About a week and a half ago, we got a call out-of-the-blue from Google. I usually blow-off unsolicited sales calls, but seeing as this one was from one of the must successful Internet companies on the planet, I was curious to find out why in the heck they were calling me.

It turns out that they were calling to talk to us about the Google AdSense program. We had tried the program briefly back in 2003 and discontinued using it because the ads were very poorly targeted, and the disruption to the site wasn't worth the paltry amount of money the ads were making for us. The Google sales rep on the phone assured us that the program has improved dramatically since we tried it three years ago, and she encouraged us to give it a try again. She claimed that we can probably get a significantly higher return on the ads than we did three years ago.

The sales rep quoted a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) that was surprisingly high. I must admit I am skeptical -- rates for Web advertising are notoriously low, and for discussion forum-based sites like ours they are usually well below average (somewhere in the neighborhood of one-tenth of the normal return for Web advertising). Still, the sales rep was sufficiently optimistic about our prospects that we feel it would be irresponsible if we did not at least try running the ads.

To give you some idea of what we're talking about here: If Google's best-case estimates turn out to be true, then we would never have to do another fundraiser on Democratic Underground. But if their low-end estimates turn out to be true, the ads would barely cover the rent on our office, and probably would not be worth the added annoyance to our visitors.

The only way for us to know for sure what kind of return we can get is to give it a try.

Over the next few weeks, we want to test out a number of different ad placements all over the Democratic Underground website to see what (if anything) works and what does not. It is very likely that the ads might seem annoying at first to some of you -- as is the case with any change we do around here -- and so we want to thank you in advance for your patience. I hope you understand that our intent is not to annoy. Our hope is that by experimentation we can find a happy medium where we can get a decent return for the ads, without overly antagonizing all of you, our visitors. Please understand that if we want this to work, the advertisements will have to be placed in fairly prominent areas of our site where people will see them; while you might prefer it if we clustered all the ads at the bottom of our pages, it would be pretty pointless from a fundraising perspective.

The DU Admins are well aware that people don't like seeing ads when they go to a website, and I'm sure many of you are wondering why we are doing this at all. Our current system has worked pretty well so far, and the last thing on earth we want to do is to annoy the people who have been donating for the last five and a half years years to keep this website online. We are deeply grateful for their help.

But it is a fact that this community exists because of the generosity of a small minority of visitors to the site. We get hundreds of thousands of unique visitors each month, but at any given time only a thousand people are actually contributing to keeping the site online. And it is worth noting that this is the only donor-funded organization I can think of that depends entirely on small donations. Since DU's launch in January 2001, we have received only two donations of a thousand dollars or more. We rarely receive a donation of more than one hundred dollars, and our average donation is about twenty dollars.

Now, we could try to squeeze all of you harder, but we really aren't comfortable doing that. Advertisements allow all of our visitors to help pay the bills. And if the ads are really successful, we might not need to raise quite as much money from voluntary donations -- and you all could donate your money to other worthy causes, like Democratic candidates or progressive non-profits.

But as I said, at this point we do not know if running ads will even make much of a difference to our bottom line. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we try these ads to find out if they will work for our community. Thank you so much.

Skinner, EarlG, Elad
DU Administrators

If it's successfull, perhaps you could do some analysis of ad revenue generated from donating members and see if there is a balance for accounts who pay *not* to see ads vs. those who go the free route.

Good Luck.

to do anything to keep this community going.

You never know what you've lost till it's gone.

Not sure how this works these days, but do you only get paid if someone clicks on the ads?

I'm sure we DUers would click-through on a regular basis if we knew that was the deal...

it works.

Don't click on stuff you don't really have an interest in, please, because it might not only get DU kicked out of the Adsense program, but Google has a "smart pricing" system, and it will reduce the amount of revenue that Google will make from legitimate clicks.

But I think they have some way of figuring out if people are fraudulently clicking, so people should only click the ads if they are genuinely interested.

My understanding is that they would be concerned if:

1) the site owner/admin was actively and regularly soliciting people to click through
2) people (IP) click multiple ads multiple times per day -- this they can obviously track
3) conversion rate -- ratio of views to buys, if indeed the target was selling something

Ad revenue pays for eyeballs, so just being willing to view something (as with commercials on TV) is what they're paying for.

I'll be interested to see how this works out for DU

:)

The part about ALL visitors helping keep the lights on seems key.

MZr7

We will probably try all of them.

cleavage, unless a man with a speedo is there as well....

OK?

It sounds worth a try to me. I don't know much about advertising. You all have all worked long and hard to make this site informative, activist and enjoyable.
Elections are coming up, and if even if the best case scenario turns out, we'll always have our work cut out for us.

no problem.

