Added ads and more added adds, what gives?

[Viggo]

Hi all!

Recently it was added loads of new ways to display ads here on CR. I’m not a Pro member and have long ago accepted ads on the site, I get why they’re there.

I’m fine with ads between posts in the forum, I can live with the full page ad when going from one thread to another. I really dislike the lower banner being in the way and shrinking my screen real estate, but I live with it.

But, now there is a banner on top blocking the menu, much more intensive and intrusive adds effectively blocking me from using the site like intended.

So I changed my browser to Safari and downloaded an adblocker and it was superb, until the site warns me and tries to make me disable the adblocker!

So the free site isn’t free anymore, might as well have it behind a paywall when it can’t be used with the insane amount of content covering ads.

how does other people feel?

 

[Ozarker]

Hi all!

Recently it was added loads of new ways to display ads here on CR. I’m not a Pro member and have long ago accepted ads on the site, I get why they’re there.

I’m fine with ads between posts in the forum, I can live with the full page ad when going from one thread to another. I really dislike the lower banner being in the way and shrinking my screen real estate, but I live with it.

But, now there is a banner on top blocking the menu, much more intensive and intrusive adds effectively blocking me from using the site like intended.

So I changed my browser to Safari and downloaded an adblocker and it was superb, until the site warns me and tries to make me disable the adblocker!

So the free site isn’t free anymore, might as well have it behind a paywall when it can’t be used with the insane amount of content covering ads.

how does other people feel?

I was running an ad blocker before membership with ad-free browsing was available here. Had no issues. I was very happy to see the memberships offered because I enjoy the website and want to support the work Craig does. Over the whole net, this is the only site I pay for other than Prime and Netflix. $20 a year to support my favorite website is fine by me.

 

[Kit.]

So I changed my browser to Safari and downloaded an adblocker and it was superb, until the site warns me and tries to make me disable the adblocker!

As far as I know, the site will tolerate your continuing use of an adblocker after the warning... which is kinda nice, but the question is why it is filed with ads so much that they make it unusable in the first place.

 

[Viggo]

As far as I know, the site will tolerate your continuing use of an adblocker after the warning... which is kinda nice, but the question is why it is filed with ads so much that they make it unusable in the first place.

Indeed, as long as I could skip the ads and navigate the site just fine I was okay with it. This is not okay:

 

[unfocused]

It does keep getting worse and worse. Charging for an ad-free experience seems like an unholy merger of extortion and elitism to me. I'm fine with a reasonable amount of ads, in fact I think it's better to have everyone endure a few ads, since I do believe in capitalism. But it just feels greedy to fill the entire site with ads. The latest trick seems to be to link individual posts to ads. It's bad on a PC and just ridiculous on a mobile phone.

 

[old-pr-pix]

I avoided getting the Pro membership just because I occasionally find the ads on CR interesting - highlighting something I might not otherwise come across. I do normally run an ad-blocker which is set to allow certain 'qualified' ads. CR occasionally asks to continue with the blocker in place but it isn't constant and isn't objectionable to me. I recently switched to a new PC and was amazed at how many ads there were on all sites, not just CR, before I implemented the ad-blocker. It seems in part my old PC was running slow simply because it was spending so much time with the ad-blocker throwing away ads.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I avoided getting the Pro membership just because I occasionally find the ads on CR interesting - highlighting something I might not otherwise come across. I do normally run an ad-blocker which is set to allow certain 'qualified' ads. CR occasionally asks to continue with the blocker in place but it isn't constant and isn't objectionable to me. I recently switched to a new PC and was amazed at how many ads there were on all sites, not just CR, before I implemented the ad-blocker. It seems in part my old PC was running slow simply because it was spending so much time with the ad-blocker throwing away ads.

PC's need a dedicated processor that just exists to remove ads. I don't mind a few and some sites seem to reach a balance that makes them acceptable. For many sites, I turn on the ad blocker.

 

[kaihp]

Given the amount of malware in ads, using an adblocker is - alas - the only sane choice.

 

[dilbert]

Why more and more ads? Over time, the amount of money that ad views pay has gone down and continues to go down. Thus if your 5000 ad views got you $10 last year, this year it might be only $8, so if you want $10 then you need to serve up more ads. That either comes with more people or serving the existing set of people more ads. More people will probably mean more page views and drive costs up as well as a few extra cents from ads.

 

[Ozarker]

Why more and more ads? Over time, the amount of money that ad views pay has gone down and continues to go down. Thus if your 5000 ad views got you $10 last year, this year it might be only $8, so if you want $10 then you need to serve up more ads. That either comes with more people or serving the existing set of people more ads. More people will probably mean more page views and drive costs up as well as a few extra cents from ads.

Pay for membership or get an ad blocker. That's all you have to do. People that tend wonderful websites like this have to make a living. If we don't want the ads then we should pay to have them removed if we find the website content helpful or interesting. Membership is $20/year. That's a decent price on a spectacular buffet.

 

[Viggo]

Agaib, ads is okay. Not being able to view or click anything because ads are blocking everything is not okay. It’s the same as a paywall.

 

[unfocused]

Why more and more ads? Over time, the amount of money that ad views pay has gone down and continues to go down. Thus if your 5000 ad views got you $10 last year, this year it might be only $8, so if you want $10 then you need to serve up more ads. That either comes with more people or serving the existing set of people more ads. More people will probably mean more page views and drive costs up as well as a few extra cents from ads.

Yes. And the subscription model only makes it worse. Since ads are only shown to non subscribers the advertisers pay less for a smaller audience which means more ads are needed to generate the same amount of revenue.

 

[Viggo]

Yes. And the subscription model only makes it worse. Since ads are only shown to non subscribers the advertisers pay less for a smaller audience which means more ads are needed to generate the same amount of revenue.

