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BNMC

How do I stop this ad appearing on my homepage?

Spear

BNMC wrote: »

How do I stop this ad appearing on my homepage?

As with all ads, you need to be subscriber to be able to turn them off.

BNMC

Spear wrote: »

As with all ads, you need to be subscriber to be able to turn them off.

I use Adblock so I don't see any ads until this one appeared today, right smack bang in the middle of my homepage. Very annoying only seeing 3 recent posts.

Boards.ie: Niamh

Moved to Feedback, the Feedback charter now applies.

Boards.ie: Niamh

BNMC wrote: »

I use Adblock so I don't see any ads until this one appeared today, right smack bang in the middle of my homepage. Very annoying only seeing 3 recent posts.

You can dismiss the ad by clicking on the X in the top right hand corner of it. You can read more about them from the post we put up back in September here.

Dav

BNMC wrote: »

I use Adblock so I don't see any ads until this one appeared today, right smack bang in the middle of my homepage. Very annoying only seeing 3 recent posts.

Those banners you're blocking pay the wages of 8 people. Maybe you'd consider adding Boards.ie to your adblock whitelist as contrary to popular belief we are not swimming in money at all.

Ross used to flat out site ban people who admitted to adblocking us, he figured you're getting the site for free and the banners on it paid his wages, so anyone blocking those banners were quite literally taking the money out of his pocket. He kinda had a point.

MugMugs

Ban people who block ads and this would be a very lonely and empty forum.

Ban anybody who admits to it and you're pretty much in denial.

Understand why ads are being blocked and adapt accordingly (like what you're doing with your sponsored threads) and you may just may get a bigger hit rate and subsequent return.

Steve

Dav wrote: »

Ross used to flat out site ban people who admitted to adblocking us, he figured you're getting the site for free and the banners on it paid his wages, so anyone blocking those banners were quite literally taking the money out of his pocket. He kinda had a point.

Was that not DeV vs Overheal?

Realistically Dav, there are very few sites I whitelist for ads any more, boards included, even with subscriber status.

Boards.ie is about content, community, and users, not how much advertising you can shove in our face before we leave.

AltAccount

TBH, I'm perfectly happy to leave boards ads unblocked and just mentally block them out. I get enough benefit for free from boards that I'm happy to pay the mental overhead of ignoring the ads.

Slightly OT, but my €0.02

Pelvis Parsley

The touch site being a case in point. It's riddled with the things.

Steve wrote: »

Was that not DeV vs Overheal?

Realistically Dav, there are very few sites I whitelist for ads any more, boards included, even with subscriber status.

Boards.ie is about content, community, and users, not how much advertising you can shove in our face before we leave.

nesf

Steve wrote: »

Boards.ie is about content, community, and users, not how much advertising you can shove in our face before we leave.

Sure, but we somehow need to figure out a way to pay for servers, solicitors etc. This site has gotten far too big and receives far too many solicitor's letters to be run just by voluntary part-timers.

Pelvis Parsley

Most of which could be dealt with by...another solicitor's letter. Not to dismiss or trivialise the need for best practise against legal action, but these guys will write a letter for you if you stub your toe on a wall you just kicked. For the price of a half decent lunch, less on retainer.

Also, every reasonable user understands the need to generate funds (this isn't a happy clappy exercise in volunteerism any more-except when it comes to the mods and admins who actually do most of the frontline legwork, that is), but it's the semi-agressive attitude that isn't constructive here. Never was. And your man was never right to ban people for their comments on or ill advised use of adblock, however provocatively they put it.

What next, infractions for giving out about ads? The touch site is full of the buggers.

We get that the stakeholders want a return (not just the Fallons, the Journal can't be making money-or news, Daft is alternately doing both), but they are playing a longer game, and boards is not altogether under their remit anyway. Said owners also would presumably want to explore the discussion fora model vis a vis direct interaction with willing commercial interests, etc., etc. and work on what they're already at. Which is where the debate on alternative ways of raising revenue come in.

Eight staff is a figure that is somewhat surprising tbh.

nesf

Pelvis Parsley wrote: »

Most of which could be dealt with by...another solicitor's letter.

Eh. No. Really, no.

Pelvis Parsley

nesf wrote: »

Eh. No. Really, no.

All of them?

(I can do short answers too.)

Steve

nesf wrote: »

Sure, but we somehow need to figure out a way to pay for servers, solicitors etc. This site has gotten far too big and receives far too many solicitor's letters to be run just by voluntary part-timers.

Back in the day when adclicks and subscribers were all that were paying CuLT's wages as well as the elastic bands and duct tape holding the servers together, that was true and was well appreciated by most of the members here.

Nowadays, boards (and adverts and the journal and daft etc..) have proper funding, spanky offices and sota server solutions thanks to DMG. I'm open to being told otherwise by staff but I doubt click-throughs on boards are a significant part of the revenue stream.

nesf

Pelvis Parsley wrote: »

All of them?

(I can do short answers too.)