In adition to a ban on sexist ads, prohibiting astroturfing (like the infamous anti-network neutrality ads), etc.

Creat an Acceptable Ad policy require google to agree to liquidated damages for all showing ads that violate the policy and include a mechanism to report violations and it works. Not to mention listing the acceptable ad policy in a promenent location on DU.

It should include a ban on racism, sexism, religious extreemism, medical quakery, homophobia, corporate astroturfing, fraud and disinfromation. I am sure there are other catagories of ads we do not want to see on the grounds that it would create a potential conflict of intrest.

It has amazed me for years how few DUers (per capita) actually contribute.
My donations are small but fairly frequent and it's a damn shame more people can't manage a few bucks now and again. So go for it and hopefully it'll work!
:D

You sold out man. It used to be about the music, man..It used to be about the MUSIC!

Oh wait, wrong thought pattern.

Seriously, I think that it is your choice and that's cool. Not pop ups..right? Anyway, I think that ads are fine. It's not getting any cheaper to do anything these days.

Google doesn't do pop-ups.

I trust you guys for not running Walmart ads. lol

I hope it works well and raises significant revenue. I do remember the 2003 try. I'm laughing remembering some of those ads. For those of you not here, they advertised for conservative causes. It didn't go over very well. :lol:

That's exactly right. We only had the ads up for a day or two, but they kept advertising conservative and pro-Bush stuff. I'm impressed that you remember.

Advertising here won't help them. We're informed.

it's sometimes unsettling to hear "from your friend, Sean Hannity" on a liberal radio station. :puke: But I'm thinking conservatives may be listening...just to get themselves worked up into an insane fit of rage.

It's almost as unsettling as hearing liberal radio personalities encouraging me to buy gold or invest in the "see clearly method".

was modding then too :crazy:

We support ya!

This is indeed a unique community, not least because of the way the admin keeps users and visitors informed.

:yourock:

I hope it helps! :)

Give it a try...BTW, does Google charge you an expensive set-up fee?

In fact, they are being extremely helpful -- which is very different from our experience in 2003. I guess when you have a website that gets more than 30 million pageviews a month, it gets their attention.

responsible for at least that many! Can't get a dang thing done for cruising the DU for info.

Thanks for a great site, and double thanks to all the admin, moderators, posters, et al for all hard work. DU is the best site on the "internets." Let the ads begin!

Hey, if it pays the bills, I'll put up with a Charlie the Tuna diving under the dust ruffle!

It sounds like a decent business proposition, so good luck. It will not influence my positive opinion about this site and I will remain a dedicated DU'er.

the ads and discuss any disadvantageous content.

Since the site is proprietary, and the proprietors are certainly open to reader feedback, I don't see the advantages over letting the site administrators decide.

n/t

The Democratic party IS a big tent, and I think it would be difficult to find advertisers that EVERYONE agreed with, all the time.

If people don't like a company, or a product, trash the hell out of them--I doubt there's any requirement for posters to not be rude to the advertisers that goes along with the package. It'd be impossible to enforce.

but I was just thinking that a more focused forum for this kind of talk would be useful by helping to steer away such talk from GD. I'd rather GD focus on Democratic and Progressive politics and Republican corruption and crimes... wouldn't you?

When I want to talk politics, I go to GD: POLITICS. GD is for the stuff that doesn't fit the political discussion frame, or is too old for LBN.

Besides, GD is a very public and well visited forum...and on the bright side, while everyone is page-viewing away and hollering about the offense, the ad revenues go up and up. I think it's a winning idea. Even if we see the odd offensive ad! Just because some flashing box on the computer screen tells me to buy something, do something, or vote a certain way, that doesn't make me do it. All it does is make me aware of its existence. And is fodder for a good thrashing, if deserved.

this is far more than a politics site.

being pissed off about the tuna sandwich is fair discussion if anyone wants to talk about it with ya!

as is saying when you don't like something being done to DU, it's our reponsibility to voice our concerns over anything, and as long as repeated name calling or threats are NOT made (esp. flame topics "Christianity sucks", "Gays cost us the election", anything goes on DU from what I've seen! lol

That CONDI 08 ad BITES!!!!

McCain for President??? He can't even make a good salad dressing, the putz!

Hell, I think it might be fun to deconstruct the odd ad...I love to point out to youngsters how advertisements try to manipulate them. They like being independent freethinkers, and resent it when ya point it out to them. Stops them from asking for a lot of stupid plastic crap at Xmas, too!

crazy pop-ups or siezure inducing flashies or system bugger uppers?

I don't know about animation. My understanding is that they permit animation, but they do not permit extreme animation.

