Advertising

[AY Mod]

2 minutes ago, MartynJPearson said:

Maybe this is just what happens when you use a third party advertising provider, which lead me to wonder whether it would be more effective to manage ads yourselves. Warner clearly already has a department dedicated to advertising for BRM and other publications, so it doesn't seem an insurmountable step to extend that to website advertising too. The result would be that ads are relevant to the audience and actually complement the site.

 

Revenue from trade advertising is insufficient to meet the costs so the alternative to giving irrelevant ads would be to shut the site and save some money.

[Oldddudders]

I just love this thread. I am reminded of one of those pictures where a chap is standing in a hole he is digging, surrounded by 14 others - probably wearing bowler hats, a la Bernard Cribbins - closely observing and advising him how to get the job done. 

 

Here we have a lot of people who baulk at paying a whole £1 a week to enjoy RMweb ad-free, advising Andy how to run Warners business. 

Some of them apparently expect to audit the accounts, too. 

 

Truly heart-warming. 

[martin_wynne]

13 minutes ago, MartynJPearson said:

 

But in much of the same vein as Martin's comment that it is up to the site owners what goes on the site, the you are of course hosting the advertising service on your site and therefore allowing them to do the tracking 

 

It strikes me that there's two things that are annoying people, the fact that the ads are intrusive and the fact that the ads are not relevant. Maybe this is just what happens when you use a third party advertising provider, which lead me to wonder whether it would be more effective to manage ads yourselves. Warner clearly already has a department dedicated to advertising for BRM and other publications, so it doesn't seem an insurmountable step to extend that to website advertising too. The result would be that ads are relevant to the audience and actually complement the site.

 

I guess the caveat is that there needs to be enough of an income to cover any extra cost of not just farming out ad management to a third party (although it would result in less time moderating conversations like this one!), and that's something commercially sensitive that isn't going to get debated in the open.

 

 

The solution is surely to promote the paid-for option as the default. You want RMweb? -- great, be prepared to pay for it. (It's actually a bargain with the magazine subscriptions.)

 

Not prepared to pay? Ok, you can view the site, but it will be mostly web advertising. Your choice, but if you block the ads, the entire page will go blank.

 

Martin.

[Reorte]

5 minutes ago, martin_wynne said:

 

The solution is surely to promote the paid-for option as the default. You want RMweb? -- great, be prepared to pay for it. (It's actually a bargain with the magazine subscriptions.)

 

Not prepared to pay? Ok, you can view the site, but it will be mostly web advertising. Your choice, but if you block the ads, the entire page will go blank.

For a site like this (not just this) to survive it needs a steady stream of new members. That'll probably reduce new members to a tiny trickle. Blanking the whole page won't make people turn off the adblocker, it'll make them go elsewhere (if the adblocker software hasn't worked a way around it). A level of that is tolerable (plenty of people just cost sites money anyway) but it won't survive like that. IMO the majority of people are happy enough to have advertising as long as it's not intrusive, so it's all just about hitting the balance.

 

I think there's some irony in asking people to view ads so a site gets payment for showing an advert that's very likely to not get a positive response, so it's just costing the advertiser money...

[melmerby]

17 minutes ago, martin_wynne said:

 

You want RMweb? -- great, be prepared to pay for it. (It's actually a bargain with the magazine subscriptions.)

 

Martin.

No it's not because I don't want the magazines.

Edited October 8, 2021 by melmerby

[martin_wynne]

5 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Blanking the whole page won't make people turn off the adblocker, it'll make them go elsewhere

 

Many newspapers operate a paywall -- you can see the first few lines of a page, but the rest is blanked off if you are not subscriber.

 

They presumably know what they are doing.

 

Martin.

[martin_wynne]

1 minute ago, melmerby said:

No it's not because I don't want the magazines.

 

You don't have to read them.

 

Martin.

[melmerby]

1 minute ago, martin_wynne said:

 

You don't have to read them.

 

Martin.

Why pay for something you don't read?

 

On that basis I could go and buy the Daily Star every day and throw it stright into recycling.

(Probably the best thing to do with the Star )

 

I'll pay for something I'll use regularly.

[martin_wynne]

3 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Why pay for something you don't read?

 

It's RMweb you are paying for. The magazines are a bonus.

 

Martin.

[Reorte]

24 minutes ago, martin_wynne said:

 

It's RMweb you are paying for. The magazines are a bonus.

 

Magazines don't cost zero to run, any more than a forum does.

[Jol Wilkinson]

13 minutes ago, Reorte said:

I think there's some irony in asking people to view ads so a site gets payment for showing an advert that's very likely to not get a positive response, so it's just costing the advertiser money...

Which is how most advertising works. The advertiser pays for the advertising, adds the cost to their product, some people respond and buy, so they end up paying for the advertising.

[Reorte]

2 hours ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

Which is how most advertising works. The advertiser pays for the advertising, adds the cost to their product, some people respond and buy, so they end up paying for the advertising.

