I’ve never been all that put off by banner ads though even those can be animated and have sound these days which is irritating. Right or wrong, like many who got painfully sick of just how obnoxious ads became after the 2000’s I use an adblocker (which I’d be happy to disable specifically for the site). - In short, as long as the ads aren’t too intrusive then I personally don’t mind them being there.
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So long as they’re not obtrusive and irritating, and don’t leave my screen covered in grandpa dick, I say go for it. I’ll even whitelist here, to put my pennies on the pile.
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As long as they aren’t intrusive like pop-ups or redirects.
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sure, il turn the ad block off
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I hate adds too, but like most people here, I don’t mind them when they aren’t intrusive. I would just disable my adblocker for the forum and that is it. I think the pros… outweight the negatives 
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First, as always, I really appreciate the transparency you all share while running the site. It’s abundantly clear how much you care about the community when it comes to this stuff.
As for the ads, it seems like the natural next step in helping this website and community grow. It’s exciting to hear that the amount of traffic here is such that running ads can be that lucrative! I agree that as long as the ads aren’t overly intrusive, it sounds like a good opportunity.
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For as much as I detest advertising, as long as you keep it malware-free and don’t have them automatically play audio while we’re browsing, they shouldn’t be a problem except for users with slow computers or poor internet; and if they really can’t take it, they have AdBlock.
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Big, big, BIG this right here. I generally have no problems with ads whatsoever when they’re actually useful, but my god does it annoy the shit out of me when a website does several auto-play video ads and just tanks the whole webpage’s ability to run for me, or I have to hunt down which ad is making sound in order to mute it.
I think FurAffinity handles ads pretty well in that regard, where not only are they very out of the way but actually recommend extremely useful and relevant things, such as artists whom I’ve actually ended up following through their advertisements, so hey, I can only hope the ads that show up here end up also being things I’m interested in if it happens!
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I suppose with our modern internet culture, ads are inevitable no matter how much I detest them. I agree that as long as they are not intrusive, annoying videos, malware, or any of that than I would be perfectly fine to turn my adblock off to help out the forum. Although I’m worried about what it may do to the mobile experience, will these ads work smoothly on a phone?
Also, if possible could you control what ads are shown? If I was just being shown ads for stuff like plus-size clothing I wouldn’t mind that at all as it would be relevant to the forum
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In my experience, Ads never make as much money as the adsense say it will, not even close. worst of all, the ad companies that make the most money are also the ones that redirect your web page, hijack your mouse clicks, use cross site scripting attacks to steal your passwords, forcibly download files etc. And in the end you can’t trust any advertisment company because at any point an advertiser can swap one of thier normal ads for one of these. Trust me, it’s seriously not worth it if you want to actually keep people around.
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I’m cool with ads as long as they’re not the crash my PC and sell my organs kind
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I think it’s a bad idea. I use an ad blocker, though some sites either acknowledge it or tell you to disable it.
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It’s nice not having ads, but you shouldn’t have to bankroll it from your own funds. I want to be confident that the site is supporting itself.
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What sort of ad network can a fetish community site run? What will you do to prevent abusive / malicious ads? Will ad space be offered to community projects?
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I’m all for the ads on the site if they’re kept SFW.
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We actually fall into AdSense’s ToS and can use most ad networks. We have also been approached by a few larger ad networks and even being upfront with them on our nature they have still wanted to work with us. The plugin itself supports:
- House Ads: Your own ads served from Discourse
- Google Adsense
- Google Double Click for Publishers
- Amazon Affiliates - Banner and Product Link Ads
- Carbon Ads
- AdButler
Which I think we fall into the ToS on most if not all of them (double checking will be needed).
I know AdSense and I think most ad networks allows us to curate what type of ads we show so we plan on relying on that. We will also open a dedicated topic for reporting ads that the community feels is abusive/malicious so we can remove them.
This is a bit of a tricky one. The discourse plugin allows for what are called “in house” ads which can be custom content which would allow us to offer ad space to community projects. The only issue is I do not think we can run both an ad network and the in house ads at the same time.
That being said as mentioned by @Tombot ads do not actually pay out all the much (hence us cutting all the estimate by half or more) so if we where to do something like FA it would actually not take very much demand to possibly outpace the adnetworks. At the same time, it is one of those things that I think may also be worth our time investing in modifying if it does not support it out of the box.
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For projects it might just make more sense to have like a dedicated space on the home page which when clicked just takes you to the info page for their project. I don’t think we have to replace the actual money giving ads. TBH this might just be a nice thing to do even if we don’t end up wanting ads.
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We have a featured system in place that I am working on that will do that, but there are some none game related community projects that have reached out to us to advertise on the forums that that could be useful for.
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Just wanted to share my thoughts on ads. Honestly there are only 3 type of ads that bug me.
- Pop up or ones that make you click to make them go away.
- Ones that play sound or start unmuted
- Video ads that make the page load slow because they load before page content and detract from user experience.
I think ads are a great revenue stream that you should use, however as a user i just want sites i visit to consider the user experience of how the add effects your site. If incorporated responsibly I think they would benefit everyone(us users benefit from the site having more money to make the site better) while not greatly effecting the user experience, when done responsibly.
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@grotlover2 how many “house ads” a month would you estimate it would take to outpace the ad networks?
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