Ads becoming eyesores!!!

[TheDeeMan]

What the hell?! Has this site become bombarded by ads? I was reading "Wanderng Ones" (well, trying to read it, anyway) and it was like the comic was under siege by the ads on top, along side, and underneath the comic.

It's just WAY TOO MUCH, guys. Really.

Dee

[carsonfire]

I'm starting to think three may be too many, too. But don't begrudge your cartoonist trying to make a living. *Especially* since many of us just got purged out of ADSDAQ for being webcomics. That makes it even tougher.

Many of us have had the extra skyscraper for most of last year. I don't know if Clint has had the side ad that long, but we have all *always* had one at top and bottom. Perhaps you notice them more because these days it's a big leaderboard and the rectangle at bottom, instead of the old, smaller banners. Plus there's a lot more of those annoying Flash ads that push their way down the page. You want to eliminate them from your site, but then you see how little your money you're making on the regular ads, and you wind up having to approve ads you don't like.

We're always open to ideas.

[TheDeeMan]

Oh, believe me. I don't begrudge anyone doing what we do from trying to make a living dong what we do. Especially Clint, who's always been cool with me.

Maybe you're right. maybe it's the fact that the ads are just-I don't know-"larger" or "flashier' makes it seem like there's more of them. I swear on some of the comics it seems like it's an ad page with a comic on it then a comic page with ads.

But your point about perspective and a creator trying to make a living is well taken. I guess I was just feeling overwhelmed.

Dee

[Kisai]

Well the problem boils down to:
a) put up with the ads
b) install script blocking software, which then makes a LOT of the web no longer work
c) don't visit the site, buy the print edition instead.

See most ads are done via web 2.0 technologies which "can't" be blocked because originally popups/unders were generated by very basic "open new window" types of javascript. The new types use the same javascript that would be sued to make a web 2.0 site, eg createchildnode and stuff. So unfortunately some ads become intolerable, but they pay a lot because not as many people want to have them... or something like that.

They say there is too much ad space, and not enough ads. You can see this reflected even in Project Wonderful. Sites that have little spiderable content (eg webcomics) or too much "user-driven-content" (forums, blog comments) are considered worthless to advertisers as its hard to gauge the context of the images or the conversations. At least forums can be text spidered, but often display completely irrelevant ads that nobody is interested in. That's ADSDAQ's model.

The ad model many webcomics use is "as much ad space as possible for as high of price as possible", which there is just a lot of. Contrast this with advertisers that may in fact chain their advertisements too. This is the source of "bad ads", where the ad network beneath the point of control, changes what was already approved by the next higher level network.

Unfortunately, unless you run all the ads directly from your own site, and cut out all the middlemen, you have little to no say in what content appears next to your content. The more middle men used, the less control, and the more complaints.

But what are you going to do when the comic is a significant source of income?

[theopenandclosedbook]

Yeah, even on the forums they are bad.
We've got the silly ones that if you pass overthem, unfold into a full thing.

[Kisai]

Yeah, even on the forums they are bad.
We've got the silly ones that if you pass overthem, unfold into a full thing.

Still more tolerable than automatically opening new tabs or windows. At least the ones that unroll (in theory) only do so if you stop and hover your mouse for a second over the ad. I know the Coraline ads did that.

[carsonfire]

Feh. I'm sick of ads, myself. When I started on ADSDAQ, I made $500 the first month, which was great, but it's been all downhill from there. Since then, they've purged tons of webcomic sites. I survived the purge, but now it doesn't matter. They've imposed a new scheme that apparently pays you for only ONE ADVIEW per visitor. If I show a banner and a skyscraper, I seem to be getting paid for only one; if a reader goes through 300 pages in one sitting, I get paid for only one ad. The revenue is so low now, ADSDAQ might as well be Adbrite.

The idea of webcomics was to build lots of pageviews through all this great content, but what good is that if the ad networks penalize you for pageviews and content?

I'm interested to know if some readers might be willing to pay a download fee to read the comics offline. It makes sense to me, especially for a storyline comic that depends more on the flow of action than daily gags, to collect the comics in one-week batches, and sell them like you would songs on Itunes. I guess the Iphone stuff got me started thinking about this.

[TheDeeMan]

It would make sense--But it doesn't. Webcomic readers still aren't willing to pay to read a webcomic, but they'll buy a trade/GN based on a webcomic. You figure t out.

Dee

[carsonfire]

Eh, I'm trying it, anyway. I certainly don't have anything to lose, and everything to gain. I've had several sales already, and I figure it wouldn't take much to match and even exceed my ad revenue.