If you think all that's involved is getting your solicitor to write a letter then, yes, that's really something you don't want to be doing. Unless you want to be arguing your case in front of a judge down the line for the % that will take you to court over something minor if they aren't met half-way.

nesf

Steve wrote: »

Back in the day when adclicks and subscribers were all that were paying CuLT's wages as well as the elastic bands and duct tape holding the servers together, that was true and was well appreciated by most of the members here.

Nowadays, boards (and adverts and the journal and daft etc..) have proper funding, spanky offices and sota server solutions thanks to DMG. I'm open to being told otherwise by staff but I doubt click-throughs on boards are a significant part of the revenue stream.

Sure, but it still has to make some money. It's not like the nice lads at DMG will just fund it indefinitely out of their back pocket without caring if the site is trying to come up with money to fund itself. It's not like they could just remove all ads from the site and no one further up the company chain wouldn't complain (believe me I'd love if they could do this, I detest online ads and pretty much refuse to use the mobile version because of them).

Pelvis Parsley

I didn't say all, I said most. I also said I wasn't dismissing the need for vigilance, but you chose to ignore that part in a cursory, throwaway and patronising response.

The receipt of a solicitors letter does not instantly equate to a four or five figure bill. They all deserve scrutiny, if nothing else if only out of a duty of care to the site itself, but the vast majority will be dealt with quite easily.

nesf wrote: »

If you think all that's involved is getting your solicitor to write a letter then, yes, that's really something you don't want to be doing. Unless you want to be arguing your case in front of a judge down the line for the % that will take you to court over something minor if they aren't met half-way.

Dav

I'll just preface this post with this:

I'm not going to be infracting for complaining about ads or anything of the sort. I was thinking out loud when I mentioned it being a site ban thing back in the day - it wasn't intended as some sort of "we're thinking about doing this again" suggestion - my apologies everyone if it read that way.

Pelvis Parsley wrote: »

Most of which could be dealt with by...another solicitor's letter. Not to dismiss or trivialise the need for best practise against legal action, but these guys will write a letter for you if you stub your toe on a wall you just kicked. For the price of a half decent lunch, less on retainer.

Wow... Just wow... I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I'm genuinely astonished that you appear to have absolutely zero understanding of the legal issues we face and yet have posted a frankly ridiculous solution and actually thought it was worth sharing.

Solicitor's letters aren't anywhere near as cheap as you're suggesting and if we're supposed to pay someone to write one for us every time we get one in (we average 1 a week) then we'd bankrupt ourselves. You can't just ask a solicitor to send a letter defending you, they'll have to research the issue, read through potentially hundreds of posts to assess the facts and then advise us if the original complaint has legs or not. They're not going to do that for free. If you then reply to a solicitor's letter with another solicitor's letter you just have a seemingly unending over and back as the solicitors attempt to one-up each other (on behalf of their clients - that's not a criticism at all, this is exactly what they're being paid to do) and this can go on for months. Even at €50 a pop (and if you're hiring a solicitor who's prepared to write a letter for only €50, then good luck, you're going to need it), we'd be dead in the water in 6 months.

Pelvis Parsley wrote: »

Eight staff is a figure that is somewhat surprising tbh.

Why? The break down is Gordon (COO), Declan (Product Manager), Dav & Niamh (Community Team), Rónán, Alvis, Diego and Andres (Tech team).

Steve wrote: »

Nowadays, boards (and adverts and the journal and daft etc..) have proper funding, spanky offices and sota server solutions thanks to DMG. I'm open to being told otherwise by staff but I doubt click-throughs on boards are a significant part of the revenue stream.

And where do you think this "proper funding" comes from Steve? Serious question.

Click Through banners as a business model don't exist any more, it doesn't pay and has been replaced with the affiliate links model where we basically ad a reference to every outbound URL and claim a percentage of any sales it might generate. One one hand, I kinda admire the elegance of something like that, The link remains and the readers get the info they want and we get a cut, but on the other I think it's a step too far in terms of monetising everyone's contributions to the site and it feels a little greasy...

Banner impressions are still our main source of revenue, but the revenue it generates has been hit very hard by the rise of Google Ads.

Guess what, we don't like online banner ads either, but they remain the most effective means of paying the bills. Commissioner Gordon and I have had seriously heated discussions every time we're trying something new because that's part of our jobs. He's responsible for running the company, I'm responsible for making sure all of you are happy and every time this comes up, we clash. It's not personal of course, Gordon is still very much my friend as well as boss, but it's both our responsibilities to fight for our cause on behalf of the site. So there will be no televised gladiatorial combat between the company's management (although I'm sure we'd make some decent money from selling tickets to a stream of it )

Ultimately, Boards.ie Ltd needs to at the very least be self sufficient / breaking even and we're not, but we're working really hard on getting there and we try to include you all in the decision making process when we can.

Steve

Thanks for the honest reply Dav.

Serious answer: I don't know where your revenue comes from but I knew it couldn't be from click-throughs so thank you for clarifying that and explaining.

I won't pretend to know anything about the referral links model.

I have the utmost respect for you guys and the work you do.

Posy

How does boards make money from advertising?

(It may be clear that I'm pretty clueless about such things so just wondered!)