Please, don't use ad blocking on this site

[weams]

Many of these advertisers are big companies who are far too heavily populated by people who still believe 20th century paradigms. I believe that because they've been putting food on my table since the 1970's and they're like my relatives at this point.

Paying for privacy is the new cool thing and worth every penny if you don't expect to be fully immune from the government. Expecting to be free from unwanted nail salon ads is completely reasonable at a nominal cost. Let the majority of viewers/poster who don't pay the premium bear the burden of generating the page views/clicks.

I believe this approach will work because I still get the occasional PM from a disgruntled 3,000-post eight-grader informing me in no uncertain terms that they would never pay to post on a board that tolerated ***holes like me.

Clearly they're dumb enough to click on that crap all day long.

What, they don't find the secret to attracting women on the internet?

[24fps]

What, they don't find the secret to attracting women on the internet?

Chicks dig the long ball. We've known that since before the internet.

[Snutchy]

I've had a JC Penny add play twice and a salon add play once in the last 5 minutes.

[allquixotic]

You couldn't pay enough to make a difference. Advertisers are big companies with deep pockets. The per person membership would be oppressive ...sorry to say.

Not true. Internet advertisers are cheap. They know that only a minuscule percentage of the people will see their ads, so the amount they pay is a tiny fraction of a cent. Consider how much has to go right for an advertisement to convert into revenue:

1. The user has to not be using an ad-blocker. Note that, while some ad blockers make it so you never even download the ad, some ad blockers will still download the ad. Once it's downloaded, the advertiser has no way of verifying that you're actually viewing the ad -- they are left guessing whether you're just sucking down their bandwidth, or whether the bits are actually being rendered into images/sound/video on your PC.

2. The ad has to download successfully from the remote server (sometimes it's too busy or times out and you get nothing).

3. The user has to notice the ad. Most people will become accustomed to the ads being in the usual spots and learn to ignore them, that is if they aren't blocking them.

4. The user has to choose to watch the ad -- either out of boredom, interest, or otherwise. Most people aren't enthusiastic to be sold more crap they don't want, so a ton of people drop off at this point.

5. The ad has to "hook" the user -- many ads are irrelevant to you, and advertise things you'd never buy. Makeup? Women's dresses? Cars you can't afford? Places you'd never willingly go to eat? And so on.

6. The ad has to compete with other ads on the page, since it's very unlikely that only a single ad will be displayed. The user is likely to stop viewing the ads and buying products once they find the one ad that interests them the most and investigates that one.

7. The user has to either click on the ad -- which usually generates significantly more revenue than a mere impression (impression == "ad was downloaded") -- or actually buy something, with a tracking cookie that verifies their purchase. Even a successful purchase may only net the hosting site a fraction of a penny. For impressions, you're lucky to get 1/10th of a cent for 1,000 impressions.

Each of these six things drops off between 70 and 95% of the remaining customer base. If you start off with 100 baseballs and you take 70 to 95% of that 100, then 70 to 95% of the ones remaining, then 70 to 95% of the remaining, etc. and put them in another pile, your original pile is going to be quite small indeed when you're done with it. Even assuming that each of those conditions only gets rid of 60% of the customers remaining (which is a VERY generous number), you're left with 4.66 customers out of your original 100. The actual number of "potential ad views" (that is, the number of ads that could be displayed assuming nobody used an ad blocker) compared to the number of actual sales, probably amounts to about 1 per 50,000 potential views. Less for ads that run on this site that don't apply to the predominantly adult male crowd.

I would estimate that the maximum ad revenue a single user could generate on this site would be somewhere in the range of $20 per year, assuming that you clicked on every single ad you viewed; didn't use any kind of automation tool to "fake" click on them (advertisers detect this automated behavior and will stop giving the site any revenue for your IP address(es) if you do this; they're not stupid); and often purchased products directly from the click-through on the ads. That's the maximum. For a VERY enthusiastic ad-lover.

I'd be willing to pay Tony $50 to $90/year extra, on top of the price of an ordinary Plus membership, to legitimately (without an ad-blocker) get rid of the ads while I'm logged in. So I'd effectively be paying him 2.5 to 4.5 times more money than he could possibly hope to earn in ads from me.

