Forum:Ad discussion (for the millionth time)
So, I've been writing tiny bits of news for The Shovel (another satirical site) and noticed how well they've handled advertisements. Since the last begging for money drive lasted many weeks and was a big invasive banner that was pretty much everything a bad ad is, what is preventing us putting a few small ads under the sidebar? That solves the issue of funding in a less invasive way than site-wide banners, and theoretically we can invest any extra into writing competitions which we can advertise to the 20,000 followers on facebook. I'm not seeing any downside except the ads = literally Hitler mindset that was formed because of Wikia interference. --Nikau (talk) 08:20, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
- I don't have any problem with lil ads here and there, but some people see it as a I Will Leave If You Do This issue. Separately, any chance you could put your news stories here too? Our page is not copyrighted, there's nothing stopping people "writing here" and then "pasting on the shovel". The more unnews the merrier. Leverage (talk) 12:16, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
- In my understanding of it uncyclopedia is designed to look just like wikipedia, as it is a parody of wikipedia. Putting adverts like that would be a move away from mimicking wikipedia as they have never, as far as I know, had adverts like that in that position. When wikipedia advertise they use an aforementioned big fuck-off ugly banner at the top. - B@NZai k!tten
(Meow?) 15:10, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
- For many of the so called "golden years" when the place was still hosted by Wikia we had ads below the sidebar and it didn't cause issue. I'm thinking that reinvesting money earned in writing competitions will nullify any issue with that though. We already have so few users that I doubt anyone will be scared off by such a tiny cosmetic change, especially if we can run regular PLS competitions with monetary prizes. Remember we're fighting the Wikia version who has the exact same Wikipedia look. We need to develop another way of differentiation and cash from ads funding writing prizes seems like a winner, plus it solves funding issues better than constant begging for donations. --Nikau (talk) 15:32, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
- In my understanding of it uncyclopedia is designed to look just like wikipedia, as it is a parody of wikipedia. Putting adverts like that would be a move away from mimicking wikipedia as they have never, as far as I know, had adverts like that in that position. When wikipedia advertise they use an aforementioned big fuck-off ugly banner at the top. - B@NZai k!tten
- I don't have any problem with lil ads here and there, but some people see it as a I Will Leave If You Do This issue. Separately, any chance you could put your news stories here too? Our page is not copyrighted, there's nothing stopping people "writing here" and then "pasting on the shovel". The more unnews the merrier. Leverage (talk) 12:16, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
First of all, the last banner was a parody one, as far as I know, so I am sad that you consider it "pretty much everything a bad ad is". Second, I am not sure it will benefit us, because I remember it was said in a similar forum that the money coming from ads would play a minor role in our budget. Third, projects such as the Christmas album are very good idea to boost our budget, if they turn out to be successful. However, I am not against ads as such if there's an immediate need in them. Anton (talk) 17:33, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- I'd say that ads won't do much harm you know, as long as it is like the ones on The Shovel and not gigantic ads that pop up every five seconds. -- (Chatter)
19:50, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
- Right now advertising is 2% of our "revenue" as we only advertise on our merchandise store and our IRC stats page. Advertising on the site could definitely help, but we should consider doing it in a very, very limited way. We could sneak an ad into our Spam article, put one on our Donation page, and/or allow users to put an ad onto their userspace as a template if they wish. --EMC [TALK] 17:02 Dec 9 2014
- I'd say that ads won't do much harm you know, as long as it is like the ones on The Shovel and not gigantic ads that pop up every five seconds. -- (Chatter)
I think just as important is what we advertise. If it was, say, other funny websites, I would have no problem. Leverage (talk) 17:08, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
- I agree with Leverege, if yous are going to put up stuff like, "Click here for free samples of beauty products", "This woman put plastic surgeons out of business with a skin care formula" or "click here how to make thousands out of your insurance, insurance companies are raging!" well then forget about it. -- (Chatter) 19:50, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
I think all our adverts should be inappropriate. 
Leverage (talk) 19:56, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
- Certo. I want to advertise fleshlights on my userpage--never used one myself but I hear they're the bees knees! --EveryOtherUsernameWasTaken(get dtf) 00:09, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
So
From what I gather so far, the consensus is that 1) the content of any ad must be approved by a community vote and 2) the ads should be minimally obtrusive. If we want to consider increasing our ad space, which I think we should consider, then we must first decide the appropriate places to put ads, create a general standard for what content we would allow, and determine the dimensions of the ads. Otherwise we can't begin to sell advertising space and approving or rejecting offers. Like I said, ads in the userspace, perhaps some community pages, and obviously anywhere off the uncyclopedia.co domain (the shop, the IRC stats page, etc.) would be minimally obtrusive. But there are again content considerations. I think a banner ad anywhere on the Spam page could be an ad for absolutely anything as it would help the article look more like what it's about, but we should be more selective about the content of an ad we would allow users to put in their userspace as a template.
Once we have that figured out, then we should decide whether we want to find our own advertising partners and negotiate a price directly, or if we want to continue using a third-party like Project Wonderful to find advertising partners for us. In both cases we can approve what ads appear on our site. The former can be more profitable as you can usually negotiate a better price and a third party isn't getting a commission, but it can be more laborious. And somewhere in there - either before or after we come up with a solid idea of what advertising might look like - we should decide whether we want this at all. But again, I think we could allow ads so that they are beneficial and satisfy legitimate concerns about our format by strictly limiting their content and location. --EMC [TALK] 19:28 Dec 10 2014
- I think it's also important to consider how much revenue the ads will actually bring in. If we're only make a few dollars off of ads placed on the site, I don't think it will be worth it. Ads tend to deter people even if they are minimally intrusive. If we're going to put ads anywhere on the site, they should really be making relatively a lot of money from them. --
23:59, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
- Yes. I'm assuming that the whole site might generate a few thousand dollars but I have no idea if that's the case. If it can't even pay the server costs it's a waste of time. I am of the opinion that money paying writing competitions advertised on Facebook would be a boon for the site if $100 was on offer and we did it fairly often (2 to 4 times a year) but it has to be sustainable. --Nikau (talk) 14:59, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
- I completely agree, we could also put ads on the Ad article. (Chatter) 11:24, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
