How reduced is "reduced advertising" for subscribers

[alexander_rosser]

<p>Hi<br>

I'm a new registered member. The info content of photo.net looks great; however I find the intrusive ads quite off putting. If I subscribe ($25 per year) I am promised "reduced advertising" which is pretty meaningless. I would pefer zero advertising fo my money. What residual advertising is left?<br>

Can someone, preferably from in house, please give me a straight answer.\.</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

<p>LCL</p>

 

[joshroot]

<p>Subscribers, it most cases, do not see the top banner ad that is otherwise on every page. The only exception would be if a discussion forum was specifically being sponsored by a photographic company.</p>

[color]

<p>Hi Alexander.<br />I am a subscriber and have been for a few years. I have been curious too about what exactly constituted "reduced advertising" and after seeing your question decided to do an experiment and see for myself what the difference is. I did a screen capture of the page with your question on it, both signed in and not. I'm attaching a side by side comparison image of those screen captures. There is a difference, but it is not very significant. It looks like about 10% less screen area in ads for subscribers.<br />Personally I would like to see a lot less advertising, but it is a commercial site after all, not owned by an enthusiast for some time now and not too different from some magazines in terms of the percentage of the real estate that's covered with ads.</p><div></div>

[joshroot]

<p>It is important to remember that ads pay for much of this site. Without that income, there would be no programmers, no staff, no new features and no improvements. Photo.net went through a number of years where it had very little in the way of advertising revenue. You might remember those years, they were the ones where we had less than one full time programmer, nobody in my position answering email and fixing problems, and virtually nothing as far as site upgrades or new features. Subscription money alone can't make this site fly.</p>

<p>We all wish things could be free, including me. But the fact is that the site costs a lot of money to run. There just isn't any way around that. And the amount we would have to raise subscription prices to completely cover the financial loss from removing advertising would place subscribing at a point where a large percentage of our community couldn't afford it. We would much rather keep the site free and offer a few advantages to those who choose to support the site by paying for a subscription.<br /><br>

The price of a subscription shouldn't really be looked at as an "admission fee" of any sort, as there is really little you can't do with a free account that you can do with a paid account. It is more of users saying "I get a lot out of photo.net and I want to support the site and make sure it continues." Do we expect every single user to subscribe? Of course not. I personally have some sites that I happily contribute to every year and some that I just don't get that much value out of. We do our best to be on the "good" side of that for people, but understand if we are not.</p>

[blakley]

<p>I've got no problem with that, Josh, but I *do* have a problem with the fact that the pop-out rollover banner ad covers up Photo.net CONTENT, and specifically with the fact that the forums menu appears underneath it rather than on top of it, so that it's quite difficult to select some forums when the ad is popped up.</p>

[blakley]

<p>Just to be clear, here's a screenshot demonstrating the phenomenon I'm talking about. It's from the Leica forum; note that the ad (for La Boheme) has popped up and that the Photo.net popup menu appears <em>underneath</em> the ad, thus making it impossible to navigate to most of the rest of the site without clicking on the "forums" tab (which doesn't have a popup ad in it at this time.</p>

<p>It's not just a problem with the popup version of the ad; the ad obscures a (smaller) portion of the Photo.net menu even when it's not poppped up.</p>

<p>Could we fix this please? I've got no problem with seeing ads. I do have a problem with not seeing the content the ads are supporting.</p>

<p><em>Edited to add</em> : If it's important, I'm viewing Photo.net on a Mac running OSX 1.4.11 using Firefox 3.5.5.</p><div></div>

[Jeff Lear]

<p>Josh, is PN still making an attempt to remove the peel ads?</p>

[Jeff Lear]

<p>Oh, and I always have a top banner and it is NOT always photography related. On the top of this page, Xbox/facebook. On the top of the No Words forum I just came from... MS Office 2007.</p>

[jsc]

<p>Jeff, that is very strange. You're a subscriber and you shouldn't be seeing top banners other than on sponsored forums. Are you sure you're logged in when you see the banners?</p>

[Jeff Lear]

<p>Hi Jin. Yes, I'm logged in. In fact, I have a header banner at the top of this page (as I type) for the Samsung Rogue from Verizon Wireless. Honestly, I've never known any different so it doesn't really bother me but if you can make it go away, that would be neat. Barring that, if you can make it so they don't expand into the forum view I would be most appreciative.</p>

[jsc]

<p>Jeff, I just tried, as an administrator, logging in under your account and viewing this page. There were no top banners. If you are seeing them, I would suspect some local adware. Have you scanned your computer recently?</p>

[Jeff Lear]

<p>It auto-scans every Tuesday for malware, adware, and virus (full system scan) and none were reported. That doesn't mean they aren't there, though. I'm going to try using a different browser just because I'm curious (currently using IE7) and I'll let you know.</p>

[Jeff Lear]

<p>Yep, that was it Jin. The top banner does not appear in firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari so I've obviously got an IE issue... big surprise! Thanks for looking into it for me.</p>