ads on LJ paid comms possible now? added: ONTD cuts deal with LJ

[charmian]

Been scarce about these parts because a certain book has come out, and so I've been reading reviews while waiting for it to arrive in the post, but I came across an ONTD link and saw some people in the comments complaining about ads. This confused me because ONTD is a permanent community, and thus wouldn't normally have ads because the option to have ads for permanent/paid users is IIRC available only to personal accounts. (Look at it with adblock turned off: you'll see ads)

I wonder if the policy changed, or they made an exception for ONTD? (they are, after all, 100,000 members strong, and probably the largest community on LJ) So then, who does the ad money go to, I wonder? Do the maintainers split it amongst themselves equally?

EDIT: Update!

Thanks to delphinapterus, I've found out that ONTD has made a deal with LJ.

One of the maintainers of LJ has become an employee of LJ, as the 'editor of ONTD.' [EDIT: See next post for more details. It's not clear whether the mod is getting a salary or not.]
They report that ONTD members will soon get special userheads (I guess kind of like those Santa's hat ones?), that ONTD will have a dedicated server, and there will be special widgets for highlighting comments, and possibly their own domain and an iPhone app. So this is where the money's going to.

Very interesting: I guess this makes ONTD sort of like the Cyrillic LJ community drugoi, where IIRC the moderator is an LJ employee as well, and there are certain promotions (IIRC). I wonder if any other English-language LJ comms may be offered similar deals by LJ? [Possibly reflecting the trend of older internet companies to go from being tech-oriented to content-oriented companies? Yahoo! forex, or AOL.]

Comments

[delphinapterus]

There was a post on the ads on ONTD. Apparently revenue is needed for a dedicated server and maybe domain name.

[charmian]

Wow, thanks for the info! I'll update my post, as this is quite an interesting development.

[delphinapterus]

There's a bit more to the post but from what I can tell the ad revenue goes to doing the following.
"We're going to get exclusive members-only purple userheads, we'll eventually have a dedicated server so we'll see less and less of those annoying database errors, plus some awesome widgets that will highlight your posts and comments on ONTD and the LiveJournal homepage. We're even trying to finally land our own domain."

[charmian]

Hmm, I see. I wonder how much increased rev. LJ will get from putting ads on ONTD? I hear that topical sites are much more lucrative in ad revenue.

[delphinapterus]

Trivial as it is I am also wondering what they mean by the purple user headers. The santa things were icons so I'm wondering if they mean the blue bar that has the icon, user name, and date stamp will be purple instead of blue?

What gets me is that as soon as anyone mentions not liking the ads there is always helpful posts about how to get Adblock+ or varies on it so the ads can be avoided. Although I wonder how many users actually do that. I don't know, does Adblock make it so that revenue is lost from the ad?

[foxfirefey]

You know that little user head icon by people's usernames? I think they mean turning that purple.

A decent percent of the population uses some kind of ad blocking (which, to be frank, is actually quite computer security savvy, as even the best ad networks can sometimes end up carrying malware), but not enough to make it worth it to block mention of methods. Also, tech-savvy populations (aka Slashdot) are far more likely to do that. And ONTD has lots and lots of traffic from people who don't even have user accounts. And don't discount things like sponsorship deals that can make money and aren't susceptible to ad blocking--ONTD is ripe for those.

[delphinapterus]

Huh, I'm sort of stumped by why changing their colour would be a big deal. The whole blue band I could see being a big deal but those heads are so small. One of life's little mysteries I guess.

best ad networks can sometimes end up carrying malware Didn't LJ's own ad network prove that? ;)

In all seriousness though I hadn't thought of the traffic from non-account holders but I would agree with you that it's probably significant especially when ONTD is becoming known outside Lj-land.

[charmian]

Yeah, ONTD seems to have a really high profile. I see it sometimes mentioned on other blogs. That whole weird thing that went down with them and Eli Roth, for example.

[charmian]

Hmm, that's a good point. I'm not really sure; I simply assumed that the mod meant the userheads, because that's all I've seen customized.

Yeah, it does, but a lot of people use IE and can't put it in; plus, ONTD has tons of lurkers and people who just happen in from links from other gossip blogs too, IIRC.

