Advertising placement on the site

Boards.ie: Mark

While advertising may not be your favourite topic, it is essential in keeping the site free to use, and allows us to maintain it, keep it running smoothly, and make improvements.

Since recently merging with Journal Media, we have taken the opportunity to review our ad positions to see if they can be made more efficient. Essentially, we want to present fewer ads, but in better and more consistent positions, a move that we think can benefit advertisers and users alike.

For starters, we are removing the ad at the bottom of the Touch site for both logged in and logged out users. Secondly, if you have selected a display view of 40 posts per page (which in my opinion, is the way to go), we will be reducing the number of ads displayed in the river from 4 to 3. The final change on the Touch site will see either MPU (300x250), which is currently utilised, or banner (320x50) ads displayed.

On Legacy, we are also looking at repositioning the ad at the bottom of the page to the right hand side. Some of you see an ad here already, in which case there will be no change aside from one less ad on the page. The rest of you may see an ad here in the future, keeping the number of ads on a page the same, but making the positioning consistent. However, even if the ad is not displayed on the right, we will be removing the ad unit from the bottom of the page.

These changes will make things consistent for both users and advertisers, who will be able to understand where to expect their ad to appear, while reducing the number of ad impressions across the site.