Aside from that, I'm actually against the idea of going out and clicking on advertisements, for reasons I've stated earlier in this thread. I'm also nowhere near the most active member of these forums, primarily visiting in the evening around game-time. So in reality, Tony would probably make about $2 per year, if that, from my visits with an adblocker disabled (remember, impressions are worth way less than clicks). I could buy him one beer at a Hangout Night and pay for my ad revenue five times over.

I still urge Tony to have an ad-free subscription add-on, and I still contend that those signing up for it would be giving him several times more income than even his most enthusiastic ad-clicking boosters.

...OK, so maybe if you have 20 children, and you force them all into child labor clicking like busy beavers on advertisements for 12 hours a day, you might be able to net him more money than I'd be willing to pay for a subscription. So you better grab your wife and start poppin' if that's your strategy.

[atomic]

Not true. Internet advertisers are cheap. They know that only a minuscule percentage of the people will see their ads, so the amount they pay is a tiny fraction of a cent. Consider how much has to go right for an advertisement to convert into revenue:

1. The user has to not be using an ad-blocker. Note that, while some ad blockers make it so you never even download the ad, some ad blockers will still download the ad. Once it's downloaded, the advertiser has no way of verifying that you're actually viewing the ad -- they are left guessing whether you're just sucking down their bandwidth, or whether the bits are actually being rendered into images/sound/video on your PC.

2. The ad has to download successfully from the remote server (sometimes it's too busy or times out and you get nothing).

3. The user has to notice the ad. Most people will become accustomed to the ads being in the usual spots and learn to ignore them, that is if they aren't blocking them.

4. The user has to choose to watch the ad -- either out of boredom, interest, or otherwise. Most people aren't enthusiastic to be sold more crap they don't want, so a ton of people drop off at this point.

5. The ad has to "hook" the user -- many ads are irrelevant to you, and advertise things you'd never buy. Makeup? Women's dresses? Cars you can't afford? Places you'd never willingly go to eat? And so on.

6. The ad has to compete with other ads on the page, since it's very unlikely that only a single ad will be displayed. The user is likely to stop viewing the ads and buying products once they find the one ad that interests them the most and investigates that one.

7. The user has to either click on the ad -- which usually generates significantly more revenue than a mere impression (impression == "ad was downloaded") -- or actually buy something, with a tracking cookie that verifies their purchase. Even a successful purchase may only net the hosting site a fraction of a penny. For impressions, you're lucky to get 1/10th of a cent for 1,000 impressions.

Each of these six things drops off between 70 and 95% of the remaining customer base. If you start off with 100 baseballs and you take 70 to 95% of that 100, then 70 to 95% of the ones remaining, then 70 to 95% of the remaining, etc. and put them in another pile, your original pile is going to be quite small indeed when you're done with it. Even assuming that each of those conditions only gets rid of 60% of the customers remaining (which is a VERY generous number), you're left with 4.66 customers out of your original 100. The actual number of "potential ad views" (that is, the number of ads that could be displayed assuming nobody used an ad blocker) compared to the number of actual sales, probably amounts to about 1 per 50,000 potential views. Less for ads that run on this site that don't apply to the predominantly adult male crowd.

I would estimate that the maximum ad revenue a single user could generate on this site would be somewhere in the range of $20 per year, assuming that you clicked on every single ad you viewed; didn't use any kind of automation tool to "fake" click on them (advertisers detect this automated behavior and will stop giving the site any revenue for your IP address(es) if you do this; they're not stupid); and often purchased products directly from the click-through on the ads. That's the maximum. For a VERY enthusiastic ad-lover.

I'd be willing to pay Tony $50 to $90/year extra, on top of the price of an ordinary Plus membership, to legitimately (without an ad-blocker) get rid of the ads while I'm logged in. So I'd effectively be paying him 2.5 to 4.5 times more money than he could possibly hope to earn in ads from me.

Aside from that, I'm actually against the idea of going out and clicking on advertisements, for reasons I've stated earlier in this thread. I'm also nowhere near the most active member of these forums, primarily visiting in the evening around game-time. So in reality, Tony would probably make about $2 per year, if that, from my visits with an adblocker disabled (remember, impressions are worth way less than clicks). I could buy him one beer at a Hangout Night and pay for my ad revenue five times over.

I still urge Tony to have an ad-free subscription add-on, and I still contend that those signing up for it would be giving him several times more income than even his most enthusiastic ad-clicking boosters.