As long as people respond positively and buy. There's a lot of "chuck adverts everywhere in the hope some will pay off" about it; they'll know that some will end up in places where it won't pay, it's only because it's impractical and will probably cost more than it saves that they won't narrow them down at not pay such places when it comes to online ads (because they don't buy advertising space on a per-site basis). But is there really much difference between taking advertising money that you know won't pay off the advertiser, and blocking adverts?

[AY Mod]

9 minutes ago, Reorte said:

But is there really much difference between taking advertising money that you know won't pay off the advertiser, and blocking adverts?

 

Of course there is and that shows a lack of understanding of how online ads work.

 

If we choose an ad aggregator to place their code blocks on a site they profile the site, its audience and geography (we choose to reject gambling or adult ads for instance) and open that up for their partners to place adverts at variable pricing. Meanwhile agencies work for advertisers to place ads on sites with the customer profile they're targeting. So you get average ads for average audiences unless your privacy settings allow customised ads for what you've recently been searching for (or targeted alternatives). We only get paid on what's been delivered, therefore no one is taking money under false pretences; if you choose to block ads you're making an active choice to not benefit the site owner rather than the advertiser.

[Dagworth]

3 hours ago, melmerby said:

On that basis I could go and buy the Daily Star every day and throw it stright into recycling.

(Probably the best thing to do with the Star )

You'd be better doing that with the Daily Mail...

 

Andi

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, Dagworth said:

You'd be better doing that with the Daily Mail...

 

Andi

There are very few papers that I would buy for proper news coverage these days (Very few = 0)

[brushman47544]

20 hours ago, melmerby said:

Not in the middle, mine is always bottom right in the blank area and didn't affect operation. (Win 10 with Firefox or chrome)

 

Here’s mine. Slightly more intrusive… and it’s even worse with the iPad vertically.

[Reorte]

9 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

Of course there is and that shows a lack of understanding of how online ads work.

 

If we choose an ad aggregator to place their code blocks on a site they profile the site, its audience and geography (we choose to reject gambling or adult ads for instance) and open that up for their partners to place adverts at variable pricing. Meanwhile agencies work for advertisers to place ads on sites with the customer profile they're targeting. So you get average ads for average audiences unless your privacy settings allow customised ads for what you've recently been searching for (or targeted alternatives). We only get paid on what's been delivered, therefore no one is taking money under false pretences; if you choose to block ads you're making an active choice to not benefit the site owner rather than the advertiser.

 

The impression generally given is one of being entirely happy to accept money from advertisers, criticise people who block them, and not be the slightest bit concerned as to whether it's a matter of overall gain or loss to the advertiser; the "we only get paid for what's delivered" overlooks that really internet advertising isn't actually all that targetted and unlike, say, TV advertising stands a much better chance than usual of missing the mark (but advertisers tolerate that due to being able to cast a wide net cheaply).

 

I don't have a problem with it being a source of payment for a site but I do with double standards.

 

Disagreeing does not imply an lack of understanding. Claiming such overlooks why some people block adverts in the first place - are those people really likely to respond positively? For people as a whole that may be a valid claim but it breaks down when having a go at people using adblockers.

 

FWIW I have RMweb whitelisted (although Im trying to block the videos - yes, I know they're just a test, I've seen the banner).

Edited October 9, 2021 by Reorte

[martin_wynne]

21 minutes ago, Reorte said:

although I'm trying to block the videos

 

It's very easy to do that -- take out a Gold subscription to RMweb.

 

[Reorte]

7 minutes ago, martin_wynne said:

 

It's very easy to do that -- take out a Gold subscription to RMweb.

 

See numerous comments elsewhere in the thread and elsewhere from various people; I'm very much in the camp of would be quite happy to pay something but less for no adverts but aren't interested in the rest of what that buys (and as long as it's not just using intrusive in-the-way adverts to persuade people).

 

Hell, I'd even pay a bit if it meant the adverts were for model rail stuff only; it's been said that that doesn't pay enough on its own buy maybe combined with a smaller payment, although I appreciate the admin and organisation of implementing that may well make it simply cost more to the site overall and hence not be worth it (I'd also prefer not to have it announced that I am a gold member if I did).

Edited October 9, 2021 by Reorte

[rodent279]

Feels like we're touching on the "buy one get one free" argument here-but Kind of the opposite way around-people don't want the free stuff!

Reading @Oldddudders post above, I'm now leaning towards Gold. It's actually more like £1.40 a week, but that's really only the cost of an average printed monthly.

There can't be many places where you can get a pint of decent beer for that much.

[Oldddudders]

30 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

Reading @Oldddudders post above, I'm now leaning towards Gold. It's actually more like £1.40 a week, but that's really only the cost of an average printed monthly.

There can't be many places where you can get a pint of decent beer for that much.