:rofl:

It's easy to block pop-ups, but those flashing, whirling, mind-altering pieces of shit are just not acceptable to me.

I'll cough up another $25 to get you to reconsider (sorry, but that's all I can do).

Go to Huffington Post if you want to be thoroughly annoyed.

Is nobody wondering what Google is going to do with the data? The NSA wants to know.

Am I the only paranoid person here?

I might even click a few. :)

I've seen enough of the place that I know it would be tasteful.

Go for it.

Especially if they're mint flavored

The few donations that I have been able to manage have been small, and I couldn't even afford one this last time around. I love this sight and wish that I could contribute more, but my $$ circumstances have become more difficult. Ads would be only a slight inconvience in comparrison to what we get back from DU.

On my best month of Halloween I receive over $700.00 dollars for my google ads... I average several hundred dollars a month... It helps pay the bills...


Holiday Graphics

I'm certain we haven't seen the last fundraiser from DU. But ads in a media journal like DU are certainly acceptable. It's not like you're Sesame Street.

no more Grovelbot?!?!?!?!

But you never know.

They have them on ScubaBoard, and they are very well-targeted! I missed them when I paid to be a member, because members don't see the ads. I found more relevant websites, good companies to shop with, etc from those ads! I also like the ones I see on Gmail. I often see an ad about something I was just asking someone by email, and get information about exactly what I was looking for.

I usually don't click on banner ads much, and I avoid pop-ups at all cost, but Google Ads have been very unobtrusive and probably the BEST targeted ads I have encountered.

I'm all for y'all giving it a try!

I appreciate your discussing this with us. One thing about DU administrators...they never take you for granted and they never let you down, so best of luck with this venture. Try to not feel badly about our fundraisers. It`s the least we can do. Du is the best of the best.

It is SO much easier to understand something "new" when it is explained to us as clearly and logically as in this post.

I will reserve comment on this experiment as much as possible. I hope it works out well for DU. :D

That you put the ads after the discussion content in the markup. Not necessarily in the layout, but the markup.

I've seen all too often slow or nonresponsive ad servers stop page rendering cold at the point they appear in the code (this can especially happen in pages that use table-based layout, like this one). Not only can a hanging page frustrate users, but it can increase requests to the server as they click refresh repeatedly trying to "fix" the trouble.

I'm not sure it would work for our site, though. Since the content of our pages are generated by the users, we won't always know exactly how they will look, which makes it hard to put things out of order in the code.

But not the page headers, footers, sidebars, etc. I wanted to point out that there could be undesirable consequences to inserting ad code say, between the logo/menu and main content, instead of between content and footer. Just something to keep in mind while setting things up. Of course, if the plan is to put ads directly into discussion threads, then this is moot.

Nothing kills the utility of a website quite like ads placed badly that are unresponsive. I avoid sites like this or set up hosts entries that essentially block the ads entirely.

I don't have a problem with ads per se, because I understand you have to pay the bills, but when they interfere with the responsiveness of the site on which they are placed, it becomes quite irritating, especially to those of us who *do* in fact contribute financially.

As charlie said, it's not about how the site looks, but how it responds, and where the code is placed in the markup is what affects this.

I am always so impressed when you take the time to explain these types of things to all of us. It would be so easy for you to add ads, or change the format of things without any notice or explanation. What could any of us do about it except just roll with things as they happen. It's moments like this that you take the time to make this more than a website but a community and that is just so freakin' great. I've donated. I'll keep on donating when I can but my question is what can we do to help make these ads work? Is it a question of clicking on them? Will they have a progressive bent or just be randomly selected?

Thanks as always to all of you. I don't know what I would do without DU.

So they should generally be progressive, but there may be plenty of times when they are not. We'll see how well it works.

I'm not sure what you all can do to help out. You could click on ads when you see ones that interest you. But don't just click for the sake of clicking, because that would be counted as fraudulent.

Once again thanks for the headsup! :hi:

Since content is user generated

"Will SOMEONE give BUSH a BLOWJOB so we can IMPEACH HIM?"

I think it's very cool that google has taken notice of the popularity of DU. This would be one less thing for yous kids to worry about (fund raising).

It could smooth over some of the month to month trouble. Thanks for all you do to keep this boat afloat. Peace, Kim

:yoiks:

:popcorn:

:popcorn:

Just make sure we're not going to see "Condi 2008" or "Conservative Tshirts" ads like I sometimes see on other progressive blogs (I used to see these on Huffington Post all the time but not lately).

Sorta like a virtual punching bag to rid oneself of any of them there internet aggressions!!!!

if it becomes a problem you can always pull it. Thanks for letting us know whats going on.
:hug:

I thought the same thing and rolled my eyes.

