The reward for clicks is much greater than it is for impressions, but that depends on someone actually interacting with an advertisement. Nobody has ever clicked on an advertisement on purpose.
Nobody has ever clicked on an advertisement on purpose.
I run a non-profit news website, and this is an annoyance to me. We want people to see our donation box and feel vaguely guilty about reading the content without donating, but we don’t actually want to interrupt your reading by sending you to the donation site if you aren’t going to donate. However analytics show a lot of people apparently accidentally click the ad when trying to make it go away because the number of people on the donation page is too large compared to the number of donors. I’m not sure why this is, since the whole page is a click away zone that will close the ad, but I guess people are aiming for the X and miss. Maybe I should just move the X further away or make it bigger, but I can’t remove it entirely because you’d have even less clue about how to get rid of the ad.
[ I want to donate now ] [ I want to donate later ] [ No, thanks ]
on the first choice, send them to the donate page. On the second choice, close the box and open one at the bottom of the page so they see it when they scroll all the way down. And on the third choice, just close the box.
We use different ads at different times. That would require using the same template every time and I think people would still click wrong because no one reads anything.
OK, how about the even more “don’t use an X” method: embed the graphic for the ad in the main text flow, instead of popping up a toast. Instead of having to clear it, they can scroll past it.
With my standard adblocker in place, it’s smooth, laid out nicely, and shows a couple of “signup for the newsletter?” and one “would you like to donate?” in-line.
Aha! :)
When I measured the
<html>element in pixels, it was larger on the inside than the outside. :OThis blog is not for you.From How to monetize a blog:
The text has a slight douglas-adamesque tone.
I run a non-profit news website, and this is an annoyance to me. We want people to see our donation box and feel vaguely guilty about reading the content without donating, but we don’t actually want to interrupt your reading by sending you to the donation site if you aren’t going to donate. However analytics show a lot of people apparently accidentally click the ad when trying to make it go away because the number of people on the donation page is too large compared to the number of donors. I’m not sure why this is, since the whole page is a click away zone that will close the ad, but I guess people are aiming for the X and miss. Maybe I should just move the X further away or make it bigger, but I can’t remove it entirely because you’d have even less clue about how to get rid of the ad.
Don’t use an X.
Make the bottom bar of the ad:
[ I want to donate now ] [ I want to donate later ] [ No, thanks ]
on the first choice, send them to the donate page. On the second choice, close the box and open one at the bottom of the page so they see it when they scroll all the way down. And on the third choice, just close the box.
We use different ads at different times. That would require using the same template every time and I think people would still click wrong because no one reads anything.
OK, how about the even more “don’t use an X” method: embed the graphic for the ad in the main text flow, instead of popping up a toast. Instead of having to clear it, they can scroll past it.
Oh believe me, we do that too. 😆
I don’t think we’re the worst website when it comes to annoying ads, but you can judge for yourself: https://www.spotlightpa.org
With my standard adblocker in place, it’s smooth, laid out nicely, and shows a couple of “signup for the newsletter?” and one “would you like to donate?” in-line.
Completely unobjectionable.
I’ve seen multiple news site developers get tripped up by their own ad blockers. 😆
The original post is wild, also going back from it crashed my browser