h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know ad's make money, but doubleclick? Come on, I could think of of better ways to make $$$ than using ads.. I hate them and am going to tell all the people here to download junkbuster to get rid of the ads. http://www.junkbuster.org

my bad URL... it's http://www.junkbuster.com it's me being sleepy, but there is a link from .org to the right site

OK, since you're intent on destroying a site's revenue stream, why don't you tell us the better ways of making money?

Destroying a sites revenue stream, that would be an interesting experiment in futility. Since the ads only generate revenue when clicked, so blocking them out would not decrease anything, save for loading time. If the advertising was on the same server, it would save time, and not be blocked by any software. As I said before there are other ways of generating revenue, sales of merchandise, special events (games, picnics, etc...) special sections for subscribers( I don't like this idea but it works). There are other ideas, however that is for the administraters to decide as they know the users of the site better than anyone.

how can I found out who is online on h2g2

Make money from advertising from this site !!!!

(-:

From Distant Shores

1: Ads are often paid for on a per-view basis
2: If you block the ads, they're never clicked so if you're paid in clicks you're still losing out.
3: You want sites like h2g2 to continue to run free of charge, put up with the ads.

1) bring the ads onto the H2G2 servers( less loading time, no broken pics with slow connections)
2) doubleclick collects and sells information about the users that see the ad( you don't have to click it for the information to be retrieved i.e cookies)
3) I made a suggestion to use another means of generating revenue, that doesn't mean people will listen(unless they are sheep)
4) ads are a part of the world and we HAVE the choice(?) to see them or not (correct ?)
5) I understand the fact that money must be made to stay on-line. The people that keep H2G2 going should be paid very well for bringing a dream of D.A.'s into reality.
6) I do belive that everybody is allowed their own opinion, and mine is that ads have no place in a community like this.
7) I agree with your posting about keeping H2G2 on-line and if ads is what it takes, so be it. However I also think that revenue could be generated by hosting H2G2 partys with a small registration fee. These partys could also be used to raise money for charity. To me, that would do more everybody, plus bring in contributors that otherwise would never have the chance to meet each other.

Just a thought....

Hi Trixiepix

You can find out who's online in the Alabaster skin by clicking on the "Who's Online" button on the top & bottom of every h2g2 page.

If, like many, you're using the Classic skin you can add a Who's Online link to your page. You can find out how to do that here http://www.h2g2.com/A178157

hope it helps
;^)#

I have to admit a certain sympathy for "Junkbuster" users. I know that I don't want to join any new mailing lists, and that ads selling web products are futile in my case as I don't have a credit card. All the ads do is slow down the loading of the page.

Even so, I do have two small ads on my own site. I haven't received any money for them as yet, since the company has a $100 cheque-postage threshold, but I know that if I ever get a $100 cheque it'll cover some of the phone calls made in the uploading of the site. From that point of view I can see H2G2's point, too.

I wasn't aware that Doubleclick could work on a "per-view" basis. This raises a few concerns about privacy in my mind.

As for using Junkbuster, well, Doubleclick rarely post ads for free, purely informational services, and as I mentioned earlier I will never be purchasing anything through their ads, so if I don't display their ads they are losing out on no clicks, I'm happier not to be involved in the "per-view" cookie situation, and my pages load faster.

Generally, I prefer sites which fund themselves by "proper" sponsorship deals, where one or more other companies pay for a permanent link designed seamlessly into their page, rather than opportunist advertisers trying to find a new strobing frequency for their GIFs to induce another 0.6% response rate... I consider doubleclick, from my previous experiences with them, to be in the latter category.

If H2G2 could survive on sponsorship from other "informational" sites, such as Britannica.com, or "community sites" who would otherwise pay the likes of doubleclick to flash an annoying ad. on an inappropriate page elsewhere, that would be the ideal solution from my viewpoint. And before you mention it, I know I'm "ill-informed", but I can wish, can't I?

