How to White-List Ads on Gaia

[II Mr Crayons II]

Hm. Doesn't ads come from what you search? Ex. If someone searches about ancestry, wouldn't ads providers take that cache and give you products from that category. Usually what Google AdSense does.

[110348583409L]

I blocked the Meebo bar because it was majorly lagging my computer to the max. I use firefox, and my computer is about 6..? years old.

I don't block ads and no offense, I wish I could.
They slow down my computer sometimes and even pop-ups like for surveys pop up while I'm in the middle of doing something. Some ads appear even mildy sexual sometimes. but mostly it's just the lag I don't like about it.
I really don't see why Gaia is push people into turning the ads back. Not only do you have ads on the top and bottom of the page, on the side aswell. This is annoying to users who have older computers. I see people with alot of expensive items in their avatars, it seems your getting paid pretty good with all the users on here.. Ads are not a want.

[Serpent Empath]

The most annoying place you guys put the ads is by my dress up page - if I hover over it, by accident, it starts the ad video playing and sometimes my computer can't handle it and it hangs up or crashes the browser. Especially if I have the site centered. I had to turn that off for that reason. I had to adblock for that reason. I want to play in dress up without having to constantly worry that my cursor is going to accidentally set off the hover-over-activated ads. It's very nerve wracking.

[Ezuka]

Sugar Daddys Girl

I'll try it. Don't want you to pull a Tinier Me, City of Heroes, Facebook Apps and etc. move and shut down Gaia for lack of revenue.. But maybe you'll make more money if you make more LESS EXPENSIVE ITEMS available in the cash shop.. that way those of us who can't afford the items may be able to at least spend a LITTLE instead of nothing. Edit: And I'm not necessarily asking you to turn down the prices of the items you already have available. I'm just asking you all to ADD items that are less expensive. The 99 cent items are great. The 50 cent ones also. More 25 cent ones and youre set. The Phin Phang needs an overhaul. No one will buy from it a background for 3 dollars when it only costs 50 gold on the marketplace and they could get it there instead.

I wouldn't group City's shutdown in with any of those sites. I'd let advertisements appear on my desktop if it meant bringing City of Heroes back. There likely much more reasoning behind the shutdown since the game wasn't losing money. sad

[Engineer Whytekatt]

Look buddy. I'm an engineer. That means, I solve problems. Not problems like "What is beauty?"

Plain and simple, ads lag my browser and computer.
Plus, they're noisy and annoying.

Sorry, Gaia.
You get at least $10 a month from me.
As I'm sure you do from a LOT of other users.

That would fall within the purview of the conundrums of your philosophy. I solve practical problems.

[kckempy]

I don't see how ad revenue will greatly impact the site. Unless you make huge amounts from providers. You make TONS of money off the cash shop. And I calculated along with others from the Black Friday Sale, that generated approximately $200k of GCash used. But that's not considering the CIs and MCs and EI/REIs that are constantly being sold.

If there is a problem with how much people are spending to use Adblock, then I suggest you up the required amount from 250GC to 500GC or even 1000GC. If you were concerned with how much Adblock is effecting, why did you add the feature in the first place? I feel that if its an issue it should be removed from the site and no longer an option.

On another note, I feel that people would be more interested in having ads, if there was an incentive to do so. I know there was something along those lines with a rare "ad" popping up and it gave you an item/special prize. But there should be a thing, like with AutoCash, how every few months you get an exclusive. That's how it should be for ads. If you have Ads turned on for x months then you get an exclusive too. You'd be able to get more Ad revenue and keep the users happy.

These are my thoughts for now on this~
ChrisHemp

[Robotic Jeana]

Can I Get a HotTub

Robotic Jeana

I'm confused. what does "white-listing" mean?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitelist

now I understand. Thanks!

[Voat]

mama_bearr

I believe you are on to something there. Great idea. I would go along with the game aspect.

Existential Existence

You're doing it wrong. From what I've seen, people download adblock because they want to block ads from view.

What you need to do is provide people with incentives for keeping adblock off. The random item ad that gave away a unique item for having ads on (if you caught the ad) was a good stab at providing an incentive but you went about that the wrong way too.

You need to give people the opportunity to collect points to build up to something so that they keep their viewing of ads constant and feel that there is a game-like aspect to it that isn't hopelessly based on chance (to get a good item).

Maybe asking people to disable adblock for Gaia will help boost your ad revenue for a short while but people will go back to using adblock if the message isn't shoved in their face every couple of days.

in sum my advice is to give ad viewing more of a game like aspect - give it a scavenger hunt element that builds up to a reward every X number of retrieved Ys or something.

a stick needs a carrot in order to get the donkey to move

Yeah....well, people go as far as downloading adblock because they find ads unpleasant. the only way to motivate someone to turn it off in the long term would be to give them an incentive to, or to make ads a rewarding experience. people watch the cash tree ads because there's a GC reward.

personally for me under no circumstances would i want to waste loading time viewing an ad unless there were an incentive or purpose. Gaia asking me to turn off adblock for the purpose of gaining Gaia ad revenue - okay, i might do this, if i felt this purpose aligned with my sense of identity with the company (turning off adblock because i'm a gaian and i like gaia, and helping gaia helps me). unfortunately for Gaia i'm not that altruistic and i know that even if i turn adblock off at sisky's request because she's cool and i like her, it's only going to last for like a day before i start to detest the ads again and turn adblock back on XD. i bet some of gaia staff have and use adblock while on gaia too ;D

for a game, one specific suggestion would be for gaia to add in an 'ad' that randomly pops up, but instead of collecting an item after you click it, you collect a point that will eventually allow you to 'buy' an item from an ad item shop. collect enough ad points and you can collect a soulbound item from the ad shop. item becomes unsoulbound after a year or two. make some special ad items only redeemable after like 5,000 collected points even. be ruthless gaia. people will be wanting to watch for redeemable scavenger hunt ads if there's an incentive to twisted