I've come for years and enjoyed so much, and provided many DU users with great pro dem designs and anti bush ones to laugh at, and I'm very concerned that DU would consider getting involved with Google who, although not inherently 'evil' has connections to people who could use data mined from DU to figure out who all of us are, what we order, look at, you name it.

I hope there are experts at DU, or have been contacted, thoroughly making sure they're not able to deduce information by configuring with the DU servers.

Look, I know DU needs money, but the immense security violations we're under now, without question, is unbelievable, and I'd be very careful using them.

It's great Skinner is always so quick to respond to questions, you don't get that elsewhere, and he's being very helpful with all our concerns, he'll probably respond to your google jpg.


AND A REMINDER! Everyone start checking out your state's DU forum now for organized events, we are coming into the election cycle, let's get active and root out the repugs...


www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable

Well said.

:kick:

Bills have to be paid and this sounds like a good way.

Otherwise, they're just added information. I like a lot of the ads at Bartcop and have bought some stuff from progressive vendors, so there's an upside and little downside. Go for it.

While I enjoy the fact that it is here in it's current form, you do what needs to be done to make it viable. The rest of us can work around it.

I don't want to go through the experience again where we had the blatantly sexist ad that caused such a kerfluffle a couple of years back. *shudders at the mere memory*

if the content conflicts with the interest or sensitivity of this community? If so, go for it. I don't want to see Pro-life fetus or McCain '08 ads.

then go back to your regularly scheduled activity.

that way, they pay, DU gets paid, but they don't see results. they'll get the message soon enough and pull the ads themselves.

I'm all for it.

Really, I have no problem with making money with DU.

:thumbsup:

to turn off the ads...and non-donors have to just deal with it?

Is that possible?

:thumbsup:

thousand people, as skinner claims (of course, the donors probably generate a greater proportion of the traffic). But even still, there are over 100,000 unique visitors a day, why should the donors have to view the ads?

I think it's a great idea.

I appreciate the explanation and considerate attitude.

I know what you mean by the paltry income advertising generates. For as much traffic as I get, I thought I would at least clear $50 a month!

Best of luck to you during the trial-period.

ON EDIT: I think the economics of blogging will drastically improve over the next few years. Advertisers are starting to realize that while blogs and forums are easy to start, the quality and traffic is difficult to maintain.

based on the hits Skinner mentioned above, what's a total GUESS of what you think DU could make? it may make the fundraisers obsolete, as long as we're protected as users, I'm all for it.


www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable

I get nowhere near the kind of traffic DU gets. In my wildest dreams that happens!

According to SiteMeter, I'm getting between 750 - 1200 unique visits a day. (My own site-stats say much higher, but I like SiteMeter because it's more objective.)

I will not venture a guess as to how much DU may make for two reasons: 1) There are too many factors to consider. 2) I don't care. We on the Left are notorious for under-paying our talent. DU provides an invaluable service to the progressive community; the Admins should be generously compensated for their time.

story was good. I'll probably be back soon..

I might be missing the mark, but for awhile, DU had these gawdawfup popup ads that were impervious to Mozilla/Firefox's popup blocker. Yes, they were indeed poorly targeted. I don't think there are very many DUers who are into the various forms of patent medicine, bad anti-virus/popup/spyware software (which contains spyware), or spurious e-loans. This was the sort of stuff that was stealing my bandwidth for no good reason.

I think I speak for a large percentage of DUers when I say I really, really fecking hate popup ads, especially when I inadvertently click on one of them, and you get sent to some truly awful website that resets your default home page, puts a hundred tracking cookies on your system, and crashes your browser. Everybody ought to be able to make a living, but those were really annoying, and I doubt they were making you much money.

What I would want to know from Google, beyond the possibility of popups users can't do anything about, is whether the advertising can be turned off for users who, um, paid...an...additional monthly/annual fee, kinda like Salon or DailyKos.

They're text ads. In fact, Google won't allow adsense to be used on webpages that include excessive popups.

;-)

So if there is a thread up arguing about WalMart, should we expect to see an ad for WalMart? Just curious.

...new forum dedicated to starting topics that would generate ads for us to analyze, deconstruct, mock, and generally amuse ourselves with.

I like this!

evilly,
Bright

and the site-based option for advertisers lets them target specific sites (not keyword activated).

Sure, go ahead with the Google ads--I have no problem with that.

But you should keep the system in place that only donors are allowed starts, and the little perqs that come with the stars.

Why? Well, I don't own DU, of course, but every time I make a donation, I feel that I have made a little investment in our community.