I'm pretty sure most banner advertising is paid on a page-view basis these days. It's the easiest thing to measure and in fact does often help generate knowledge of the advertising subject even if people aren't clicking through. It tends to favor the site a bit over the advertiser, since they aren't paying for any "guaranteed" results, but the per-view price can be set at whatever the advertiser deems is worthwhile to get their message across this way.

Permanent sponshorship deals tend to be a bit nicer, I think, yes, but these are rare. For one, many advertisers probably wouldn't want to make that sort of commitment. And if they did commit that way, they'd be looking for significant savings over an agreement that lasted only a month or few. In other words, a sponsorship deal is likely to bring in somewhat less revenue than an equivalent advertising deal.

Jim, Peet, and CrazyOne all have made very valid points, in a rapidly growing thread. Though, I have seen the same ad everytime I have logged onto H2G2, so it seems that H2G2 has some sort of arrangment with regards to what ads are shown. My main concern is and has always cookie tracking and bandwidth usage. Thay are the main reason for blocking out ads. Personally, I have never clicked through an ad so the only way to generate revenue from me is on a per-view basis (which brings back the privacy issue).

As Peet mentioned, there are ads on his/her(?) sites and has yet to receive any revenue form them. I don't know of the difference of rates ads charge and pay for size, number of visitors, etc.., but I can't see it being much of a pay off to the site administrators. At $1.00 per view, per unique visitor, per visit, if a site receives a million hits a year, thats works out to a million dollars. Now take into account variables like wages for the staff, upkeep of the system, taxes, etc..., that's not alot of money to work with. Which is why I mentioned that there has to be a better way to increase revenue.

I belive that DNA fans are intelligent people and together a better way of generating funds could be proposed and implemented. Any thoughts or ideas?

I believe the ads typically work out at a cost of about $0.40 per clicked-through ad for the site paying for them, and around 40% of this goes to the site displaying the ad. It's economies of scale, and the only people making a real profit are the ones hosting the ad servers.

(btw, jimmiejaz, I'm male - you could have checked the photo on my page! )

Is doubleclick.co.uk related to the US doubleclick.com?

Actually, I tend to visually deaf out the ads after a while, but I do get ENORMOUSLY irritated when doubleclick murders my browsing experience with a 404 error. If we're to live with an ad company, couldn't we have a more stable one?

Appy-polly-logies, dear sir. I had failed to view your page before my posting.

I just used a buck as a nice round number as opposed to a PU, since I don't have the storage space for the rubber coins

I'm not sure if the two are related or not, but I would assume so since doubleclick.net is a registerd trademark. I agree with the 404 comment 100%.

Hello all
I'm new to H2G2, so please pardon my leaping into this conversation, but I happen to work for a competitor of DoubleClick's but one not quite as... how can I put this politely? Intrusive. So I have rather in depth experience of how all this works as both a web publisher and from the side of the ad network.

This site, since they are using DC for their ads, is making money on a CPM (cost per thousand views) basis not cost per click. If they are getting paid on a click basis, DC is giving them the shaft since DC secures ads on CPM for pretty much everyone I've ever heard from.

The sites showing ads could not host the images on their own servers, since the advertisers and DC would _never_ trust the website owners to hand over accurate and honest logs of what banners have been seen and how often. It'd just never happen. Too many ways to fake stats to have that work. So when you visit the page and the call goes to DC's servers, they count it (as well as grab your IP, cookies, and all sorts of personal information!) and they log in that it came from H2G2, and Mr. Adams and friends get paid (I hope).

I admit, though, that banner ads are a damned eye sore and a pain in the biscuits when they don't load properly. But I'd rather put up with the silly things than not have sites like this and all the others out there that I like to visit.

Oh... and you think they are bad now? Give it another 6 months. Flash, sounds, "interactive" ads... *shudder*

If you are concerned about DoubleClick's internet surveillance tactics but aren't ready yet to go the way of Junkbusters, go to [Broken link removed by Moderator]This page will remove the Global Unique Identifier put on your computer the first time you saw a Double Click ad, so DoubleClick no can longer recognize you as a unique user.

Sorry. The URL was corrupted by the "." ending my sentence. Try this: http://www.doubleclick.net/optout/

Thanks - it looks like it might actually work!