Is that really a forceful objection given that the response is “ONE BILLION DOLLARS FOR CHARITY. DON’T BE AN ASS.”? And if we’re just talking plane banner ads, not flashing “You’re a Winner!” pop-ups it’s hard to justify to loss in revenue.
Maybe some kind of compromise where clicking the x hides the ads for 24 hours? My sense is that a lot of people, when they first see the ads, will turn them off. But if once they get used to them they won’t mind so much. I wouldn’t want to lose a huge chunk of revenue just because people were initially bothered by the ads.
I think the objection is forceful enough to potentially derail the whole thing—some people don’t like ads, and if they don’t want to see them, they should have that right without having to go and install an adblocker. Even if the objection isn’t logical, it’s still a very real objection that could and will be voiced.
I can’t find it with a quick Google search—though I will try again later—but I have seen at least one site owner that did this optional advertisement thing with minimal impact on revenue.
Also, with this kind of thing, “permanently” closing the ad isn’t really permanent. It’s permanent until you clear your cookies or use a different browser. It is a shame to have to lose some revenue because some users won’t just deal with the damn dust speck, but my intuition is that we’re looking at a 20% decrease in revenue with this, a difference that could be made up by a better advertising sales team.
The loss of revenue hurts, but I don’t think it’s worth a chance of losing the whole thing because some people don’t want to look at ads.
Reddit does well at unobtrusive ads. Their sidebar ads are easily blocked by adblock, and occasionally they’ll just run an ad with a happy reddit alien saying “thank you for not using adblock!”—a lot of reddit users have their adblock settings set specifically to allow ads from reddit, in order to support the site.
ETA: I suspect the ad would be closed less often if there were a note nearby naming the specific charity to which that ad was providing revenue.
I learned that my initial copy was not viral to motivate people to join based on seeing the group name in their newsfeed. I learned that it is a whole lot easier to get someone to join a group than it is to invite their friends to join the group. I sent out a few mass messages encouraging people to invite their friends, but the third and final message I sent out resulted in a net loss in users for the group.
I do still have control of that group and it’s 150 members, so it’s a good enough place to focus test ad copy for the next group.
Is the permanent removal of the ad a necessary part of this?
No, but it minimizes the most obvious possible objection: “I don’t want ads on Craigslist.”
Is that really a forceful objection given that the response is “ONE BILLION DOLLARS FOR CHARITY. DON’T BE AN ASS.”? And if we’re just talking plane banner ads, not flashing “You’re a Winner!” pop-ups it’s hard to justify to loss in revenue.
Maybe some kind of compromise where clicking the x hides the ads for 24 hours? My sense is that a lot of people, when they first see the ads, will turn them off. But if once they get used to them they won’t mind so much. I wouldn’t want to lose a huge chunk of revenue just because people were initially bothered by the ads.
I think the objection is forceful enough to potentially derail the whole thing—some people don’t like ads, and if they don’t want to see them, they should have that right without having to go and install an adblocker. Even if the objection isn’t logical, it’s still a very real objection that could and will be voiced.
There’s one person objecting in the comments on this blog post about my first, failed attempt to do this. http://journal.markbao.com/2009/07/craigslist-advertising-for-charity/
I can’t find it with a quick Google search—though I will try again later—but I have seen at least one site owner that did this optional advertisement thing with minimal impact on revenue.
Also, with this kind of thing, “permanently” closing the ad isn’t really permanent. It’s permanent until you clear your cookies or use a different browser. It is a shame to have to lose some revenue because some users won’t just deal with the damn dust speck, but my intuition is that we’re looking at a 20% decrease in revenue with this, a difference that could be made up by a better advertising sales team.
The loss of revenue hurts, but I don’t think it’s worth a chance of losing the whole thing because some people don’t want to look at ads.
Reddit does well at unobtrusive ads. Their sidebar ads are easily blocked by adblock, and occasionally they’ll just run an ad with a happy reddit alien saying “thank you for not using adblock!”—a lot of reddit users have their adblock settings set specifically to allow ads from reddit, in order to support the site.
ETA: I suspect the ad would be closed less often if there were a note nearby naming the specific charity to which that ad was providing revenue.
Hmmm. Conceded. Since it looks like this was tried before and failed, I’d be interested to hear what you learned from the first attempt.
I learned that my initial copy was not viral to motivate people to join based on seeing the group name in their newsfeed. I learned that it is a whole lot easier to get someone to join a group than it is to invite their friends to join the group. I sent out a few mass messages encouraging people to invite their friends, but the third and final message I sent out resulted in a net loss in users for the group.
I do still have control of that group and it’s 150 members, so it’s a good enough place to focus test ad copy for the next group.