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March, 2024

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Awkward way to start a ski edit...

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e~b
Posts: 861 - Karma: 2,733
i have no idea what forum to put this is in, but here it goes:

I am the only one getting a tampon ad at the beginning of a video? or does google think im a girl...
May 5 2013 4:21PM
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gotti
Posts: 4269 - Karma: 4,548
I haven't gotten any tampon ads yet but I have been seeing a lot more ads for big companies. Im thinking ns is making a little more ched these days.
May 5 2013 4:41PM
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J-C
Posts: 1138 - Karma: 3,683
Adblocker
/threads
May 5 2013 4:45PM
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appa
Posts: 2249 - Karma: 1,739
i've been really happy whenever a video is hosted on vimeo lately.... especially after watching that north face commercial one million times, and that song in the coc ad was getting sooo old.
May 5 2013 4:46PM
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JWeinstock
Posts: 3439 - Karma: 1,352
The girl doing a backflip? It's really weird
May 5 2013 5:04PM
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De-Clan
Posts: 1920 - Karma: 3,696
i get some weird fucking shit popping up when i watch videos on here now, and yes i know adblock, yes i dont care
May 5 2013 10:21PM
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DeRizzo
Posts: 3827 - Karma: 3,483
Works like a charm
May 5 2013 10:25PM
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stupendous-man
Posts: 8637 - Karma: 13,293
Get adblocker, takes 30 seconds and voila no more ads. Be a good guy and donate to ns though for their trouble
May 5 2013 11:37PM
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Mr.Huck
Posts: 6096 - Karma: 14,893
The ad trolls have poor eyesight. They think your username is OB.
May 5 2013 11:55PM
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Mr.Bishop
Posts: 22671 - Karma: 75,830
In order to offset this, we'd actually have to launch a subscription model. Right now we're actually losing about ~$80k per year from people using adblock. We've taken quite a noticeable revenue hit because of it.

Its a tricky game, because yes we get some more general type ads which bring in great money, but it seems to also increase people using adblock.

Were you to see only ski-focused ads would you consider uninstalling adblock?

Would you pay a small reasonable monthly subscription to use NS without ads?

May 6 2013 9:44PM
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Mr.Huck
Posts: 6096 - Karma: 14,893
I don't have adblock and I am completely stoked to learn about feminine hygiene products. Make members suck it up and lose the adblock Doug. Tampon ads are HAWT!!!!
May 6 2013 9:50PM
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Inline.
Posts: 4424 - Karma: 432
That's actually pretty crazy. I donated and don't use adblock on NS. It's not too bad as long as you laugh off the ads. I usually just mute them and play some Shredsauce for 30 seconds anyway. I'd much rather do that than have NS lose 80k.
May 7 2013 1:43AM
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Ali_Dibden
Posts: 1966 - Karma: 1,688
I had no idea adblock actually lost NS money, never used it as the ads don't really bother me that much anyways.
May 7 2013 5:00AM
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Mr.Bishop
Posts: 22671 - Karma: 75,830
Oh yeah bigtime. I mean the ads are basically 95% of the revenue on here. The clothing and donations are cool, but they're a drop in the bucket compared to the ads.

That is one reason we've been establishing revenue share programs with content creators. We've got a great ecosystem going here that makes solid money. We want the people to be able to share in it.

Basically the only way to replace this revenue in a solid fashion would be through subscriptions. Simple subscriptions could give us the flexibility to consider ad-free models, or recoup the losses from AdBlock.

AdBlock on Newschoolers is like pirating ski movies. When you do it, you harm the entity's ability to survive and keep doing awesome stuff.

May 7 2013 7:57AM
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corona
Posts: 12752 - Karma: 32,266
if you could opt into a subscription to not have ads, what sort of price range would we be looking it?
May 7 2013 8:12AM
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Mr.Bishop
Posts: 22671 - Karma: 75,830
Ever the question. Its a question of how many pages / videos a user watches in a month, and replacing the revenue from that.

I'm going to do a deep analysis one of these days, but I anticipate the findings to say that it would need to be between $5 and $20 per month.

There could be a balanced approach too, where you cut out certain types of ads for less money, or we add in more enhanced features/value for a higher amount. We could even get into stuff like more premium content that your money pays for, but that is another discussion.

Again, it would take a deep dive to really get a concrete answer for that. Anyone have ideas on what they would be willing to contribute for an ad-free Newschoolers? If it was $10 per month would you do it?

May 7 2013 8:16AM
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oil.
Posts: 2255 - Karma: 1,254
ha unnoticed pun
May 7 2013 10:57AM
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stupendous-man
Posts: 8637 - Karma: 13,293
Well shit thats a lot of lost beer

As long as the ads are <10 seconds i have no problem with them being ski related or not, and not the exact same ad every video for a month straight. And no i would just suck it up and watch the ads!
May 7 2013 11:53AM
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Mr.Bishop
Posts: 22671 - Karma: 75,830
Hahha... its not beer, its an entire staff and a travel/freelance budget for them. Its a second coder.

