ad links

[hopjohn]

I'm guessing that the new links in text will be cropping up in posts, so I figured I would experiment with just how annoying it is going to be.

DVD home theater ibm microphone apple cables dlp speakers digital media denon sony onkyo yamaha amp receivers entertainment monitor car book dog internet kerry bush music hdtv widescreen sacd pioneer lcd

how many of the above will be links based on some guesses and a few ive actually tried to remember

are these really paying big enough of dividends to be here?...this place is becoming very commercial...annoyingly so

[Rob Babcock]

Yeah, this one's pretty obnoxious. I frequent a few forums with this level of ad links, and I must say it's a trend I hoped never to see here.

[joelincoln]

I think it's misleading and ineffective.

It implies that the author of the post is doing the advertising or endorses it in some way.

It took me a grand total of 5 minutes to realize what it was and I now ignore them completely.

[Clint DeBoer]

We can reduce the number, but considering its much less obtrusive than popups (which we'l never do) and banners (which we dont want to ad more of) we thought it would be OK.

Right now I think I'm going to limit both the number per page and the number per section - which I have noted is a bit high.

The revenue potential is high enough that it will help pay some expenses so we'd like to keep it, but we would agree that some compromise on frequency is in order.

I'll pop in on Monday morning and tweak a bit.

----

OK, Sunday afternoon and I tweaked it to lessen the number (4 per page max). They are a different color from our normal links and none of the normal links have hovering "mini-descriptions" so I believe people will be able to distinguish between our links and the advertisers.

I'm glad you guys gave us your feedback early on. We have to do something to pay the bills, but want to pick the least intrusive options whever possible... Let's give this a try and see is its not too bad.

[Rob Babcock]

Sounds reasonable. A few doesn't hurt anything, but too many gets annoying.

[Rip Van Woofer]

I haven't seen any of these dreaded green ad links. Perhaps they don't display in the Safari (http://www.apple.com/safari/) web browser for Mac (http://www.apple.com)? :D

[Mark Duncan]

I wouldn't mind them if they didn't have that hover mode. I hate it when I'm reading along with my mouse, and that thing pops up and covers half the text in the post. This may limit my usage of Audioholics. I hope you guys turn off the hover, and use more banner ads or side page ads or something...no pop ups though!..

Mark

[gene]

hope you guys turn off the hover, and use more banner ads or side page ads or something...no pop ups though!..

Haha Mark thats funny. If we eliminate the green links and add more banners, we will likely hear from our readers that we sold out and should eliminate the banners. The truth is if we can't keep a constant revenue stream into this site, there wont be a site and we will all have to go back to our full time dreaded dayjobs. I for one have no desire to remain in a cube :eek:

I will see what we can do about the hover mode however. We will also post a disclaimer about the green links so people know what they are.

[Dan Banquer]

Personally I find these ad links offensive; SNIP: www.redesignsaudio.com I will not post here until this is corrected. SNIP: www.redesignsaudio.com There is a time and place for advertising; SNIP www.redesignsaudio.com Individual posts on a forum is NOT one of them. :mad:
d.b.
P.S. Note how distracting the above is and how it distracts the reader from the actual content. SNIP: www.redesignsaudio.com There has got to be another way.