I think that you should keep the donor star system in place--maybe not run the quarterly fundraisers, by keep the donor stars in place. If it gets to the point that DU doesn't need the funds from the stars, then you could give the money to a Democratic candidate or to a charity (think about how many DUers were affected by Katrina this year--a donation to Habitat for Humanity would be nice, for instance).

I just think that you need to continue the star system, because it makes donors feel like they have an interest in the community.

As for Google, GO FOR IT!

Instead of a quarterly fund drive (if they're no longer needed), each quarter we can raise funds for charity! The generosity of DUers is amazing, so we'd be sure to make an impact.

:toast:

I think you should use the money you raise from this to pay yourselves. I don't mind donating to DU about twice a year, and I'd bet that very few of us do mind. So give yourselves a pay raise with the income.

at least for the moment. I don't mind donating to DU and I do it every quarter. I'll still donate when asked. But this is worth a try, as I know there's always a need for additional income. And I trust Skinner to make the right decision if it turns out adsense isn't working for us.

http://www.cafepress.com/scarebaby/1446062

But this sounds pretty cool, and that's a understatement.

I make a shit load on my site.

...make spit's worth of difference to me either way. I say go for it!

As long as I don't have to look at 'em, I don't care how many are lurking there. And if DU can make a little cash out of it without losing integrity, privacy, etc., more power to ya!

encouragingly,
Bright

I think this sounds like a great money-making idea.

I'm actually shocked at how few people donate, even just a little. For the amount of time so many people spend here, I would have thought it would be a lot more people donating.

since DU is more like an extended family.
But give it a try, and if it makes me really, really, grind my teeth, I'll let you know.

Everything from the angry rightwingers who keep tabs on this place, to simple reading lurkers, who don't want to chime in.

Keep DU up and running, everybody happy. (owners and admin)

If it doesn't work, you can always back away. Just make sure that your trial run is just that, and doesn't lock you in for longer than it takes to get the lay of the land...then, sample opinion, and go from there.

My attitude is that anything that puts a spare dime in a democratic race is a good thing, and I'll put up with ads if it means more people will be able to either donate to Dems or just keep up with inflation or their internet bill!

Go, do, try, enjoy!!!!!

I agree, their targeting has improved a great deal over the past couple of years. As well, DU is busy enough that you will probably see some fairly decent click-thru conversion ratios. Go for it, just don't make any super long-term commitment.

I have another suggestion. Since you're already in the BlogAds program, have you ever considered opening up low-cost classified ad space? You know, the type some blogs have where an individual can run a small text-based ad in the side-bar, under the graphic ads?

...is the reliability of the servers providing the ad images (and the manner in which the
DNS thereof is configured.)

The best things would be for the ad images to be automatically fed to DU and hosted on DU's servers.
That might sound like a bad idea bandwidth-wise, but from the perspective of the visitors it will
speed up the site. If you rotate several ad images from several servers in and out of the
pages, each requires a DNS lookup and subsequent download and that can really slow down a
site's responsiveness if the DNS or ad image servers are slow or worse yet, malfunctioning.

Failing hosting the images It's better of course if these sites are highly reliable, and would
be best if they came from a limited number of image hosting services rather than from all over
the place. Perhaps with AdSense google hosts them all (I'm ignorant there), which would be a
good thing presuming Google can offer some level of assurance that their servers are robust. As
to DNS a lot of large companies like to play tricks with DNS load balancing and as such crank
their expiry times on records way down, which causes more frequent DNS lookups as the entries
time out of your visitors' caches.

How wonderful to be around people who actually act the way they talk politics! This only makes me want to support you more. And thank-you for opening the discussion, for the democracy, so we can let you know what we think and help build DU.

I urge you to give it a try. Getting started is free, so no risk. Clicks pay, but what brings in the most revenue is when people click on an ad and follow through with a purchase. Revenues are not consistant month to month, but I have noticed increasing averages overall. The code can be used in may interesting ways. Since I am planning to move from an antiquated forum software to PHPBB I have played with a code to place a set of horizontal banners after the OP in a thread, and it works great. I'd like to mod that code to also put a banner after a 10th post in a thread for long threads. Anyway, do it.

I really don't want banners in between our posts...

remember, DU gets lots of donations, over 1100 this quarter for an avg of $20 Skinner said. I hope it doesn't seem 'annoying', is all. I don't mind ads that are at the top, side or bottom of a page.

It is your call...

Peace!

just be careful. I had an adsense account on a new website that had, at the time, less than 2000 visitors. I checked my account one day out of curiosity and found that I had a whopping seven dollars in my account after 2 months. About a week later I went to check it and found my account had been disabled due to "fraudulent clicks". I wrote Google and asked them to explain to me and show me where the fraudulent clicks were and they couldn't, but still disabled my account.

