fyi- Modifications to advertising on Photrio

Hi All,

I am experimenting with a different type of setup for ads. Here is a brief outline of what will stay the same and what will change:

-All Analog areas and most other areas will continue to display the analog ads.

-All Hybrid, Digital and social group areas will display the same ad zones and sizes as usual, but instead, these will be google adsense ads. This consists of one banner in the header and a banner in the footer, nothing popping up or invasive.

-possibly a sidescraper google ad under the sidebar for all non-subscribers (subscribers will not see this ad).

The ads might be off-topic at first, but over the coming days be more in line with what is in the particular forum.

Sadly, ads are a necessity for sites like this. I've always done what I can to keep the ads non-invasive. I have avoided popups, popunders and nagging ads asking for subscriptions etc.

I am still investigating how we handle ads and will evolve this as needed. I have had many discussions with a friend in SEO & Advertising. Looking at our numbers, he believes our site is missing out on substantial ad revenue, so much so that this missing revenue could provide us with full-time staff. I'll continue to investigate and feel free to pass on any concerns or thoughts. In the end, we are simply looking to survive, be competitive and grow our community in the best possible ways. If these ads prove too annoying I will back out of it.

Thanks!
Sean

*update I have disabled all of this so far and still tweaking:

Sean:
You could include all those disabled subjects in the Soapbox group, and we probably wouldn't notice .

MattKing said:

Sean:
You could include all those disabled subjects in the Soapbox group, and we probably wouldn't notice .

Click to expand...

Might make a good subforums list for the soapbox

Here is an example of how the ads are starting to become more relevant. Yesterday they were quite generic, but today google's algorithms have started to use the content on the page and it will continue to improve. This ad served in the digital image editing forum. Quite relevant.



There is still a lot of tweaking to do. After crunching a lot of data it's becoming obvious that moving to a hands off ad network has huge benefits. Several of the larger sites such as petapixel.com run through google adsense etc. I think it could boost revenue enough for us to:
1) convert ad payments right back into advertising Photrio throughout the web
2) allow us to financially compensate our moderation team
3) fund more site development
4) massive reduction in time spent managing advertising. This is set it and forget it, then focus on more important things such as content and development.
5) quite possibly 5-7x the revenue of our current in-house ads, which would open us to huge opportunities.

These changes will not happen overnight. For now it's an experiment in a few areas..

Thanks

Sounds like excellent changes. Thanks for the clarity and full speed ahead!

Sean:
Do the ads respond just to the site's content, or do they respond as well to the user's Google history?
In other words, if I have been researching new microwaves for our kitchen using Google, would I start seeing microwave ads on Photrio when I hop over to the hybrid or digital area?

MattKing said:

In other words, if I have been researching new microwaves for our kitchen using Google, would I start seeing microwave ads on Photrio when I hop over to the hybrid or digital area?

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Ansel dried test prints in the microwave, so they should appear in the analogue section.

MattKing said:

Sean:
Do the ads respond just to the site's content, or do they respond as well to the user's Google history?
In other words, if I have been researching new microwaves for our kitchen using Google, would I start seeing microwave ads on Photrio when I hop over to the hybrid or digital area?

Click to expand...

I suspect it will be a mix but probably lean more towards content as the targeting improves and site grows in traffic. So, a photo site that gets 100 visitors a day = general ads but a photo site that gets 100k visitors a day ends up having large photo companies bid for ad space on that specific site.

Once the advertising system is working, perhaps you can sell premium memberships for so many dollars over the average advertisement income per account.

I'm still waiting to see my dry plate ad pop up.

I know the big bucks are with the big advertisers, but don't forget the little guys from the community who serve the community.

Nodda Duma said:

I'm still waiting to see my dry plate ad pop up.

I know the big bucks are with the big advertisers, but don't forget the little guys from the community who serve the community.

Click to expand...

It should be running now, somehow the ad system threw it into a black hole when I thought it had already been activated. Somewhat of an example why a hands off system would be appealing.

I'm looking to incorporate a way for small analog advertisers to have a presence as well, possibly the banner in the left side of the header will be homegrown ads for the analog areas. They would be far cheaper and well seen by the community sitting under the logo. As well as the advertisers forum and advertisers status.

Sean said:

I'm looking to incorporate a way for small analog advertisers to have a presence as well, possibly the banner in the left side of the header will be homegrown ads for the analog areas

Click to expand...

This is really important - if the Google ads eliminate the small and specialized advertisers, it would be very disappointing.
I would guess that it might be particularly disappointing to the Photrio "Partners".

MattKing said:

This is really important - if the Google ads eliminate the small and specialized advertisers, it would be very disappointing.
I would guess that it might be particularly disappointing to the Photrio "Partners".

Click to expand...

Completely agree. I have had small shops tell me they managed to survive thanks to the site, so do not want to interfere with that. I'm going to keep header banners for them and likely 50% cheaper since the other ads will improve revenue.

I wish there was a listing of the small advertisers somewhere. I saw an ad for something that looked interesting pop up, but didn’t click on it at the time, and I had a hard time finding it again later.

@juan This is a work in progress, but you might find them here: https://www.photrio.com/forum/advertising/advertisers

Thanks, Sean!

All the best,
Jason

MattKing said:

This is really important - if the Google ads eliminate the small and specialized advertisers, it would be very disappointing.
I would guess that it might be particularly disappointing to the Photrio "Partners".

Click to expand...

Sean said:

Completely agree. I have had small shops tell me they managed to survive thanks to the site, so do not want to interfere with that. I'm going to keep header banners for them and likely 50% cheaper since the other ads will improve revenue.

Click to expand...

Yes, yes, yes! The small and specialized advertisers need to have superior support.

Assuming that in order for you to generate revenue people actually have to be able to see the ads so I just whitelisted Photrio in my adblocker.

Julie McLeod said:

Assuming that in order for you to generate revenue people actually have to be able to see the ads so I just whitelisted Photrio in my adblocker.

Click to expand...

So have I. I did it a long time ago.

Sirius Glass said:

So have I. I did it a long time ago.

Click to expand...

I never think to do it unless a site throws up one of those popups to remind me that their revenue is based on viewers being able to see the ads.

Thanks. If this rolls out to a wider area I'll have one of those notices asking for people to consider whitelisting us.

We have some ads showing where they shouldn't be.. mainly in header areas, trying to fix this now..

ok weird.. sorry about that all.. seems a setting in google had google auto-populating the site with ads.. which was not what I wanted AT ALL. Looks ok now but might go back to testing this on the dev server. Thanks

This is a good move, Sean. We support you all the way!!