I am seeing Lag for all the Ads to Finish

[coxhaus]

Has something changed recently. I am seeing a lot of lag associated with the Ads painting. It takes 2 or 3 seconds to paint the Ads and then the site responds.

 

[stevech]

and more very annoying pop-over ads.

 

[thiggins]

A lot depends on response time of ad networks. No changes have been made

Stevech: The VMware campaign that was loading an overlay ad on each pageview was quickly killed. Are you still seeing it.

As I've said before, if you need my immediate attention, email me or start a Conversation (PM). I don't read every thread.

 

[sfx2000]

Wow - I turned off ad-blockers for a bit to see how bad things are...

I realize this site, along with many others, is ad-supported, but things have really got out of hand with the ad providers - it reflects poorly on the sites as well...

Tim, if you can provide some feedback there, I think this would be a win-win for all - users/site owners/ad networks...

 

[thiggins]

So you think ads on SNBForums are "wow" bad? How so?

I try to keep ads relevant and to a minimum. Yes, we occasionally get a misbehaving ad, which I kill as soon as it is reported. Try THAT with other sites.

I also have not implemented some of my ad partner's suggestions to meet new ad viewability requirements, like ads that follow you down the page and run over other content.

Is 2 or 3 seconds lag really THAT bad?

Without ads, I lose a major portion of my revenue. If I lose enough, no more SNB or SNBForums.

 

[sfx2000]

It's a tough call - and many times the site operators are caught in the middle...

I use Ghostery, so a fair amount of reporting back to the user on trackers, add providers, and purposes - it defaults to open, but it gives very good feedback.

As far as page load times, Ads can definitely change the user experience and amount of data downloaded on a page view, and depending on the site, that delta can be dramatic, as demonstrated below:

This is Crystal, which is an iOS specific ad tool for 64 bit iPad/iPhone...

 

[sfx2000]

Pretty surprising eh?

And if one is mobile, it's not just the page load time, but the amount of data impact on the user's dataplan...

Now that being said, even with good ad partners, things can squeak thru, and tools like the one I'm running (Ghostery) one can troubleshoot and find out exactly which provider might have a troublesome ad in rotation - and this info can help Tim H. in a big way.

And most ad blocker extensions do have the option to whitelist sites - so for common site, one can, and should, whitelist the forums and main site here.

One of the other challenges, and this is the dark/slimy side of the ad biz - I've seen broadband operators substitute/insert their ads own in place of the site ads - and the site can miss this revenue oppty on the pageview, which is pretty ugly in and of itself. I've also seen on some CDN's where the site is cached, but the CDN will poll the ad provider multiple times on the same pageview - which benefits the ad provider, and not necessarily the site operator.

It's an ugly business - the challenge for the site operator is to find the right partners that respect and appreciate both the site owner/operator and the members eyes on the pageview.

 

[thiggins]

I've seen all the current adblocking coverage spurred by Apple's moves allowing blocking apps. It's just icing on the cake that's been baking for a long time.

I try to err on the side of not annoying users with disruptive ads. But if someone is going to run an adblocker, they don't really care. They generally don't want ANY ads.

The "buy something from Amazon to support us" experiment results so far are very disappointing. I started the experiment to see if it could replace running ads. It's netted around $30 in the month or so it's been up.

As I said, enjoy SNB and SNBForums while they last. When it gets to be too much of a hassle and revenue dwindles, they'll be gone.

 

[thiggins]

It's an ugly business

Unless you've ever run an ad-supported site, you don't know the half of it.

 

[sfx2000]

Unless you've ever run an ad-supported site, you don't know the half of it.

I know someone who does

And he works hard to curate a great community and great/relevant content...

 

[sfx2000]

I've seen all the current adblocking coverage spurred by Apple's moves allowing blocking apps. It's just icing on the cake that's been baking for a long time.

I've been watching that whole debate - and it's a hard call...

I think Apple's move was to try to change how the ad business works - keeping in mind that at least in the iOS space, they do get information on how their browser works, and they also know the ad business themselves on what is a better way vs. inefficient way to render - I would put Google in the same camp with Chrome.

I would hate to see things to the point where the magazines are - years back, ads were there, but perhaps 20 percent of the paper and ink, rest being editorial content - these days, it's probably inverse, perhaps 20 percent editorial, the rest is either ads, or worse yet, sponsored content. And long term subscribers would see this, and cancel the subscriptions...

It wasn't just the world wide web that is killing the periodical space...

The other challenge that sites face is that the ad provider is a third party, with their own servers and networks, and the black hats and bad guys leverage into this - rather than hack a main site, they can get into the ad provider's servers and put malware/adware there - things like Cryptolocker and others - and there's little the primary site owner can do about this.

Again, I appreciate all the hard work you do - and I can see the frustration - please don't give up. You've built up a great site, and there is value in that - not just to the users, but to the ad providers, and you probably have more leverage with them because of that success.

If SNB were to go down, they lose everything... and we would lose a great community.

 

[stevech]

Is 2 or 3 seconds lag really THAT bad?

with frequency of occurrence, yes.