Needless to say, it kind of soured me on adsense revenue. Just hope they don't do it to you if you show a lot of clicks.

On the other hand, if you need any help with it, let me know. I have a lot of articles and some software on how to maximize your profits from adsense, and I'll be glad to share with you.

Reconstruction!!!

...Of course, that turned out to be a damn fine album.

Anyway, jus' funnin' ya. If it helps pay the bills, I probably won't care. Even neon signs shaped vaguely like nude women (or men) won't get my burlap shorts in a bunch.

But I did like the stickies, too.

:hippie:

This website is well-organized and well-maintained; the discussion forums are the best on the web. The DU administrators deserve any financial benefits as a result of the hard work. I think you shouldn't apologize for the advertising; if the DUers disliked it that much, I'd challenge everyone to donate more to the site.

Like - will Google know how many times I've been fed a certain ad or if I clicked on it...?

google may know, but they don't share that with the advertisers.

they only know how many clicks they got.

Wow, have to give google credit for doing their research, and having the incentive to track you down. No wonder they are kicking ass.

and I know Romeo rations and Programmer Chow adds up fast

go for it!

:hi:

n/t

I won't. Brant is already a fucknut. I won't give him the liberty of knowing that I looked at his site.

Other than that ads don't bother me at all.

I love Google and DU, sounds like a nice marriage :hi:

I know of a half dozen sites, including ours, that cancelled Google adsense ads because they constantly turned up ads for rightwing, GOP-type stuff. Republican dating services, etc. If you say 50 bad things about George Bush, all the google software sees is "George Bush" and decides The Young Republicans are a fine match for you.

With all the mention of prominent Republicans here, I'd predict you'll get the same.

Now, depending on how you look at it, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You can take the attitude that it's nice for the GOP to pay the bill for people to organize against them. :evilgrin:

My suggestion - tell Google to take a hike and sign on with one of the big ad providers. Get a deal that pays per impression, not per click. Per click sucks. People will swear to you on a stack of "Fahrenheit 9/11" DVDs that they'll click on them like crazy. And they mean it. But a week later, they forget about it, get busy, get caught up in conversation, whatever, and the initial rush of click income slows to a trickle.

You can run skyscraper ads on the right side of the screen without any real diminishment of the "DU experience." The guys who own and manage this site have a right to make a decent living. You guys are unusually liberal (so to speak, hehehe) in your policies allowing people to promote one thing or another. Half the people who post here are selling or promoting something in their sig lines, so I can't imagine they'd want to complain about you all being able to know the check for the mortgage payment will be good next month.

Maybe youll quit squeezing the life blood from the members if you get some ad money.

:)

Certainly worth a try, nothing ventured nothing gained.

I've been pretty dissappointed with the conversion rates, and the CPMs always seem to hit my maximum allowed. I would also max out my budget in a matter of hours with tons of hits to my homepage. I paused my campaign about 2 weeks ago, and it hasn't affected my sales one bit.

If your proposal gets a positive reception, I would consider advertising here - i just hope the users are aware that advertisers are paying each time you click, and would appreciate the patronage. We're not all big companies with budgets that can afford frivolous clicking.

rucky

www.duckduckgooseboutique.com

The worst thing about google ads is the lack of control. You can exclude specific sites through your account, which is nice, but that only goes so far. One other thing you can do is section off specific portions of the page the ad code is on. You can find out about it at:

https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23168

But so long as the content of the messages being posted is used to deliver the ads, you're going to get ads showing up for things/sites that annoy you. The only good thing about it is that every time a du'er clicks on the ad, the people that annoy you have to pay :)


- K

sure, give it a try!

I am obviously weird a lot of times but that being said it seems to me that the advertisement thing would only be cool if posts don't get deleted if we are critical of the the products for one reason or another. This place is a lot better than when I first came here and success often breeds success.

Btw squeezing is a good thing sometimes :pals:

I have no problems with ads on the sidelines. But if we see a big endorsement by Skinner of Lieberman right next to a big ad for Lieberman, they we should worrry. (smile).

If nothing else, you can get a barometer of interest that may give some sort of measurement for the future. A lot of Democrats read these pages.

Sounds like Google has come a long way since 2003, just like us.

:thumbsup: for a try.

DemEx

although I am a sucker for cakes and cookies.:9
Hey, no problem with me. Spread ads all over the place. If they start causing anxiety, I'll let you know.

If it makes money for this site and it can help you all, then I don't see why going for it.

Go right ahead and I will still donate if necessary!

