Advertising AdBlock

Taluntain · Jun 23, 2014

Using a German proxy? Sometimes they just misclassify a block of IPs as well so you get ads in the wrong language.

sexbad? · Aug 31, 2014

What could it mean?

Jaesun · Aug 31, 2014

Prosper bought ad space on the codex?

Grimlorn · Sep 11, 2014

So there is a lot of talk about adblock and turning it off by journalists and people commenting on websites that post good articles. How much money is involved? What is the difference in ad revenue between adblock on and off and when you click on ads? it's something I've always been curious about.

Taluntain · Sep 11, 2014

It's the same as with every other thing. If a dozen people are doing it, it's negligible. If you have more than 50% of your site visitors doing it, it definitely isn't. Advertising is in many cases the only (or at least major by far) source of income for most websites, so the percentage of your site's visitors blocking ads is the percentage of advertising income that the site isn't getting. It's simple math, really. Wait, deja vu...

Grimlorn · Sep 11, 2014

So you get nothing if the ads are blocked? How much do you get compared to the clicking on the ads and not clicking on them? Is it big? I'm not looking for the Codex's personal ad info. I'm just more curious how this affects these gaming websites that are starting to see new traffic due to putting out good articles on the whole gamergate thing.

Taluntain · Sep 12, 2014

Yes, nothing if ads are blocked. Most ads only pay per click but some do pay per impression, but this is all combined in the end as you've got thousands of different ads in rotation so you just get a combined figure out, which is very low for independent gaming websites. And the advertising income fluctuates considerably from month to month, so at best you can look at a yearly average. Ad blocking is affecting all websites considerably, you can google for it and you'll find dozens of articles, even from a number of big gaming websites where they explain the situation in detail. It's a problem that's been snowballing for years, up to the point where the ratio of gamers for instance who don't have AdBlock installed is probably smaller on average than those who do. So everyone's got double the traffic but half the income (or less) and it's obviously not a sustainable situation because the AdBlock user base is only getting bigger every month. It's not that critical with websites that don't have paid staff like around here, but those that do certainly won't be able to keep going indefinitely if their traffic (and consequently costs) will keep going up or remain the same, but the number of visitors who actually enable them to pay said staff will keep going down. Everyone can downsize and cut costs to a point, but eventually they'll hit the breaking point where maintaining a site at a standard that is still acceptable to them just isn't financially feasible any more. Big gaming websites are businesses like any other and they have to be profitable in order to stay around.

FuriousGamer87 · Sep 12, 2014

Taluntain said:
Yes, nothing if ads are blocked. Most ads only pay per click but some do pay per impression, but this is all combined in the end as you've got thousands of different ads in rotation so you just get a combined figure out, which is very low for independent gaming websites. And the advertising income fluctuates considerably from month to month, so at best you can look at a yearly average. Ad blocking is affecting all websites considerably, you can google for it and you'll find dozens of articles, even from a number of big gaming websites where they explain the situation in detail. It's a problem that's been snowballing for years, up to the point where the ratio of gamers for instance who don't have AdBlock installed is probably smaller on average than those who do. So everyone's got double the traffic but half the income (or less) and it's obviously not a sustainable situation because the AdBlock user base is only getting bigger every month. It's not that critical with websites that don't have paid staff like around here, but those that do certainly won't be able to keep going indefinitely if their traffic (and consequently costs) will keep going up or remain the same, but the number of visitors who actually enable them to pay said staff will keep going down. Everyone can downsize and cut costs to a point, but eventually they'll hit the breaking point where maintaining a site at a standard that is still acceptable to them just isn't financially feasible any more. Big gaming websites are businesses like any other and they have to be profitable in order to stay around.

True. Codex can have my ad-bucks for being so chill :takemyjewgold: