Testing Forum Ads Again

VGMoose

Google AdSense ads have been added back to the site. This is an experiment to see how well they perform, but also whether or not they're too intrusive.

If you'd like to opt-out, you can join the @Hide-BDNS-Ads group and refresh the page to hide them. There's no penalty for joining that group! In the future, it may be placed behind rep requirements.

Although, I do want to receive feedback on how annoying they are as well-- This thread can be used to report whether they work on various devices, do they break things on the site, are there too many, etc.

Plus4+

While I feel like the general consensus is going to be "we don't want ads", I also understand that everything needs funding. My only real issue is on desktop, when in any chatroom/room, the bottom banner ad makes the window to actually see people chatting significantly smaller and it makes it difficult for me, as someone who is visually challenged, to deal with such an informationally-dense page. It's also just generally really irritating and large. I can't speak for any other devices, though ^^"

?

on nintendo, its working well so far and hasnt caused me any issues and the pop ups are easy enough to dismiss so it doesnt ruin the experience too much

Spooky overlord

ig its just my switch bc mine is bad but it messed up my messages screen especially in shoutbox, specifically getting rid of the scoll bar, making all of the messages show at once and causing a lot of lag. the pop-up in general made me lag too

ilovecats2018

We should make no ads a VIP perk

Biblecampvictim

@ilovecats2018 no

ilovecats2018

@Biblecampvictim ...why not??

trashghoul

@ilovecats2018 no,because it should be an opt out thing. like, some ofthe ads ive gotten are lowkey weird and directing me to weird sites, and they just ruin personal expeerience. lockimg things bhind VIP doesnt make the site better tbh, esp for people aldready in the group.

Raven

@ilovecats2018 said in Testing Forum Ads Again:

We should make no ads a VIP perk

I like the way you think, you're a real businessperson.

Faust

@Raven of [censored] COURSE man

ilovecats2018

@Raven well Raven, I actually am in my free time with my hobby . I run my own business right now.

mrmojangles3552

@ilovecats2018 oh my god i swear if that happens i will crash out

saphirecrown1

@ilovecats2018 ooh what do you do

ilovecats2018

@saphirecrown1 I'm a mechanic. I buy non-working equipment to repair and resell.

Yougot1960ed

@ilovecats2018 cool

swiftie133

What’s bdns vip

Yanderemenhera

@Raven aw hell naw

VGMoose

For those on Switch, is it that bad? Is that on Switch 1 (OLED, Lite, or original) or Switch 2? And which DNS are you using? (certain ones might have some built-in ad-blocking)

Popping up during conversations is a definite problem. I'm also not a huge fan of ads, so I'm always going to err on the side of making them be optional. The @Hide-BDNS-Ads group works well because you still have to seek it out, but also, signed-out users eg. people arriving via Google search can't join them.

If the ads are weird, how weird are we talking? Below is an example of the kinds of ads I'm seeing. Although it's a LOT of ad real estate, I also kind of feel like that's just how the Internet is these days?

Google has their own internal algorithms where they decide where to put the ads, but you can mark certain areas as "off limits" zones. That first page load though is some of the more valuable real-estate (which is also why so many news sites look so terrible). It's a trade-off for user annoyance VS ad performance, really.

Raven

@VGMoose said in Testing Forum Ads Again:

For those on Switch, is it that bad? Is that on Switch 1 (OLED, Lite, or original) or Switch 2? And which DNS are you using? (certain ones might have some built-in ad-blocking)

Popping up during conversations is a definite problem. I'm also not a huge fan of ads, so I'm always going to err on the side of making them be optional. The @Hide-BDNS-Ads group works well because you still have to seek it out, but also, signed-out users eg. people arriving via Google search can't join them.

If the ads are weird, how weird are we talking? Below is an example of the kinds of ads I'm seeing. Although it's a LOT of ad real estate, I also kind of feel like that's just how the Internet is these days?

Google has their own internal algorithms where they decide where to put the ads, but you can mark certain areas as "off limits" zones. That first page load though is some of the more valuable real-estate (which is also why so many news sites look so terrible). It's a trade-off for user annoyance VS ad performance, really.

Are you getting ADTraffic though? If not, what's the point in them being displayed for Switch Users.

VGMoose

@Raven This time, that's part of the experiment, I'm curious to see if the situation has changed at all in that area. There's a new "optimize for mobile" feature that might help Switch users.