managing the site so that you can come here and post in the forum and chat about your topics of interest. We provide a service and in return we ask users to pay for that service in some way. I don't believe that is unreasonable, whether you've been on the site for 4 seconds or 4 years.

If a restriction on users with adblockers were to cause a small amount of people to take it personally and leave then that's your loss at the end of the day but if you feel unwilling to support a site that you have visited and used with such regularity then I'm afraid it wouldn't be a great loss to VGChartz.

You're absolutely right, this site is not just the forums, but I can gurantee you, the forum is a big reason why people come here.

From my view (and I'm just talking about me), there is no power struggle. You are the owner of this site, you control what goes on in here. You're not being unreasonable by asking people to not block ads.

This site is as big as it is because people told their friends, and those friends told more friends, etc. So essentially, some of those same people who built the site up (by telling their friends) are going to be turned away because you're not getting anything from them, is what I'm seeing.

I'm not saying that isn't you're right, it absolutely is. I'm just saying that it's not really cool to do that to those who helped make this site successful.



 

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nordlead on 08 March 2010
the2bears said:
What's the solution for a) those blocking JavaScript for security reasons, and b) poorly written Flash/JavaScript ads that start using up clock cycles and have huge memory leaks? These are real reasons, never mind how long it takes a site inundated with ads to load. I love how this is painted as "damage" and such. There are very legitimate reasons for running something like NoScript.

Cross-site scripting carried out on websites were roughly 80% of all security vulnerabilities documented by Symantec as of 2007. You can enable noscript to block all XSS while still loading all the regular scripts. This would still load all the content that is intentionally being run on this website without putting your PC at risk. This is what I do, and I see no problem with it.

Blocking all scripts in the name of security is just done by those who aren't aware of what the real security threats are.




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cdude1034 on 08 March 2010
ioi said:
 

The forums are a big reason why SOME people come here, a lot come here for sales figures and a large number for the games database and news / reviews.

I totally agree that a lot of people who use this site have helped it to grow by telling friends etc but again I don't believe that gives people the right to demand a free ride! I buy a car and love it so tell my friends and they all buy one. Doesn't mean next time I go to them to buy a car that it's my right to get it for free. Also it's next to impossible for us to categorise who has told who about what. I'm sure some people have been active in helping to grow the site but many others haven't - how do you suggest we distinguish between the two? I am highly appreciative to those who have helped to spread the word about VGChartz but by the same token we have obviously created a good site for you to use for you to want to spread the word about. It's not like you'd go out of you way to tell all your friends unless you saw some benefit in doing so for both yourself and your friend - it's not as selfless an act as you seem to be suggesting!

I agree with you, boss.

We certainly come here for a reason, and I personally would be willing to pay to keep coming here. I just hope that people won't be turned away, that's all.

It seems like this has been talked to death now, and I hope this conversation will become as fruitful as it is lively. Keep up the good work.

EDIT: And I appreciate you yourself coming on to answer most (if not all) of the community concerns, instead of just making an announcement and leaving.



 

Currently playing: Civ 6

Rath on 08 March 2010

It should be noted that while forums are not necessarily the reason for the majority of your unique visitors we forum users certainly will count for a much much higher proportion of page views.



Kantor on 08 March 2010
ioi said:
superchunk said:

lol, yeah you are pretty busy with this thread.

I can understand your logic with the donate button. However, the idea of a membership fee for no ads is a good one if it is broken up appropriately. Meaning, instead of a base membersip and a premium w/no ads, why not have any membership with a really cheap option to no have ads. You'd probably get A LOT of users willing to spend $5-$10/year to have an option where the only benefit was the ability to have an ad blocker installed.

Also, what about scenarios like mine where my employer makes it mandatory to have an ad blocking tool installed? At home I can control whatever I want, but I work I cannot.

RE: the amazon feature, the problem with that may be it was always increadibly hard to find. Last time I tried to use it, it took me about 30mins just to find where it was located. idk, I have no clue what goes into providing it, so it may not be worth it, but I tried to use it.

We're no longer doing data memberships for the new site - that idea was abandoned. So what I'm talking about is exactly as you say, $10-15 per year to use the site ad-free, maybe with some other bonuses thrown in. We will be doing data memberships but aimed at industry and at a much higher rate.

As for an employer making it mandatory - firstly you shouldn't really be online at work (!) and secondly if it is forced upon you in that way you'd either have to not go on at work or pay for the ad-free version (or use the upcoming iPhone app we are going to be developing).

We gave the Amazon store a good go originally - ads, hard links on every game page and it didn't do that well. When moving to 2.0 we removed all the links but we could certainly just add a link under the store menu or something. Same is true of the VGChartz download store - for whatever reason VGC users don't like buying things which is a shame, otherwise we'd probably have enough success selling t-shirts and games that we wouldn't need to use external advertisers.

Can staff get free ad-removal? It would be a little odd to charge your employees.



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