I was an early adopter - I think I'm in my third year - so I pay less than £1 a week. Nevertheless I seem to now have additional access comparable with new Gold members, which is nice, at a time when so much else in life is starting to cost more.

[phil-b259]

On 06/10/2021 at 23:02, Ben Alder said:

Will this proposed lite version of Gold have access to the classifieds for signers up?

 

 

Although its obviously up to Andy and Co to determine the spec of any 'lite' or 'silver' offering, I would have thought not.

 

As I see it the point of any such 'lite' or 'silver' membership would simply to do away with the need for advertising by contributing an equivalent amount of cash to that which said advertising generates and nothing more.

 

This is also quite logical as certain things like managing the classified adds will probably require extra resources plus it also preserves the premise of 'Gold' being a premium membership of the site.

[Huw Griffiths]

3 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Feels like we're touching on the "buy one get one free" argument here-but Kind of the opposite way around-people don't want the free stuff!

 

Reading @Oldddudders post above, I'm now leaning towards Gold. It's actually more like £1.40 a week, but that's really only the cost of an average printed monthly.

There can't be many places where you can get a pint of decent beer for that much.

 

With a brewery in my part of the world putting a load of pubs up for sale, there might soon be less places you can get a pint of beer. Whether you regard this beer as decent depends on your personal taste.

 

As for the reference to "buy one get one free", I could imagine a lot of places running these promotions precisely because they have difficulty persuading enough people to buy both the "paid for" item and the "free" one at full price.

 

However, the prize for odd promo pairings would have to go to some hypermarkets in the Middle East a number of years ago, when my brother worked in that part of the world. There, it seemed quite commonplace for items to have no apparent connection with each other - by which I mean pairings along the lines of "buy a large box of cornflakes - get a can of WD-40 free".

 

OK - I can't remember seeing that particular pairing, but ... . (Since this was a number of years ago, I can't remember any specific examples, but this was typical of what I saw - certainly, a lot of the pairings did seem to be completely random, with no discernible logic to them.)

 

 

3 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

I was an early adopter - I think I'm in my third year - so I pay less than £1 a week. Nevertheless I seem to now have additional access comparable with new Gold members, which is nice, at a time when so much else in life is starting to cost more.

 

Ssshhh! Please don't say that stuff too loudly!! Some of us are rather keen for our existing subscription deals to get rolled over!!!

 

 

2 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

As I see it the point of any such 'lite' or 'silver' membership would simply to do away with the need for advertising by contributing an equivalent amount of cash to that which said advertising generates and nothing more.

 

This is also quite logical as certain things like managing the classified adds will probably require extra resources plus it also preserves the premise of 'Gold' being a premium membership of the site.

 

Fair comment. There's also the issue of companies not wanting to offer too many package deal options to new customers. Too wide a range of options could potentially lead to the extra costs involved in offering / setting them up exceeding any potential extra revenue from new customers. If, instead, they just offer a limited number of standard options - let's call them "A", "B" and perhaps "C", they might be able to reduce this problem.

 

In view of me not having access to a car, it's hardly surprising that I can recall a public transport related example of this sort of thing. A few years ago, a bus manufacturer offered "basic" and "high spec" versions of one of their vehicles - well they did until they "drilled into" their accounts. Someone worked out that, if they only offered the posh version, they'd be able to sell it for less than the base model would otherwise cost! It sounds like this decision probably made itself.

 

 

Anyway, returning to the topic of RMweb Gold, I've never been against it - although, for it to work for me personally, several factors needed to work together. The deal I'm currently on definitely works for me - in fact, it's such a good deal that I would probably have been crazy not to "sign up" for it.

 

Of course, if I'd felt that anyone was trying to "bounce" me into "signing up", I would have been rather less keen on even this deal - thankfully, though, I didn't need to worry on this score.

 

In fact, signing up for "RMweb Gold" (as it was then called) has turned out to be a very good call for me.

 

Whether it's also a good call for other people is not for me to decide.

 

 

Huw.

[corneliuslundie]

Two comments.

First, I had finally decided that RMWeb was such a "good thing" that I really ought to sign up for Gold and support it, only to discover that it had been replaced by a new product which incorporates Gold but which offers other things I simply don't want. So I have for the moment backed off. If just Gold is reinstated I shall sign up.

Secondly, the advertising on RMWeb is completely irrelevant to my life. I don't think i have ever seen an advert for anything I would be likely to want, Compare that with Amazon's offering this morning: Brunel in South Wales and books by Patrick Lee Fermor, one of whose I am currently reading. Which is giving the advertiser better value?

Jonathan

[Neil]

Is this still rumbling on. We seem to have passed the useful fault reporting feedback stage, grumbles have been aired and people have either stumped up for gold membership, got used to making a couple of clicks to close adverts or gone away to bus-spotterforum.co.uk never to return. Time to pull the plug on this thread perhaps?