OK, this is going too far (Ad Placement)

[AAjax]

Originally posted by: Krk3561

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
It's not REALLY that horrendous (as far as appearance). It does result in a lot of "wasted" space, but if they want the ads there, that's fine (though on the right would be better, and as long as they don't blink).

The only major problem is once you get down below the adspace, there's just blank page being wasted (and no the solution isn't more ads ).

There comes a time when people with limited capabilities have to be left behind and forced to upgrade, otherwise we'd still have games written for 1MB video cards. It took forever for many sites to optimize even for 1024x768. If AT wants to put a relatively small ad-bar on the left, and you're stuck at a low resolution so that it's annoying, either upgrade or stop using the site. If you went to a NEW forum and saw something like that, would you start complaining about it there?

Cant really compare graphics cards to monitors. Not everyone has deskspace for a 21" CRT.

Well I do have a 21" CRT and I still dont like it, Anand really needs to look deeply into the staff that so blindly pull this stuff and think about getting some folks that are in touch with the AT community, heck these are the guys that brought you such things as the tiger direct sticky thread (like anyone who has drawn a breath in the last decade dosent know what complete thieves they are) and then go's on to defend them? I will not give a troll, be it a company or a person a second chance when they blatently rip someone off.
But I degress, I understand that it requires $$ to run a site the size of Anandtech. What I dont understand is how the people that run it are so out of touch with the people that use it. Why would I even think about subscibing when there are so many people who are completely dis-satisfied with the service they recived after doing so, they greatly outnumber the "fully satisfied" it seems.

But of course its allways easy to complain about stuff, its much harder to actually do it. That said, please, please, please take a long look at the way these things are done, and perhaps take a little more time and thought before implementing them.

Jax


++Edit++ Oh yeah, please move the ads to the right (if they must be on the sides at all) Thank you

 

[vegetation]

Wow, I've never come across a forum that's trying to intentionally kill itself. Forums are nothing without a userbase, why scare people off?

 

[c]

It's a simple concept. You can't have effective advertising if your ads piss off your target audience. It's really that simple. Move it to the top or right. Most/all of us aren't arguing against the use of advertising for money to run a site. We're saying do it in a way that doesn't PISS US OFF.

And to the people telling us to spend $30... Well a lot of us are hot deals browsers and quite frankly this isn't a "hot deal". Not only that but a good number of us wouldn't ever give in to paying when we feel like we're being pressured to by these highly unprofessional ads.

And to reiterate......... YOUR ADVERTISING WILL BE INEFFECTIVE IF YOU PISS OFF YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE. Take pop ups for instance. I close those without EVER looking to see what they're selling because I would never buy something that is advertised to me in an annoying way. I never buy from telemarketers either on the same principle. I have clicked ads before though and these were the ones that both interested me and didn't piss me off.

CONSUMERS ARE SMARTER THAN YOU THINK AT/GOOGLE.

 

[Adul]

i had a look and I have to agree with the with many of the others The ad on the left is suck.

 

[EDiT]

I agree with most of the people here. I have a big monitor, but that bar on the left looks like sh1t. I'm sure whoever thought of it figured it was a creative idea since no one else does it, but I'm pretty people don't do it because they want people to keep visiting their site. People don't visit sites that look like sh1t.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

PLEASE move the ad to the right side.

 

[J5im8yo]

The way a forum looks affects the person who is posting. Now I don't even feel like posting because the ad is so ugly. It's really bothering people and it should be removed or move somewhere else. After all if this doesn't change there are always alternatives to forums like these. Don't loose any members by doing something stupid.

 

[Yai]

I agree, right side is better and bottom is the best

 

[fourtwenty]

Why don't you just double the height of the space at the top for ads?For most threads you have to scroll down the page to read everything anyways, what's a few more inches going to hurt?

 

[EDiT]

Hmm...proxomitron is our friend.....

 

[kindest]

my neck hurts now!

 

[Lars]

Wow, the new ad placement really sucks.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Thank god for gecko

 

[EpsiIon]

NumberOfUsersHatingTheAdsOnTheLeft++

 

[NuclearFusi0n]

BingBongWongFooey, your stylesheet thinger stopped working!

 

[bot2600]

quick solution, unmaximize IE, move it so it 'hangs a couple inches off the right side of the screen, stretch it to fill the whole screen, then move it to the left until the ads are off the side of the monitor and the forums fit snug on the screen, and no ads on the left 'that you can see'

 

[elanarchist]

If you want to get rid of the text ad, you can use the old Windows host trick. Just add the following line to your hosts file:

127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com

You will need to reboot after this to see the change. For Windows XP users, the hosts file is located in <Windows Directory>/system32/drivers/etc

The only thing is that the annoying white space will still be there, but its now marginally less annoying. Alternatively, you could subscribe to the forums to get rid of all the ads and support Anandtech. Oh yeah, and if you ever want to see the google text ads again for whatever reason (as in the banner get placed on the right *HINT HINT*), just delete the line.