[foxfirefey]

I was totally wondering when this would happen. ONTD has always been a moneysuck; even getting it to break even would be an improvement.

[charmian]

Yeah, I always wondered about that. I have no idea whether it makes money in the long run by being an incentive for people to get paid accounts or not, though, but it did seem very troublesome because it would sometimes crash the servers.

I suspected that ONTD was in the long run a net money loser because even if a few people got paid accounts for it, I wondered if many ONTD members simply used LJ to participate in ONTD, which gave them far less incentive to get a paid account, and also because it attracts a lot of lurkers (non-LJ-user-readers). Under the traditional subscription-based LJ model, lurkers represent a drain on LJ resources, without any positive sides; I suppose with the addition of ads, lurkers can finally be monetized.

[synecdochic]

Under the traditional subscription-based LJ model, lurkers represent a drain on LJ resources, without any positive sides; I suppose with the addition of ads, lurkers can finally be monetized.

That was the entire point of adding ads,a ctually. Not for ONTD specifically, but traffic showed a horrble lurker::active user ratio.

[charmian]

Huh, really? I wonder if LJ's lurker:active user ratio was much worse than the industry, or if had then worsened from what it was in the past. But I'm not sure how an open site can avoid that, as the internet increases in size, the amount of lurkers increases dramatically, especially as people only seem to join a limited number of sites.

Does DW keep stats on that kind of thing too? Or is that not really a problem considering the different business model?

[synecdochic]

Not a problem for us! And wasn't for lj if they hadn't wanted to strike it big.

[(Anonymous)]

I suspect that for ONTD, a lot of the ONTD users and posters are willing to use a "sponsored" account just to have more icons. I would love to see a percentage of frequent ONTD'ers who have sponsored accounts, and how much ad revenue they are getting from LJ'ers who are primarily ONTD'ers who have sponsored accounts?

[charmian]

Actually, if they're new users, chances are that they don't even know a non-sponsored free account even exists, as that is now the default. However, previously to the system in which ONTD has ads, I wonder whether they were getting much revenue at all under those circumstances, because if all they were reading was ONTD and related comms, ONTD previously did not show ads to any users, so even if they were sponsored, they wouldn't have been seeing ads anyhow. (Now, of course, both Basic and Plus users see the same ads on ONTD)

[tresjolie9]

They may not have been seeing ads when they were on ONTD. However when they went here and there elsewhere on LJ, say to look at the profile of a fellow ONTD_er who has a sponsored account, to modify part of an F'list, to add or change their user pics, to go to another ONTD related comm not on a paid account, they would be seeing ads.

[charmian]

True, but I think those ads would be far less valuable, because demographic-targeted ads command higher rates than ones that are sitewide on a very general interest site.

(Though, I'm not sure how lucrative gossip site ads are anyway, comparatively)

[tresjolie9]

Hmm, but then again, the ads you see may be based on the DOB you state when you open an LJ account. Say if you state that you are 18, they may give you one set of ads. I would say that ONTD is mostly comprised of the 14-25 demographic, so the majority of those people might get the ads for that demographic.

[matgb]

Exactly. And anything at all that stops them from crashing the whole site when someone major does something daft (like dying) is good for the rest of us.

If ads are to be allowed, and paid/perm accounts are allowed to have their own ads, then comms should be allowed them in some way.

Interesting to see them moving forward; wonder if the 'own domain name' thing will mean they allow the proper domain mapping like they're doing for the newspapers.

[foxfirefey]

If ads are to be allowed, and paid/perm accounts are allowed to have their own ads, then comms should be allowed them in some way.

Well, I wouldn't say that, necessarily, except from maybe an ideological standpoint.

[charmian]

Yeah, if it avoids the whole "something happened to famous celeb!-->LJ goes down" phenomenon, that'll be worth it.

Well, actually I can see quite a few logistic problems associated with ads; for example, who is the 'owner' of a comm, given that there may be multiple maintainers, who all theoretically have the same status.

It would indeed be nice if LJ could straighten out that domain mapping. Now that Tumblr and Posterous are having that as a free feature, especially.