As if there wasn't advertising on DU already - that left-hand sidebar is always touting something. It's nice to come to part of the internet that ISN'T clogged with advertising. And there is no such thing as "subtle" advertising - it is inevitably designed to attract attention, even GoogleAds. What next, popups, and dancing smileys, and 10,000 free ringtones? "The fart button"? Seriously, guys, don't do this.

As for the donor system - I appreciate that it doesn't provide a stable cashflow. What it does provide is two things. First, donors "buy into" the site on an emotional level, and care for its wellbeing. Not that non-donors do not; but a donation is an extension of trust more than money that lends an attachment. Second, the donor system provides feedback for you guys about how the site is doing - far better feedback than advertising.

(Full disclosure: I am a Friend of the Adbusters Foundation and consider advertising a serious social ill.)

China.

Now, Google is a great company in a lot of ways - I often use their search tool and I have a gmail account. But Adsense is different, it's entering a commercial relationship with Google. On that basis ... I think a dissident website should be careful about entering that kind of relationship with a corporation that has behaved very badly in terms of pandering to the enemies of free speech.

Maybe you think I'm being a hypocrite, and it's your website. But I urge you to reconsider this experiment. DU's fundraisers have been getting more fun and more inventive, a good trend. Isn't there more that can be done in that direction?

I don't have a lot of money to donate, but I donate at least a little to DU every year. One of the reasons I like DU is the paucity of ads. Why are you doint this? Ugh! Jesus, I just got rid of TV and its constant ads. Yuck!

Obviously, this point of view isn't popular. I don't care. This ad idea sucks.

so I'll see the ads only once anyway.

Else I woulda contributed... :(

Definite. Would be good if they could even get ads from "Blue" companies here too, though I doubt that.

Ads that don't make sense to DU such as those from several years back, no. No way.

L-

that a few ads here and there won't bother me. And if the ads can help to pay for the operating costs the small inconvenience is well worth it.

But there is a possible middle ground.
Why not build in an option where where donors wont have to be expose to the advertisements.

You still get your advertisements and the revenue generated.

The donors get special option of not being targeted by the advertisements and hey if you say we only a thousand strong it would not drastically effect your ad revenue.


See you can eat both your pies :rofl:

Have the support of all the donors
and enjoy the advertising revenue.

I'm donating about 400 a year -- I wish it could be more. To me, this is the most Important Thing Ever. When I win the lottery, you're getting a giant chunk of it. Press on, make your decisions -- I'm behind you.

I see that they won't be Pop-up (which I despise) so I think if it helps the DU I'm for it! :-)

and doesn't begin to allow for a place for Republicans and other right wingers, go for it!

...that would prevent them from becoming drawn-out battles staged in General Discussion. There was a protracted struggle at Daily Kos over an ad that featured a pie fight between two women (I think it was an ad for the Gilligan's Island movie). Then some people went and splintered off to make a blog that kept talking about the pie fight and what it's presence on Daily Kos meant.

http://womenkossacks.blogspot.com

I'm not worried about there being right-wing ads because like, who would click on them? If they want to put poorly-targeted ads anywhere it would be their loss.

The risks seems to far outweigh the benefits. Have you checked out Google Watch? -- http://www.google-watch.org

"Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google since January 2000, used to work for the National Security Agency and had a top-secret clearance. Google would like to hire more like him. Can you trust Google with a database of all the search terms you've ever used?"

http://www.google-watch.org/jobad.html

everyone else does -- just take care not to allow advertisements that are contrary to progressive values

Once your initial experiments are over, would it be possible to consider a version of DU that is ad free for those who donate a certain amount quarterly, yearly, or whatever you deem fair?

A know of a number of sites that do this sort of thing. Non-paying members get served ads. Paying members don't.

I *do* understand why you would be considering this and in theory have no problem with it, but ads do become annoying, no matter how well targeted, in fact sometimes because of how well they are targeted. Is a discussion about AT&T, for example, going to end up serving us a bunch of ads for AT&T services? (I've seen AT&T, Dell, and even Wal-Mart ads on progressive oriented sites that use AdSense.) If so, I will have a problem with that.

In any case, one possible way to lessen the complaints that may develop in the future would be to offer an out for those who don't want the ads at all would be some sort of subscription requiring a certain level of payment. That said, I don't know from personal knowledge how difficult this is to set up, but it seems as though it could be accomplished fairly routinely, the same way certain menus, graphics, etc. can be displayed for some users and not others. I've done very, very trivial versions of the latter just with cookies.

Anyway, just something to consider...

...so members can pay to get rid of the ads. But we aren't going to make a decision on that until after we have tried out the ads for a while.