Its a lot of things, TBH. That amount of lost revenue is staggering, but its a reality that we live in a world where people demand free stuff on the internet in exchange for less than nothing.

I'm wide open to suggestions. So when ads are over ten seconds and repeat a lot, you hit your breaking point? Can you think of specific examples that have made you snap?
May 7 2013 11:59AM
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stupendous-man
Posts: 8637 - Karma: 13,293
augustus kenworthy and his infamous vitamin water
May 7 2013 12:01PM
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Hammyslapwagon
Posts: 1261 - Karma: 1,409
To be honest, I do feel bad about using ad blocker on NewSchoolers.  However, when I do use it the site runs so much faster for me on my crap laptop.    As far as paying a small reasonably monthly subscription goes.....no.  I don't like monthly subscriptions.  However, maybe an annual or one time payment type thing I would consider.  
May 7 2013 12:21PM
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Mr.Huck
Posts: 6096 - Karma: 14,893
I think this needs to go out as a public service announcement. I don't think nearly as many people would be using ad block on NS, if they knew that it was costing you guys $80,000 a year.

Doug, you should send out a mass PM to everyone and spell that out. I am sure you have a good idea of how many people use ad block, but it would be great to take a reading a few weeks after the PM and see what the numbers look like then. If it works well, you could just send out a reminder every once in awhile when people start using it again.
May 7 2013 12:54PM
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Hammyslapwagon
Posts: 1261 - Karma: 1,409
Yeah start some kind of "movement" to get the NS community involved.  Would be interesting to see the results in a few months
May 7 2013 12:59PM
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Mr.Bishop
Posts: 22671 - Karma: 75,830
So the reason that we know this now is we're using this nifty little tool that measures the amount of ads being blocked. It also allows us to do tiny little inoffensive messages to people using AdBlock, asking them to simply only unblock Newschoolers.

Honestly about the overall money its costing - we were totally shocked. The last time we measured AdBlock it was only a tiny percentage of people using it. That number has grown dramatically across all websites on the internet in the last few years. Hell there are some gaming sites where over 50% of people are blocking ads, and as such they're facing massive staffing cuts and huge sweeping changes to their business.

I think you're right though, if we can come up with a balance where we REALLY try to stop putting up so many annoying ads, and then we work with people to communicate that it does hurt us and it would be really nice to leave ads running - then we can really get somewhere.

May 7 2013 1:19PM
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Mr.Bishop
Posts: 22671 - Karma: 75,830
This I can actually really understand. I highly recommend turning off the Fancy GUI in the forums, as for some reason it does akward things with the ads from time to time.

We're actually re-vamping the entire ad system which will make the ads load after page content, so it doesn't slow the site down if your ads have a particular slow load time.

Reasons like this, I actually really understand when people use AdBlock. Afterall, we need to make sure we aren't taking advantage of our users and causing them to do it. We need to commit to making sure the ad experience on NS is as friendly as possibly can be.

May 7 2013 1:21PM
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Hammyslapwagon
Posts: 1261 - Karma: 1,409
Have you ever considered disabling ads for donors that have payed 50 or more dollars? 
May 7 2013 1:34PM
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MacMahoooon
Posts: 9009 - Karma: 3,305
It is something we have considered, though like Doug alluded to above, there is a lot more involved in building a subscription type system. Though Donations and Subscribing are different, they give the same end result and would require similar development to make happen.
May 7 2013 1:37PM
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Mr.Huck
Posts: 6096 - Karma: 14,893
The people who donate to NS did it because they really enjoy the site and want to see it succeed. If the advertising benefits the site, I have no issue with it, and I doubt that other donors have a problem with it either. Obviously there are limits, but right now it seems that the problem is just a lack of awareness that the use of ad block is actually hurting NS.
May 7 2013 1:50PM
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.Roockley.
Posts: 3857 - Karma: 4,000
on the subject of ads can we please get rid of the scorecard research pop up ad that appears at random times on the forums?
May 7 2013 8:56PM
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Mr.Bishop
Posts: 22671 - Karma: 75,830
The real problem is that $50 from one user for unlimited ad-free use is a paltry amount of money. Advertisers want to reach you guys, as you're a very targeted market that consumes a ton of stuff.

As Chris said, it would have to be a subscription model that offsets the lost revenue from advertising. After all, our costs aren't only one-time, so as such we need recurring revenue.

