Do ads turn people off?

[AresBlade]

I'm curious about your thoughts as experienced masters. Do you put ads on your sites from the day you launch, or would you wait and build your hit count with your content before integrating ads. If that's your approach, have you seen your established counts sink after implementing ads.

 

[Azareal]

I'm curious about your thoughts as experienced masters. Do you put ads on your sites from the day you launch, or would you wait and build your hit count with your content before integrating ads. If that's your approach, have you seen your established counts sink after implementing ads.

I'll approach this from a different angle.

Normal adverts do not turn me off.
Intrusive and annoying adverts turn me off.
People who feel the need to spam adverts everywhere turn me off.
Those absolutely irritating video adverts turn me off.

 

[PhilA]

Spammy intrusive adverts are very annoying, there are some sites I know that are almost impossible to use because of over advertising. The normal 3 AdSense ads per page has become accepted I think, nothing wrong with it.

 

[calebmelvern]

Some ad networks out there are just flat-out irritating. I particularly hate pop-ups, text link ads, video ads and those with flashy and blinking banners as if we were still in the 90s. Your audience shouldn't find the ads annoying when they cater to their interests and they're not intrusive to their browsing experience.

 

[AresBlade]

I rarely ever put the full 3 ads on a page Phil, but I suppose you're right that most sites do. Caleb I think you're right about some ads being far too intrusive and throw-back style.
I hate it when the background of a page is entirely an ad, and that's getting more popular unfortunately.

 

[alphaguild]

I have decided to wait on putting up ads on my forum till it becomes more active. I don't find ads to be bothersome if they are a few banner ads. If you have banner ads everywhere, pop-up ads, toolbar ads, in-text ads and content lockers than it can be quite annoying.

 

[lludawg]

I am not a fan of ad networks that display random ads. I prefer building traffic to my site and then selling ad space directly to advertisers who are advertising something related to my niche. These ads tend to do better because they are targeting a specific audience. This makes advertisers very happy and willing to spend more.

 

[AresBlade]

I am not a fan of ad networks that display random ads. I prefer building traffic to my site and then selling ad space directly to advertisers who are advertising something related to my niche. These ads tend to do better because they are targeting a specific audience. This makes advertisers very happy and willing to spend more.

That's a very interesting perspective and one that I was looking into as well. I don't even know how to approach and organization and work out what kind of costs should be associated with this type of approach, so that has always been something that kept me on the sideline from direct sales. How did you learn about that aspect of it? Any recommended reading?

 

[gmckee1985]

Yes, I think ads do turn people off. But that's just too bad. There's nothing they can do about it. People aren't going to run their sites for free. They need ways to earn revenue and ads are a way to do that. As long as there's not an excessive amount of them, I think people will deal with them.

 

[Goat of Departure]

They do turn people off but it depends on where you place them and what kind of ad you're actually showing. For the most part what annoys me as a user is the idiotic placement of the ads. I hate it when a site owners compromise function just to squeeze in their ads. If I had to wait 5 seconds before I can close the ad and go to the site then you can forget it.

Second is the content of the ads. I know it's somewhat out of our reach what kinds of ads their going to show but it should be appropriate enough. If you're running a gaming forum you might want to send in some gamer related ads and not a bunch of nonsense, that's a really big annoyance for me.

As for the right time when it comes to placing ads, I think it doesn't really have that much impact whether you put them early on or not because it would still depend on how you're ads add to your site. If it's too annoying or okay.

 

[AresBlade]

They do turn people off but it depends on where you place them and what kind of ad you're actually showing. For the most part what annoys me as a user is the idiotic placement of the ads. I hate it when a site owners compromise function just to squeeze in their ads. If I had to wait 5 seconds before I can close the ad and go to the site then you can forget it.

Second is the content of the ads. I know it's somewhat out of our reach what kinds of ads their going to show but it should be appropriate enough. If you're running a gaming forum you might want to send in some gamer related ads and not a bunch of nonsense, that's a really big annoyance for me.

As for the right time when it comes to placing ads, I think it doesn't really have that much impact whether you put them early on or not because it would still depend on how you're ads add to your site. If it's too annoying or okay.

I think you're right on Goat. I don't think it matters when you put them on your site, and it's better in my opinion to put them on at launch so that you can ensure functionality is completely there from the jump. I have seen sites launch with no ads and then break content by adding ads later, and I think that's really the worst case scenario. I was curious if someone would jump in and defend adding later so I could understand that approach and see what I'm missing.

 

[tmgenterprises]

I start with ads right off the bat. I've always thought it would be a bigger turn-off to suddenly add them after you have a following. As long as you're not plastering the site with garish, in-your-face ads, most people will be fine with them. The key is to only place ads for products or services that your audience could truly benefit from.

 

[Goat of Departure]

I think you're right on Goat. I don't think it matters when you put them on your site, and it's better in my opinion to put them on at launch so that you can ensure functionality is completely there from the jump. I have seen sites launch with no ads and then break content by adding ads later, and I think that's really the worst case scenario. I was curious if someone would jump in and defend adding later so I could understand that approach and see what I'm missing.

I agree. I think a site should put on the ads at the beginning rather than slam it in once they get big. It's going to be a matter of 'getting used to' in the part of the viewers and visitors. For example, if your site started off as an 'ad free' website with clean design and no flashy banners whatsoever and you do that for a couple of years, your viewers and frequent visitors of the site would say "Oh, this site is ad free so it's great. I like this site".

Since you got that notion established, if you add your ads later it would kind of ruin the image. Since you started off without any ads people might think "Oh he's cashing in on us with the ads, this site is selling out". Of course not all people would think that way and it would be great if people would be more understanding and go "Oh he's trying to generate revenue using ads to keep the site up. It's cool" but the again this is the internet so it might not always be the case.