As for getting ads for AT&T, Dell, Wal-Mart, or the like: If you have a problem with getting ads like that, then I think it is fair to assume that you will probably have a problem with many of the ads we get. We will have some limits about what we want on our site, but we don't want our limits to be so ridiculously narrow that we have to reject half the ads we get.

By "problem" I don't mean "run around like a screaming banshee because I just can't tolerate this" problem. I just suspect a lot of irony nerves to start twitching when there's some lengthy discussion about NSA spying, cooperation from AT&T, etc., and then seeing an ad on some part of the same page for AT&T.

Ya gotta do what ya gotta do, though, and I'm confident y'all won't let it get too bizarre.

So have at it. :thumbsup:

Nothing new there, then. :D Go for it Skinner!

<snip>For the proof do a search (using a less evil search engine, http://www.alltheweb.com or even http://www.yahoo.com) for the words "Google immortal cookie"

The problem isn't policy, it's data retention. If they have it the government can buy it, or if google refuses to sell, seize it. Google is just one Patriot Act and sealed court order away from becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the domestic intelligence apparatus.

In fact, this may have already happened.

If you don't like being spied on avoid google. Do not do business with them. Do not trust them.<snip>

http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=ea0df4fe8ca1879c9df6b63ecbf269ac&topic=8311.msg112487

You got the call a week and a half ago, just before the fundraiser started. So why did you wait until after receiving all those donations to reveal this plan?

I'm not going to stop visiting DU or anything, and I still plan to donate soon (finally started working after many months of being unemployed), but I am not impressed with what looks like really shady, bottom-line, corporate, Republicanesque bait-and-switch move.

People are congratulating you on your forthrightness, but I see it exactly the opposite. You really should have mentioned it before beginning a fundraiser if you thought there might be even a CHANCE you would start using ads. From the looks of it, you had full knowledge and intentions to run the ads, and just chose not to tell us.

It seems to me that the donations were received under false pretenses. I can't congratulate you for that.

Seeing as it was held under shady, bottom-line, corporate, Republicanesque, bait-and-switch false pretenses.

You're not concerned at all about the appearance of impropriety?

I may have to rethink my intention to donate.

I guess all that remains is "ideology" on the "right" & idolitry elsewhere.

Yes, I'm popping in from the Lounge, and had to add that to K&R to keep my reputation. ;):D
K&R.

blame you a bit for giving it a try. I want DU to stay online and times right now are rough. I give you guys like pocket change and it took me an eon to do that, but it's not cause I don't love you--it's cos I'm BROKE. That's the pocket change that buys stamps to pay the rent we finally scraped up--or a can of cat food to stop that yowling noise, hee. Or even a tenth of a gallon of gasoline.

That's probably true of a lot of people here in this day and age--and a big symptom of why we desperately need DU to continue and be the best and safest it can be.

We'll deal with a bit of annoyance for the chance at a great deal of good. : )

please try to go easy on the animation. I can't tell you the number of sites I don't visit anymore because the piles of spinning, dancing and zooming crap slows the experience to a crawl.

would rather continue with DUers supporting the site.

Please. This is exactly how American politics got corrupted--the attraction of easy money versus the slow, messy work of collecting from willing individuals.

Say no to corporate dollars. Keep DU free of that influence!

so, we're the ones paying Google, it started well enough, $20-50 per month, then it bloomed to $5 or 6 hundred, and now we've had to cut it back. So, my limited opinion is, it's a short term gain, don't rule out fundraisers. But do it, it's 'free money'.

I haven't yet read the great slew of comments, maybe somebody else has already said this.

and on the data mining issue:
They have it already.
Make some money, you guys do a bang-up job, and I would like to see the site continue to operate.
On another note, I wonder if they extended the same sort of offer to our dark counterpart (fr)?
I never go over there (so difficult to navigate and sickening comments too), so I wouldn't know if they have adds or not.

This really is a great resource for me, and really do appreciate all the work you put in to it.

I will visit DU either way.

Thanks for the hard work in making this the best political website on the net.

:bounce:

They're not doing so now, and I'd prefer that ads I click on open a new window so I can close them when I'm done looking at the ad. Just took the Polling Point survey about Hilary, didn't realize that this was my only browser window open, closed it, & had to fire up a new browser session.

No biggy really but it "would be nice." :hi:

:toast:

Uh-uh. I don't like it at all. I'm not averse to change. I'm averse to the reduced white space and increased clutter.

I'll increase my annual donation if you'll stop the google ads.

Please.

I feel like it disrupts the flow of conversation.

I tried the shift/refresh option on the latest page, but it is still squeezed in very tiny with the right side ad section just huge.