It can't be that people don't want to pay for things online. While there's certainly a pirate mentality, there's also plenty of people paying for MP3s on Itunes. But comics, even after all this time, seem to be an awkward fit in the digital environment, whereas music is a perfect fit. Music has been enhanced by digital technology, whereas comics are *degraded* by digital technology. There are delivery systems designed specifically for music, whereas comics are mostly still just JPGs slapped on a web page. Why *would* somebody pay for webcomics?

I figure if I can find the answer to that, it'll be a big step forward.

[Kisai]

It would make sense--But it doesn't. Webcomic readers still aren't willing to pay to read a webcomic, but they'll buy a trade/GN based on a webcomic. You figure t out.

Dee

This is tongue in cheek, but not every online comic can afford a print run.

This might change a little with the iphone/android and whatever else comes out for smartphone platforms, kindle and game consoles. I'm someone that doesn't buy swag unless it's something I would actually use (My room has plush animals, all presents.)

Subscriptions don't work in the long run, ad revenue is unfortunately the only tried and true money maker on the internet. Ad networks keep rising and falling though. So each time an ad network thinks they can cheat the advertisers or the sites they advertise on ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFront ), they crumble and have to start from scratch.

And there have been SOOO many versions of the "screw the little guy" with advertisements. Anyone remember the "ad toolbar" that you got paid for allowing ads to be shown on your PC? Remember what eMachines originally were? and "ad supported shareware" days? Namezero and netzero? Wowio's original revenue model?

Yeah those days are gone all for the same reason. Someone gets a bright idea to push ads a certain way, and then once either everyone else does it, or the advertisers get insignificant return on their investment, there goes the revenue model. You might say the age of the "push advertising" model are numbered (newsprint, tv, and website ads are all 'push' type of ads, where they are shown regardless of anyone sitting at the machine), and with few exceptions, nobody is rolling in ad revenue unless their site is massive, or they clamp down on the quality control to the point where it's nearly invite-only. There is a lot of move towards interceptor type of ads that force you to see the ad before you see the content you came to see (every download site does this, ign and gamespot do this, something awful does it. Even newgrounds is starting to get ads like that. ) If you visit the funimation.com website, you have to see two ads before you can watch any episode, but that's nothing compared to watching it on TV. In fact, I'd say watching something on their website is as far better experience than watching the same show on TV, Two 10 second ads versus 6 minutes of advertising. But the video quality is not quite as good as DVD. Youtube is now sticking ads on videos, which works somewhat, but not in a very good way. The ads google places are text ads in video, which compete for the subtitles/captions. NicoNicoDouga actually has both an ad that appears in the text window to the right and an intercepting "commercial" that stops what you are watching for long enough to play the ad, and then resumes.

Comics unfortunately, for now, are stuck in a situation where interceptor pages compete for the screen, and many people have developed a "click off" habit that may in fact click away from the site they were wanting to visit (I know I've done that many a time.) In my opinion as long as the option to "skip the ad" is there, it's not evil. But as soon as you insist on wasting the visitors time, by preventing access to the content (eg megaupload and such) unless that is the only content to get, nobody is going to put up with having to wait a minute between pages.

[Canterrain]

Hulu has it down I think for videos. Yes you watch commercials, but again like with Kisai's example, you watch far fewer commercials than you would have on tv. And in this case the video is fairly high quality (and there's an HD version to choose) and it loads pretty quickly.

Ads are a very hard thing. There are ad companies that don't even let you look directly at the ads they'll try to serve you. Lots of times a problem ad has to be tracked down the hard way with firebug or a similar tool. And while they are the most tried and true method, unless you are bringing in millions (Plural) of daily hits you need multiple ad networks, so that's that much more to pore through if there's an issue, and that much more chance for there to be an issue.

There's this concept that's killing economies in general where people want stuff of extremely high quality, and they want to pay as little as possible to own it but they want to be paid as much as possible to make it. And that's not an equation that ads up. And the same goes true for the internet.

People want the best webcomics with the most well written story and the nicest art and they want it free dangit. But it costs someone somewhere. And those costs have to be recouped. Or there won't be a webcomic at all dangit.

If you want your webcomic to be ad free, pool together your fellow fans and help that creator live without need of those ads.

Else... the ads will have to stay. And the most annoying ones.. well... I've not seen a keenspot creator yet say, "I refuse to attempt to do something about the extremely annoying ad." But there's alot of times where... it can't be fixed. Sorry. By the time you track it down it's already gone half the time anyway.