[Serpent Empath]

Ezuka

Sugar Daddys Girl

I'll try it. Don't want you to pull a Tinier Me, City of Heroes, Facebook Apps and etc. move and shut down Gaia for lack of revenue.. But maybe you'll make more money if you make more LESS EXPENSIVE ITEMS available in the cash shop.. that way those of us who can't afford the items may be able to at least spend a LITTLE instead of nothing. Edit: And I'm not necessarily asking you to turn down the prices of the items you already have available. I'm just asking you all to ADD items that are less expensive. The 99 cent items are great. The 50 cent ones also. More 25 cent ones and youre set. The Phin Phang needs an overhaul. No one will buy from it a background for 3 dollars when it only costs 50 gold on the marketplace and they could get it there instead.

I wouldn't group City's shutdown in with any of those sites. I'd let advertisements appear on my desktop if it meant bringing City of Heroes back. There likely much more reasoning behind the shutdown since the game wasn't losing money. sad

That's not what I meant at all.
For City, who never did bombard us with ads, I would have done ANYTHING to keep it. Because it was a community of mine for seven years and it was based on community, and it did sell things, but it didn't cost much, you could enjoy the game fully no matter how much extras you could afford to pay for. The monthly fee was minimal. When they made it free to play but left the VIP option there, maybe they shouldn't have done that? I don't know? Because the point buying system let you purchase really tantalizing extra content/things so maybe people still spent about that much per month anyway? Our players were dedicated.
Don't twist my words.
All I was saying is that
I am grouping it in because it has the same thing in common with those other sites: it shut down unexpectedly when it was popular and making plenty of revenue and we all feel devastated.

[siskataya]

Hey everyone!

Thanks so much for the feedback and comments so far! We're glad to have your input. We'll be reading through this thread to get your suggestions and thoughts, so feel free to keep posting! As I said, whether or not you like this idea or not, we're glad you listened! biggrin

Take care! ^^
Sisky

[Crystal Whitney White]

Even i knew why ads are on (even on Gaia) if they weren't they wouldn't be able to keep going, same with ads on Tv, if they don't have ads to sell products so people will know whats to buy out there we wouldn't have TV... actually TV is for companies so they can earn money. sweatdrop

[xX VENOXiS Xx]

TheOpenBox

I understand why you have ads on the site, but the only place I absolultly can't stand ads is on the meebo bar. This is the only reason I have ads turned off. Otherwise I would keep them on forever. Just the meebo bar is so cluttered as is. No need to take up more just for the one constent ad. Just my opinion on things. I know there is only so much you can do and you have to cover sever costs for the site and other things. I love Gaia, but I hate the meebo bar ad. ^^;

Thanks for reading,
TheOpenBox

totally agree ads on the meebo bar should be removed

[110348583409L]

I don't have adblock because I don't really think it's safe, honestly. but I just saw a ad-block you can have on Gaia for about 30 days [[ at the expense of G-cash, of course ]], so I think I'm gonna try that soon.

[Voat]

ChrisHemp

I don't see how ad revenue will greatly impact the site. Unless you make huge amounts from providers. You make TONS of money off the cash shop. And I calculated along with others from the Black Friday Sale, that generated approximately $200k of GCash used. But that's not considering the CIs and MCs and EI/REIs that are constantly being sold.

If there is a problem with how much people are spending to use Adblock, then I suggest you up the required amount from 250GC to 500GC or even 1000GC. If you were concerned with how much Adblock is effecting, why did you add the feature in the first place? I feel that if its an issue it should be removed from the site and no longer an option.

On another note, I feel that people would be more interested in having ads, if there was an incentive to do so. I know there was something along those lines with a rare "ad" popping up and it gave you an item/special prize. But there should be a thing, like with AutoCash, how every few months you get an exclusive. That's how it should be for ads. If you have Ads turned on for x months then you get an exclusive too. You'd be able to get more Ad revenue and keep the users happy.

These are my thoughts for now on this~
ChrisHemp

gaia didn't create adblock....adblock is a firefox add-on you can download for your browser. if you turn it on it pretty much blocks all ad activities on any internet website you go on. it's pretty awesome to use on Youtube. You can skip watching those annoying youtube ads with adblock on. so it's not as simple as turning them on or off - gaia probably can't track that - because adblock is a browser add-on, not something Gaia can control. that's a good idea though, if it could work. but since gaia can't control and probably can't detect when users use adblock, it's probably not possible to track which users have it on and which users have it off for providing rewards.

[Aldo Simoncini]

siskataya

Since you might want to discuss this, we'll be leaving this thread open for a couple of weeks to get your feedback, thoughts, etc.

Take care 3nodding
Sisky

Sorry, I won't whitelist Gaia for three reasons:

1. I can't. I use my hosts file to block ads, so whitelisting isn't possible anyways.

2. I use adblock in addition, but mainly to block single pictures I don't want to see, like annoying animations in the header or Mintaka and Rigel. Whitelisting Gaia would make me see them again. No way!

3. Gaia disappointed me too many times, so I simply don't feel like supporting this site any longer.