...OK, so maybe if you have 20 children, and you force them all into child labor clicking like busy beavers on advertisements for 12 hours a day, you might be able to net him more money than I'd be willing to pay for a subscription. So you better grab your wife and start poppin' if that's your strategy.

I guess you like throwing money away. How do ads hurt you?

[allquixotic]

I guess you like throwing money away. How do ads hurt you?

I'm not going to type this again, so I'll just link you to it: here you go.

Also, because the OH is an enjoyable part of my social life, and I want it to continue to exist, and I appreciate what Tony does, I don't consider it "throwing money away". I consider it helping a cause I believe in. Don't tell me you visit this site out of pure self-interest and couldn't care less about those who operate it...? That would be a very myopic and anti-social position to take, indeed.

The only reason I'm so active in this thread is because I care about this community and don't want to see it, or its ownership, suffer from financial issues. If OH becomes a major drain on Tony's paycheck, he could just bring the site down. I'm sure it would have to be burning a pretty huge hole in his pocket before he'd do that, but even so, it's a risk. I want to help. I want to minimize that risk.

[atomic]

I'm not going to type this again, so I'll just link you to it: here you go.

Also, because the OH is an enjoyable part of my social life, and I want it to continue to exist, and I appreciate what Tony does, I don't consider it "throwing money away". I consider it helping a cause I believe in. Don't tell me you visit this site out of pure self-interest and couldn't care less about those who operate it...? That would be a very myopic and anti-social position to take, indeed.

The only reason I'm so active in this thread is because I care about this community and don't want to see it, or its ownership, suffer from financial issues. If OH becomes a major drain on Tony's paycheck, he could just bring the site down. I'm sure it would have to be burning a pretty huge hole in his pocket before he'd do that, but even so, it's a risk. I want to help. I want to minimize that risk.

I view the ads and click on them once in a while. I use an iPad Air so not worried about the security like you window users. Also I have no bandwidth issues as I have no download caps and the page loads instantly. I am guessing if you want you could send Tony 70 bucks and he wouldn't care if you block the ads.

[weams]

I'm not going to type this again, so I'll just link you to it: here you go.

Also, because the OH is an enjoyable part of my social life, and I want it to continue to exist, and I appreciate what Tony does, I don't consider it "throwing money away". I consider it helping a cause I believe in. Don't tell me you visit this site out of pure self-interest and couldn't care less about those who operate it...? That would be a very myopic and anti-social position to take, indeed.

The only reason I'm so active in this thread is because I care about this community and don't want to see it, or its ownership, suffer from financial issues. If OH becomes a major drain on Tony's paycheck, he could just bring the site down. I'm sure it would have to be burning a pretty huge hole in his pocket before he'd do that, but even so, it's a risk. I want to help. I want to minimize that risk.

I'm glad you and others feel this way.

[Ridgway22]

The autoplay video ads I'm getting here the last two days are more annoying than listening to drunk Yankee fan engage drunk RedSox fan. Yesterday was a JC Penny ad, and today, I have no idea what it was, I closed the browser immediately. Listening to some nice background music, and take a break to check O's news, arrive here and SCREEECCCCHHHH!!!! SCREECHHHHH!!! BLAH!!! BLAH!!! BLAH!!!. Adblocker is turned off for this site. Can I just send a check and turn adblocker on?

[Stotle]

Embassy Suites, some Kardashian PR show, etc. etc. etc. Really disappointing.

[weams]

Embassy Suites, some Kardashian PR show, etc. etc. etc. Really disappointing.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/mute-sound-webpages-embedded-audio-flash/

http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_disable_sound_on_websites_using_embedded_audio_or_Flash

Mute tab

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mutetab/nmkbaaijgpppbokgnhhoakihofedkgcc?hl=en

[Stotle]

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/mute-sound-webpages-embedded-audio-flash/

http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_disable_sound_on_websites_using_embedded_audio_or_Flash

Mute tab

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mutetab/nmkbaaijgpppbokgnhhoakihofedkgcc?hl=en

Can't use chrome at the office.

[weams]

Can't use chrome at the office.

Ah ok.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2854/ie7_ie8_disable_sounds_in_web_pages/

[weams]

http://digiwonk.wonderhowto.com/how-to/disable-annoying-autoplay-media-chrome-firefox-safari-and-internet-explorer-0139641/

[LookitsPuck]

So paying members have to deal with autoplaying ads? Especially AutoPlay with audio?