 

[c]

Originally posted by: bot2600
quick solution, unmaximize IE, move it so it 'hangs a couple inches off the right side of the screen, stretch it to fill the whole screen, then move it to the left until the ads are off the side of the monitor and the forums fit snug on the screen, and no ads on the left 'that you can see'

I think I will actually use this method just on this site until they fix these ads. I'll just keep one window open for this site that's stretched in that way. My browser navigation buttons are on the left side but I know the keyboard shortcuts.

 

[Lord Evermore]

90% of people who have been here a long time and claim they're going to leave forever over something like this, come back soon. The rest haven't been around long enough in the first place to become quantumly entangled with the site so they can stay away.

Everybody'll get used to whatever is decided. I'm sure they do understand it's an issue by now. It really isn't THAT terrible. It's certainly better than all the sites that for years have had flashing banner ads on both the left and right sides as well as the top and bottom and interspersed in the content, which by then was compressed down to half the screen width at 1024x768, and even less at lower resolutions.

I haven't seen anybody complaining about the AT web site ads which are surrounding the content.

For those that complain that they have to scroll, what browser and screen resolutions are you using? Most people don't have to scroll, all the forum widths are dynamic. And if you do have to scroll, and they put the ads on the right, then that means you have to scroll to see the ads. While that may not be exactly the definition that Google uses for where they won't let ads appear, I'm sure as soon as Google checks on it they'll tell AT that it violates the spirit of the requirement.

I can't believe I'm defending ads on AT of all places. That ought to be a sign that everybody else needs to stop complaining.

 

[Lord Evermore]

elanarchist: how is filtering out the ads and leaving a big white space less annoying than some small-font plaintext ads? At least when people filter out banner ads and Flash, it's to get rid of highly annoying content leaving behind a calm blank region, or simple removes the unused space and moves the real content to fill it in. Google ads are just sitting there, looking no more annoying than the content of the posts themselves.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: NuclearFusi0n
BingBongWongFooey, your stylesheet thinger stopped working!

I've got one that's a million times better, however I cannot reveal my precious intellectual property to the world for fear of it being reverse engineered, and I don't want to have to invoke the DMCA. You'll thank me later

 

[AnandTechDeals]

Hi Everyone,

I have been told to not stir too much of into this matter, so I will make this one last post and hopefully address as many issues as possible.

1.) We cannot move this banner to the top because there are already banners there. Yes it would be nice to not need additional banners but we do need to pay for the bandwidth. Some members were correct in saying we are probably not able to move the banner to the right side. This does not mean we are bending to the will of a certain advertiser. Perhaps you have seen other websites and how they are dealing with plummeting click through rates and advertising prices.

2.) We are not trying to piss anyone off. Understandable, no one wants to put any banners on the website. While I cannot condone ad blocking or anything of the like, I do understand your choice to do so. However, consider the downfall. If you aren't giving your 30 dollars to AT to pay for bandwidth (subscription), and you aren?t viewing the banners, we have no way to generate money for the bandwidth. Eventually, we will run out of money and the site will go under. By the way, this is not a problem that only plagues AnandTech.

We are all sorry for those of you who feel the banner has alienated your experiences here on the forums.

Kristopher Kubicki
kkubicki@anandtech.com

 

[krackato]

I understand the whole need to pay for bandwidth, and I should probably subscribe, and all the rest of it... but let me be honest and say that I liked it better when there wasn't an ad on the left of the forum. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but I'd rather it went away. You don't always get what you want, but that doesn't mean that you still don't want it.

 

[dmk11]

On my 10.3" laptop screen, it takes WAY too much space.
I don't think I've seen an ad placement as annoying as this one.

 

[Gatsby]

Originally posted by: AnandTech Deals
Hi Everyone,

2.) We are not trying to piss anyone off. Understandable, no one wants to put any banners on the website. While I cannot condone ad blocking or anything of the like, I do understand your choice to do so. However, consider the downfall. If you aren't giving your 30 dollars to AT to pay for bandwidth (subscription), and you aren?t viewing the banners, we have no way to generate money for the bandwidth. Eventually, we will run out of money and the site will go under. By the way, this is not a problem that only plagues AnandTech.

I'll only block adds that become nuisances. I understand that bills must be paid, but if the Ad is a nuisance to the site, I'll start host blocking it.