Interesting article on advertisers, websites and consumers...

[Stephan Whelan]

Off topic a little bit for DB but of great interest to me as the owner (and person who pays for) DeeperBlue.com.

As an online publisher and community owner the article below highlights something DeeperBlue.com has struggled with since the beginning.

An interesting read for everyone (publisher or consumer) with a great question - if there wasn't advertising would you be willing to pay £44/$68 a month in subscription fees (on top of your internet provider fees) to access your favorite sites....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25219922

To give people an idea it costs about £1,000/$1,500 per month to run DB (and that doesn't include any trips for staff to cover events or shows) free of charge for all members/readers.

At present we offer a $9.98 per year subscription option to the community to remove adverts but that hardly makes a dent in supporting this site. We do accept advertisers and that is starting to help as we have made a big effort this year but still we are a long way off making a dent into the overall cost there has been to run this site since 1996.

What do you, our members of the site think?

 

[Gab]

I think as long as ads are relevant to the content on the page, that they are not intrusive (flashing, sound, videos) and are not everywhere (banner or footer are fine, but ads in the middle of an article and on the sides are horrible. If a service has less ads they can ask for more per ad IMO, since the user may actually look at it. If there are too many ads on a page it is counterproductive since you don't look at them and it annoys you as they take up space, especially on a mobile device.