We've got a new advertising product to try out

Dav

Hello all.

So I'm here to talk about a new Advertising idea we've had that we're going to start with on Monday.

It's not bigger banners that slide over in front of your viewing area and move away when you try to close them

You're all familiar with Talk To forums at this stage I'm sure. They've been extremely successful for us and getting more of them is one of our biggest goals from a "this is how the site pays for itself" point of view.

One of the issues we've come across though is that there are lots of companies and organisations that would love something like this, but who aren't suitable for a full on Talk To forum with all the expectations that come with it from our members (things like customer service, accounts queries, fault reporting, etc). So we came up with a new idea that's sort of like a half way point between our Sponsored Threads and a Talk To forum - we call them Sponsored Forums (I know, it's a highly imaginative name).

I can explain how it'll work, but it might just be easier to show you.


(this is a mock-up, it's not going live until Monday)

As you can see, there is an additional (and clearly marked) Sponsored Forum for the people at Naturalife who recently ran a Sponsored Thread with us and had great success from it - so much so that they wanted to find more ways to talk with our community as well as the obvious desire to sell more of their products (I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence here by trying to suggest that this isn't ultimately about sales!). The forum will have a limited number of threads where the Naturalife team will be having some discussions about their product range and they've got special offers and freebies for all like they did with their Sponsored Thread.

So we're going to try this out for the next few months with Naturalife as a sub of the Health & Fitness forum.

Does this mean that community forums are "for sale?" Well no, the content is all being hosted on the Sponsored Threads section of the site outside of the (in this case) Health & Fitness section so Niamh and I will have responsibility for it. The impact this has on any community forum is the link in the sub-forums list and we won't be putting links for any and all Sponsored Forums, just those that are related to the community you're in. We've already been doing this sort of thing since we started with Talk To forums - if you have a look at the Broadband forum, you'll see links to the Talk To forums for the various ISP's we have on Boards.

If we get more businesses or organisations who want to get a forum of their own in a certain section, we may have to figure out a neater means of presenting these links without creating a big list of "Sponsored Forum: ...." at the top of a forum - I don't mind admitting that's a problem I'd really love to have But to be clear, you will only see, for example, Health and Fitness related Sponsored Forums in the Health and Fitness Community.

I'm sure there are questions, please post them here and I'll be happy to answer them.

nesf

Far preferable to mixing in the sponsored and non-sponsored content native advertising style.

5starpool

No harm, most people would prefer this form of revenue collecting to normal ads anyhow I'd say. Best of luck with it.

Calhoun

Is the sponsored forum on a timelimit? would it be removed once its no longer being sponsored?

DoYouEvenLift

If this is successful, which it may be, then it might be better to have an expandable link/parent forum at the top in the same place where when you click it it shows all the sponsored forums/sub-forums

Oryx

Who mods that forum?

Taltos

Oryx wrote: »

Who mods that forum?

The first person that asks that question.

Congratulations

Oryx

Taltos wrote: »

The first person that asks that question.

Congratulations

Genuine question. Did I miss something?

Micky Dolenz

He is pulling your leg.

It would make sense that the same people who mod the talk to forums would mod it. I think that's Dav and Niamh.


Good idea. Hopefully it works out.

Harold Finchs Machine

Oryx wrote: »

Genuine question. Did I miss something?

Yup, you missed the OP.

Oryx

Harold Finchs Machine wrote: »

Yup, you missed the OP.

I read the op. But as this is a sub forum of the ones I mod, I needed a bit more clarity than 'we are responsible for it'.

nesf

Oryx wrote: »

I read the op. But as this is a sub forum of the ones I mod, I needed a bit more clarity than 'we are responsible for it'.

With Talk-to isn't it the company that moderates it and Dav and Niamh oversee that not the local mods?

Oryx

nesf wrote: »

With Talk-to isn't it the company that moderates it and Dav and Niamh oversee that not the local mods?