PS: Remember the term "Magazine dandruff?"

 

[sfx2000]

Without ads, I lose a major portion of my revenue. If I lose enough, no more SNB or SNBForums.

Now this isn't specific to SNB Forums or the main SNB site, this is in general...

I believe that ads are a needed part of the ecosystem - the challenge here is to balance valuable content (to the user) with value to the site operator. One of the metrics here that the user/operator share is the Page View.

The ad networks on the other hand sell ad impressions... now if we follow another medium, let's say Broadcast Television - it's reasonable to have 43 minutes of content, and 16 minutes of ad - so we're looking at what, 72 percent content to ad? And most people find that an acceptable level.

So we take that page view - it's a metric - the value of that page view should indicate to the operator, the value of both the user viewing the content, and the operator generating and serving that content, plus that remaining 28 percent of ad space and load time/bandwidth - get over that level, and one might start seeing complaints about performance, and overall user experience.

When we get to the point where the pageview load time/bandwidth hits 50-60 percent of ads, and not content, this becomes a pretty big problem for the operator - just from server performance, depending on CMS and server architecture, this locks things until the page is fully rendered, and this can lead to server performance concerns, as this reduce the opportunity for the operator to send over a page view to another client accessing the site.

So, if/when a site operator needs to monetize the site - e.g. go ad-supported, that page view is key, and that determines the value of that ad impression - it's a fixed overall number, but the value of those ad impression diminish by the number of add - divide 100 by 2 vs. divide the number by 20 (the 2 and 20 are ads).

So the pageview has a tremendous amount of value to the consumer and to the operator, and when we have a very valuable asset - fantastic user base, active participation and engagement from that user base, and then we also consider the value of not just site generated content, but the collective/tribal knowledge of that user community...

 

[thiggins]

with frequency of occurrence, yes.

PS: Remember the term "Magazine dandruff?"

If SNB is so damned annoying, why do you hang around?
I can't remember the last time you said anything complementary about the site.

 

[System Error Message]

Thiggins, is it possible to load the website the same time as the ads? It will solve the problem and i've seen some websites that load the content first before the ad because the ads were much slower to load so the user could see the website without add for a few seconds. Some overlay ads over a semi transparent layer after the website has loaded.

Ofcourse you could be a bit more evil in making content appear as ad so ad-blockers will block legitimate content unless they turn it off or manually add the exception. People spend so much time trying to defeat ad blockers when it is much easier to have content be flagged as ad.

 

[PolarBear]

The "buy something from Amazon to support us" experiment results so far are very disappointing. I started the experiment to see if it could replace running ads. It's netted around $30 in the month or so it's been up.

I would cheerfully buy from Amazon through this site, but as I'm not in the US I would have to pay transport and import duties. If there was a way of ordering from the local Amazon in my country, it would work much better for me.

 

[RMerlin]

Tim, just a thought - how about either a voluntary fund raising campaign, or a "donator forum account" which would remove the ads (not sure if Xenforo would allow the later)?

Personally, like a lot of users on this forum, I'd be more than happy to send some money your way if it makes it easier to pay the server bills, and in addition would allow you to reduce your reliance on ad networks. The type of visitors SNB often attracts would probably be more than willing (and able) to contribute.

 

[charlie2alpha]

In my opinion, although a donor account or similar would work for some, the majority probably wouldn't care or just prefer the ad supported model. Besides that hosting costs keep running every month, how much money can be gathered from such accounts and how much/how often can you ask people to pay?

If money is such an issue, perhaps an anti-adblocker solution should be considered eventually, some sites for example detect it and replace the ad placeholders with a plea to whitelist the site. Others take a harder line, overlaying that request over the site content not allowing you to use the site until you remove the block.

Remember people, there is no free meal in this world. Even if it's free for you, it's because of someone's effort to be so.

 

[RMerlin]

In my opinion, although a donor account or similar would work for some, the majority probably wouldn't care or just prefer the ad supported model. Besides that hosting costs keep running every month, how much money can be gathered from such accounts and how much/how often can you ask people to pay?

If money is such an issue, perhaps an anti-adblocker solution should be considered eventually, some sites for example detect it and replace the ad placeholders with a plea to whitelist the site. Others take a harder line, overlaying that request over the site content not allowing you to use the site until you remove the block.

Remember people, there is no free meal in this world. Even if it's free for you, it's because of someone's effort to be so.

I don't expect it would totally replace the financing brought by ads, but more like a way to compensate for the fact that an increasing number of users (now that mobile clients also get ad blocking capabilities) are now blocking the ads, and that the Amazon sponsorship didn't bring any decent results.

 

[sfx2000]

I've seen a couple of sites where they detect the ad-block (either via host file or via plugin) and they'll let you land on the main/home, but not allow to deep dive/deep link into the site content, any attempt redirects back to home with an overlay banner asking politely to whitelist the site or disable the blocker...

For Premium Subscribers (e.g. Paid), once they log in, get to skip the ads (and instead of multiple page articles, can get it as a long read in one page) - free users, once the ad-block is whitelisted, have full access, but don't get the value add on the long reads w/o ads.