Because as Kisai said... lots if not most webcomic creators can't afford to make books. Can't get anyone to make books for them. And even when they do lots of times those books don't even sell. Look at Inverloch. Never made it past volume two due to sales. And who wants to buy a t-shirt with a webcomic character no one else is going to recognize on it?

I'm rambling so I'll stop and leave it at... it's a sad fact of the matter that the current equation of making and viewing webcomics leave the only semi-reliable way to pay to keep doing it.. annoying eyesore ads.
And the creators can do everything they want to try and change that... but without fan support it really won't matter.

[macclint]

Wow. Late to the party again.

Sorry about the annoying ads. We've had a few bad ones come through.

[TheDeeMan]

Wow. Late to the party again.

Sorry about the annoying ads. We've had a few bad ones come through.

Not your fault, Clint. At the time of the post I just found that some of the new ads on the page were getting in the way of my enjoyment of the comic.

Dee

[Bruce Bergman]

Now you have some ads in the top banner that are becoming ear-sores, too.

And ads with audio of any sort can be very dangerous, because anyone browsing from work that forgets to - or can't - mute their computer is going to hit that ad that hollers "Congratulations! You WON!" right as the Pointy Haired Boss walks past their cubicle. And the next statement is going to be stolen from The Donald Trump... "You're Fired!"

At least they stopped insulting our intelligence and saying "You're the 10,000th Person!" and they make up a random number. But that sound thing is just as bad.

Kisai, you are just going to have to INSIST that if you can't preview all the ads, they don't run. The ad people are even getting ballsy enough to accept Pink Contracts like Trojan Horses (Windows Antivirus 2009) as banner ads, and serving them right up with the rest of the rotation.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to a Wipe and Reload of my laptop - Again - because it's got a Trojan/Spyware on it that got past Norton. Again. Don't know where it came from, but it doesn't matter, there goes a whole <censored> day either way.

--<< Bruce >>--

[Canterrain]

Please keep in mind that it's not just Kisai (if it's even Kisai, I can't remember in keenspot's case) that takes care of ads.

Here is how it works currently for most (not all though) of the webcomics at Keenspot.

For sake of example let's say you are visiting Joe's Webcomic about Zebra's.

Joe has at least one ad service he uses on his own. He more than likely has two, and possibly three. These could be something like adsdaq, burst, and tribal fusion. They are chained so that one tries to fill your view of the page with an ad, if it has nothing, then the next tries, then the next tries. It is Joe's responsibility to take care of these three networks (whether that be by himself, or by hiring someone to do it as Xylia has done with me) only after Joe's chain has been tried does things go over to keenspot, where they have their own chain (I think they have two, adsdaq and guerilla nation, I could be wrong).

So when you view Joe's zebra webcomic it might go something like this:

Person has visited. Need an ad. Start chain:
Joe's Adsdaq, if no ad pass to next,
Joe's Burst, if no ad pass to next,
Joe's tribal, if no ad pass to next,
Keenspot's adsdaq, if no ad pass to next,
Keenspot's guerilla, if no add pass to next,
keenspot default webcomic ad will now show.

And this happens for every ad space this chain exists on. Typically a banner, a tower, and a big box. This sequence occurs three times per page viewed on average. (Though it usually doesn't run this full sequence, obviously)

Keenspot is only responsible for ensuring the parts I labeled keenspot are not full of spyware/annoying ads/etc. Joe is responsible for the ones that come before it. This is wonderful in that, Joe gets to keep all his revenue from his ads that shows, and keenspot gets to keep all their revenue.

This is annoying in that if Joe uses 3 ad networks, and Keenspot uses 2 or 3 completely different ad networks (totally possible) your annoying ad could have come from 5 or 6 different places that all need to be checked, some of which while paying very well do a terrible job of letting you find bad ads and kill them. (Adsdaq is a prime example of this)

Very few are like burst which allows you to look through every single ad that -might- get shown and then choose not to let them be shown.

So the onus is not just on Kisai, or any one person, but on all keenspot creators using the system. And unfortunately, it's alot harder than it sounds to find these ads and kill them, and more so, kill them across the board so it doesn't show up on any keenspot site.


And also, not to sound unsympathetic (I really am sympathetic, and we really are trying to keep these bad ads killed) but the ultimate truth of the matter is, if you are visiting websites you are not supposed to be visiting while at work and you get caught and punished for it... the ultimate fault lies in you. Bad ads are a scourge and should be destroyed with a passion, but likewise rules broken come with consequence.