This isn't talk to. I have no issue with it at all, just need to know if I can ignore it, modwise.

Micky Dolenz

As far as I know the reps don't have mod tools or have the ability to edit posts.

Dravokivich

You say the intention is to put this under health and fitness. Does this mean boards are then endorsing these products as health and fitness products, or just targeting the link based on the business the advertisers slot in to?

You may want to consider whether there is a need to make the distinction.

Vexorg

That's a nice unobtrusive way of targeting a product or company, and with more control over the content than google or other network served advertisements.

Well played sir.


Cannot see boards endorsing company, product or service (maybe they will at some point?) and in fact can manage the advertising/message/thread content faster than they can with other network served advertising should the need ever arise.

Regarding the moderation of these forums, probably should not be the responsibility of local mods other than housekeeping perhaps? defiantly something to be cleared up between mods and staff and worth a conversation on the mod forum.

El Weirdo

Dravokivich wrote: »

You say the intention is to put this under health and fitness. Does this mean boards are then endorsing these products as health and fitness products, or just targeting the link based on the business the advertisers slot in to?

You may want to consider whether there is a need to make the distinction.

Indeed.

Boards Deals' magic bracelets, anyone?

Dav

We have ads all over the site, no one asks about whether we "endorse" them - why would this be any different? We figured since it's clearly marked as Sponsored/Paid For stuff and in the title of this thread I'm calling it an advertising product - I'm not sure what or why ambiguity exists. However, if people feel the need for us to explicitly state that then we absolutely will - that any doubt exists at all means I've obviously not made it clear enough that it's an Advertisment, so thank you for the feedback on that - I'd honestly have never even considered that anyone could misinterpret it as anything other than an Advertisement and then we'd have to go through the same rigmarole that we had with them fecking magic bracelets again!

Who mods it? As I said in the OP, Niamh and I have full responsibility for it. It's not a sub-forum of any of our communities, it's all hosted in the Sponosored section which is under the remit of the staff of the company. The link to the forum appears in your sub-forum list because that's the only way we can make it work in VBulletin without a massive chunk of developer and testing time being needed to make changes to the page templates. If this product takes off for us, the liklihood of that dev time being spent is a lot more likely to happen, but for now, we're using the VBulletin functionality to create Links that appear as sub-forums.

Taltos

Oryx - only copped now that it was placed under your forum - sorry, clearly my attempt at early morning humour misfired. No offense intended.

Dravokivich

Dav wrote: »

We have ads all over the site, no one asks about whether we "endorse" them - why would this be any different? We figured since it's clearly marked as Sponsored/Paid For stuff and in the title of this thread I'm calling it an advertising product - I'm not sure what or why ambiguity exists. However, if people feel the need for us to explicitly state that then we absolutely will - that any doubt exists at all means I've obviously not made it clear enough that it's an Advertisment, so thank you for the feedback on that - I'd honestly have never even considered that anyone could misinterpret it as anything other than an Advertisement and then we'd have to go through the same rigmarole that we had with them fecking magic bracelets again!

Who mods it? As I said in the OP, Niamh and I have full responsibility for it. It's not a sub-forum of any of our communities, it's all hosted in the Sponosored section which is under the remit of the staff of the company. The link to the forum appears in your sub-forum list because that's the only way we can make it work in VBulletin without a massive chunk of developer and testing time being needed to make changes to the page templates. If this product takes off for us, the liklihood of that dev time being spent is a lot more likely to happen, but for now, we're using the VBulletin functionality to create Links that appear as sub-forums.

In regards to the first paragraph:

The difference between the ads currently in place and this new feature, is that those ads are targeted specifically to the user by the advertising service, you are now targeting ads and userbase based on where you are going to put them.

Maybe endorse was the wrong word to use, but the idea was that where you determine the ad is placed are ye recognising the product for what it is, or just putting it there because that's the category the product falls under.