May 8 2013 10:37AM
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Mr.Bishop
Posts: 22671 - Karma: 75,830
For the life of me I can't track that pesky thing down. Working on it.
May 8 2013 10:37AM
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ChristianMingle
Posts: 629 - Karma: 1,202
Damn, I had no idea that adblock took so much from ns. consider it off from me now. like some other people were saying i dont at all mind ads on the top and side of pages but when the occur before videos it gets really hard for me because i have pretty slow internet and almost always have to buffer the ads before i can even get to the video...
May 8 2013 5:12PM
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*ninja*
Posts: 2108 - Karma: 1,143
i like ads and since i havent donated to ns, yet! i will keep enjoying and streaming ads
May 9 2013 1:10AM
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Kretzschmar
Posts: 6691 - Karma: 97,873
i feel like a scumbag seeing that you guys lose 80k a year to adblocker and such. i just turned mine off for newschoolers just because of that haha
May 9 2013 2:54PM
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TheClap.
Posts: 21649 - Karma: 4,013
exactly this
May 9 2013 4:24PM
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NinetyFour
Posts: 8650 - Karma: 13,409
I completely wiped adblock off of chrome, solely for the reason of being able to see advertised deals. Blooms sale banner is pretty kick ass right now, and Saga has had some good ones in the past. D-Structure always advertises sales in a banner so I keep an eye out for that. Got some really good stuff from D-Structure because of their advertised sales.

I would be pumped to see some more sport oriented banners though. Right now I see some ads for a steel building, and an american express card. Neither are even close to being relevant to any of my google searches and so forth.
May 11 2013 6:18PM
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Tree60
Posts: 1438 - Karma: 4,961
One thing I really wish was changed with ads though...

You need to change the way ads buffer, or at least let them overpower the buffering for the video you were watching. When I'm on slow internet, It takes me two or three minutes to watch a 30 second ad, because its buffering both the ad, and the video that the ad is playing for. It just makes it super annoying, and its a change that most people wouldnt even notice.
May 13 2013 12:46AM
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Mag
Posts: 8155 - Karma: 14,809
This!

Nobody really cares if they have ads that don't get in the way, it's just the annoying ones they don't want, popups and video ads.

and bishop how the f would it be close to 20 a month, I'd be amazed if the average person was worth more than 10$ to you tbh.
May 13 2013 9:12PM
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B.Aussie
Posts: 5851 - Karma: 4,522
I'm happy to have ads, just re-enabled them. The only reason I had them blocked in the first place was because they make everything load a lot slower for me and my internet is horrible.
May 15 2013 7:47AM
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corona
Posts: 12752 - Karma: 32,266
yea I'm a bit confused by the price.

this is speculation, but they probably get ~$10/thousand impressions. so that'd be ~650,000 impressions per month of lost revenue. If only 0.5% of members subscribed, then that would be $6.5/month. plus, that only averages out to about 1 impression per unique site visitor.

again, mostly speculation on the prices, but they're no doubt in the right ballpark (Google is a wonderful thing).


then you have to accept that this is the internet and you will always have people turning off ads and you can't possibly think that you're going to be making money off every single person who visits the site. A TV station fully realizes that a good portion of viewers mute/turn off the TV during ads which essentially related in the TV station making no money off of them.
May 15 2013 8:45AM
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--ski--
Posts: 1670 - Karma: 817
You can 'whitelist' websites in Adblock. However, I believe most people don't actually realise this. How about trying to get people to put www.newschoolers.com on that 'whitelist'? So while ads run on NS, the rest of web is still blocked.
May 16 2013 11:49PM
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RimJobber
Posts: 3313 - Karma: 10,058
So is adblock costing you guys money because it shows up that we're using it and they dont pay or use you?
May 18 2013 7:32PM
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The_Hannes
Posts: 285 - Karma: 63
Lots of people use adblock these days because on some sites you get a huge number of annoying pop-ups that you can only counter with ad-block. However, I do not think that the ads on ns are all that annoying. It is simply the problem that people who use adblock are not aware of how they damage the sites they love. If somebody told them, most of them probably would turn it off on the sites they really care for.
It was the same for me: I was a long-time adblock user, but only when my favourite news site had a huge banner on top of the page about how they are loosing money because of people like me, I realized what I was doing. They had a tutorial on how to disable adblock on their site, so I did that on all of my favourite websites and it is not bugging me at all. On newschoolers.com, for example, I enjoy seeing a few nice powder photos on the top of the page or getting a good offer on some nice pants.
So I think the main problem is awareness. The best solution to this problem would be to launch a big banner on top of the page telling everyone about it.
Just my two cents, hope I could help to maintain my favourite site the way it is.
May 19 2013 7:46AM
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gregorio
Posts: 2372 - Karma: 151
I actually get some enjoyment seeing the banner ads when one of for The Mountain (animal shirts) and one for Jos A Bank
May 19 2013 11:08AM
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