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

[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.