Dav

Dravokivich wrote: »

In regards to the first paragraph:

The difference between the ads currently in place and this new feature, is that those ads are targeted specifically to the user by the advertising service, you are now targeting ads and userbase based on where you are going to put them.

Maybe endorse was the wrong word to use, but the idea was that where you determine the ad is placed are ye recognising the product for what it is, or just putting it there because that's the category the product falls under.

We sell and have always sold ad inventory based on the forum they'll be shown in - no point in having ads for an event in Dublin City being shown in the Cork forum for example. However, we have a lot more inventory than the sales team can sell, so we use things like Google Ads to fill up the remaining ad-space on the site. Even within that though, the ads are loosely categorised based on where they're being shown on the site so we try to match relevant ads to the relevant communities and forums. Not everyone categorises their ads correctly when submitting them to Google though, so that's why you might see unrelated content.

With this particular product, it's a brand that specialises in health food supplements, Health & Fitness seems the logical place for it (their previous Sponsored Thread appeared under the Nutrition & Diet sub-forum of H&F). Members of that community are also more likely to have seen their name before.

Orion

No problem with things like this as long as they are obvious advertising of course. I just noticed that the forum appears in the New Forums section of the Boards cat. When you go into it it's not immediately obvious that's it's a paid forum (unlike in H&F where it's quite clear that it's sponsored - the breadcrumbs show it as part of the Sponsored Threads forum but that's very small print and easily missed. Maybe remove it (and other ones) from the New Threads section as a "fix".

Dav

I just spotted that myself, I will see what we can do about it - thank for the heads up.

Turtwig

I have very mixed feelings with this. These are 'threads' published in the same vein as normal threads yet they say these:

As the heart is the most active muscle in the body, requiring constant fuel and coordinated messages from the nervous system, thiamine is the ideal aid for heart health.

Just one capsule a day will help keep your heart in shape, giving you the freedom to enjoy life to the fullest.

Udo’s Choice Ultimate Oil Blend is an excellent source of Omega 3,6 & 9 and is a must for people who have an active lifestyle

That's bordering medical advice. Yes, it's a sponsored thread. I don't see how that gives exemption. My understanding with the site was that anything health related needs to be made explicitly clear that boards.ie itself does not publish health advice. Yet, here via the form of native advertising it effectively is publishing such info. I wonder, how'd that bode for any potential legal issues in future regarding health advice. My understanding always was the forum always down played health aspects because doing otherwise would leave open the possibility of an image where health advice or habitats were being promoted. Something which we cannot have?

Oryx

In terms of that particular forum what happens if the health claims are challenged? (As regularly happens with such products)

coffee_cake

Honestly I think this should be put in the talk to forum, not in a health and fitness forum where they make mad claims that wouldn't be allowed by anyone else and it's definitely not clear enough that it's not just a H&F subforum. I think turtwig makes a good point also

Considering what happened with that safefoods fiasco where they were telling everyone to eat more bread and got shouted down by all the regulars I would be interested in knowing the answer to oryx's post also. Are we allowed to call them out on anything

Dav

If they're making claims about what their stuff does, challenge them on it, ask for the science to back their claims up - they have no business selling it if they can't. The Safefood thing taught us that they simply had no idea what we're talking about and we didn't work with them anymore after all that.

No one queried this when the people from Naturalife had a Sponsored Thread in the H&F section 2 months ago - they were selling the same products then as they are now. There's no difference in the set-up - they just have more threads than they did previously. It's because their Sponsored Thread ran so successfully that they wanted to have this forum. Again, that was clearly marked as Sponsored advertising content - we're not trying to stealth this stuff in as fake content or any of that sort of nonsense you see elsewhere.

I don't know how something with the words SPONSORED FORUM in it's title can lead to any confusion as to what this forum is - I don't think you're giving people enough credit for being able to distinguish advertising from community driven content.

I'm rolling a charter out onto the forum to explain it in more detail what it is, why it's here and so on. Hopefully that should make things clear beyond a shadow of a doubt.