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

[(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.