That greed made me use an adblocker so now they get squat.

 

[Mod_1]

The site techies turned on things they should not have done, resulting in more ads. This wasn't noticed by us as we are ad-free members. Craig will sort it out early next week so that the experience should improve in a couple of days.

 

[snappy604]

thanks. I generally turn off ads as well for security reasons, but I get finding a balance to help run things.

I liked the site enough to fork over $ for a permanent pro membership... even overcoming my aversion to paypal. But thought the site brought enough value so I did it.

however agree with others. Blocking hasn't prevented usage of the site, when I forget to log in I still block and can navigate around.

 

[old-pr-pix]

Old tread I know, but it seems the number of ads has ratcheted up again. They pop-up on the bottom, top and sides of the page. Plus the relevance to topic has dropped. Far more irrelevant and annoying ads. As I explained above, I have left my ad blocker set to allow some ads to pass. I realize the site owner needs to make a buck but it appears they are going after more and more ads unrelated to photography or photographers.

My only defense is to block all ads from the site. Under new ownership does CR membership still effectively do that or should I just set my own ad blocker at full coverage?

 

[Bdbtoys]

Under new ownership does CR membership still effectively do that or should I just set my own ad blocker at full coverage?

CR Pro still disables all ads.

 

[Ozarker]

Old tread I know, but it seems the number of ads has ratcheted up again. They pop-up on the bottom, top and sides of the page. Plus the relevance to topic has dropped. Far more irrelevant and annoying ads. As I explained above, I have left my ad blocker set to allow some ads to pass. I realize the site owner needs to make a buck but it appears they are going after more and more ads unrelated to photography or photographers.

My only defense is to block all ads from the site. Under new ownership does CR membership still effectively do that or should I just set my own ad blocker at full coverage?

I think 2 bucks / month will solve your problem. Even with that, the owner doesn't make a buck. Money is made through ads, subscriptions, and affiliate means. That's it. There is no free lunch. Pay up. Before subscriptions were available, I used an ad blocker I paid $40/year for that covers the entire net. I could have stuck to that model, but did not think it fair to take all the free knowledge I get here and not pay anything.

 

[GoldWing]

Hi all!

Recently it was added loads of new ways to display ads here on CR. I’m not a Pro member and have long ago accepted ads on the site, I get why they’re there.

I’m fine with ads between posts in the forum, I can live with the full page ad when going from one thread to another. I really dislike the lower banner being in the way and shrinking my screen real estate, but I live with it.

But, now there is a banner on top blocking the menu, much more intensive and intrusive adds effectively blocking me from using the site like intended.

So I changed my browser to Safari and downloaded an adblocker and it was superb, until the site warns me and tries to make me disable the adblocker!

So the free site isn’t free anymore, might as well have it behind a paywall when it can’t be used with the insane amount of content covering ads.

how does other people feel?

The ads almost completely cover the screen on mobile devices. They will ultimately lose traffic and ad revenue and it will be hard to get users back. Too bad, many sites have made the same mistake and are out or have less than 1/10th of prior users.

 

[jd7]

The ads almost completely cover the screen on mobile devices. They will ultimately lose traffic and ad revenue and it will be hard to get users back. Too bad, many sites have made the same mistake and are out or have less than 1/10th of prior users.

It would be nice to know what the owner's (or owners') game plan is for CR. I ended up paying for the lifetime pro membership but I had my doubts CR would survive even as long as it has. From a business/financial perspective, offering lifetime pro memberships created a group of members who do not provide a source of revenue (ie they pay nothing further themselves, and they do not see ads so presumably do not factor into ad revenue) - unless perhaps they indirectly assist in creating revenue simply because their involvement in CR attracts other users who do pay recurring fees or see ads. Further, by allowing the ads shown to visitors (ie those who have not signed up with CR at all) and non-pro members to reach a level where the ads seriously detract from the usability of CR (which was certainly the case a couple of years ago before the pro memberships were offered, and I gather from the post above that is still the case), it must reduce (and would have thought substantially reduce) the number of visitors and non-pro members who use CR, thus decreasing the number of users to whom ads are shown and hence reducinglimiting advertising revenue. So, unless there are a large number of pro members who pay recurring fees (I don't know how many there are but I will be surprised if there are very many), you are left with a group of pro-members who do not pay recurring fees and presumably do not cause ad revenue (since they are not seeing ads), and very few other users (who would see ads). Further, as non-pro user numbers decline, there are fewer people coming through as new pro members (meaning membership fee revenue struggles to grow), and the CR community becomes smaller and less vibrant and enticing to new users (leading to a further decline in users seeing ads and users joining as pro members). I struggle to see how that is likely to be a succesful business strategy. Am I missing something?

My feeling is the first thing which needs to happen, if CR is to survivie and thrive, is the number of ads shown to visitors and non-pro members needs to be reduced so the CR website is enjoyable to use notwithstanding the ads, with a view to increasing the number of users seeing ads and therefore being able to inrease ongoing ad revenue, increasing the number of people who decide to sign up as new pro members, and simply bringing through new users to keep CR vibrant and interesting. I know I used CR for many years when ads were shown but they were not instrusive, so I am talking about a return that sort of approach to the ads. A second thing which might need to happen is that pro members might need to accept seeing some level of ads (yes, I know some of us signed up for lifetime ad-free membership - I was one of those people), possibly even the same ads as everyone else (albeit that may lead to pro memberships becoming a thing of the past).

Maybe I am wrong about what needs to happen - I have never tried to run a website for profit so perhaps there are factors I don't know about. But I have to say that at this point I feel like CR is slowly fading away. It's a lot quieter than it used to be, and there don't seem to be many new members posting. I have learnt a lot from CR's members over the years, so I hope I am wrong about CR fading away,