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Contents 1 The ads are coming 1.1 Ad layout 2 Support bar 3 Ad messing up site 4 Where I put my ads. 5 Maybe a footer ad? 6 No popups plz... 7 Printable version 8 Top vs. side && new ad network. 8.1 New Network 8.2 Layout changes

The ads are coming

As per our lengthy previous discussion, we're going to be making some changes to the site to attempt to beat our rising server costs (which is still a good thing since that means ppl are using the site :).

It's been almost two weeks since the discussion, so I just wanted to call out the warning that they're coming now because we got approved with a major ad network and we're all ready to set up the ads. This is great for us since the ad network (24/7 Real Media) is one of the big top-10 advertisers and we technically don't have the traffic numbers they would normally need. Luckily, with the consistent growth we've shown, and the traffic from Pedlr plopped on top, they let us in anyway.

When I created the account, I chose the only the lowest-media-level for the ads, so no pop-ups, no interstitials, no audio-banners.

I'm going to start rolling in the other recommendations from the discussion as well to give users a clearer view of what's going on at LyricWiki and to make the experience on the site the best it can be.

Once I get these ads up, I'll create some sandboxes with different layouts of ads and then I'll be looking for feedback as to which arrangements seem ideal for the site.

Thanks for your patience... if you have any feedback, as always, let us know!
-Sean Colombo 14:11, 3 April 2007 (EDT)

I did say if were going to do it, to do it properly. Can't ask for better than that. Good work Sean. I can see them appearing now, I'm seeing CityKids ads, in a strange way it actually looks good.

-TrevorP 22:03, 3 April 2007 (EDT)

Wow, yeah, I'm getting nice "Live Strong" ads... not bad at all. :)

-Sean Colombo 23:01, 3 April 2007 (EDT)

Same here, "Live Strong" ads. I have to admit that the advertisers did a good job making that (those?) ads. Far from what some other sites have.

- teknomunk (talk,E) 23:03, 3 April 2007 (EDT)

Ad layout

As I mentioned above that I'd get to... I've started messing around with ad layouts. The current placement is technically against our TOS w/the advertisers since it is only 'below-the-fold'. We kinda have to move it. I haven't figured out where exactly a banner could go on the top of the page (any suggestions?), but I crammed one in on the bottom and also a version with an ad on the right (the same way as wikia... in fact, some of their code directly).

Oh, a random thought: since the side-bar is so tall on the left, if we had one on the right bar and one on the left bar then they would never both be visible at the same time (unless someone had a really tall monitor or something), so that might be a low-impact way to make sure ppl see (and therefore occasionally click) the ads... on the other hand, it might still be visually-stressing to have two on the same page even if not visible at the same time??

Anywho... to mess around with the different layouts here are some debug-links:

• right-side
• bottom (still technically below-the-fold on most pages)
• right-left-combo (when you scroll, the idea is that you'd only see one at a time)
• ALL THREE! :-O (just for comparing them I guess... I don't see us going with this, lol)

Please leave feedback about these layouts (these aren't the only options too... feel free to be creative)
Thanks for your input!
-Sean Colombo 03:39, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

I personally don't like the right-side in its current form, it takes away too much screen real-estate all the way down the right side of the article (maybe I've just been using MediaWiki for so long i don't like to change). If it could be brought inside the article frame, so that the article could wrap around the ad I think it'd be great. Might just have to experiment and make sure that articles that use "float:right;" still wrap around it, and don't appear underneath:

 +--+ +---------------+
 |  | | Article     ##|
 |  | |~~ ~~~ ~~|FL|##|
 |  | |~~~          ##|
 |  | |~~~~ ~~~~|FL|##|
 |  | |~~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~  |
 |  | |~~~~           |
 +--+ +---------------+

not

 +--+ +---------------+
 |  | | Article     ##|
 |  | |~~ ~~~ ~~ ~~~##|
 |  | |~~~~ ~~~~    ##|
 |  | |~~~ ~~~ ~~   ##|
 |  | |~~ ~~~~    |FL||
 |  | |           |FL||
 +--+ +---------------+

 ##  ad
 ~~  text
|FL| floating box

If we don't do this properly, the site could fold, the site needs money to sustain itself, we want to maximize our possible income from ads. I see no problem with horizontal ads at the top of the page (Wikia used to do this), or at the top of an article (under the title maybe).

I don't think ads at the bottom would help, I rarely consciously see the footer, I'd probably never see an ad down their either. Its after the end of the article, after the amazon links, you know its the end of the article, and never scroll any further.

On a related note, I don't link the sponsors box where it is, it hides the search and toolbox which i use often. I'm not sure what to do, perhaps we could use both top and right spots, to still accommodate it.

It might be worth, at least initially after making the ads prominent, add a link under to the effect "whats with the ads?" (if the advertisers don't object). I have read many enthusiastic comments from people who like the fact we are a lyric site without ads, it could upset some people. We need to let them know our reasons, and ask for their support, in keeping with us, and possibly donating. Ultimately if we can make enough from donations alone, we can scrap the ads.

A further alternative (slightly annoying, but perhaps very effective) is to distribute horizontal ads throughout an article (in the same many news sites do [1]). Its entirely possible to have an ad or two inserted on a blank line in lyrics, or between two paragraphs of text. It should possibly not be used on talk pages etc., defaulting to the top or side, I don't know. Just a thought.

-TrevorP 09:33, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

If you want to keep the site as visually pure as is possible under the circumstances, I think following the lead of the majority of other sites (and this is by personal experience, I haven't done a survey or anything :-]) and have it either at the top or on the left side. Personally, I've become fairly numb to sites with ads in these locations. I notice them, but they don't hinder me from enjoying whatever the site has to offer. Having ads on the right side takes page space away from the main thing that the site is about, the lyrics. Also, it will lessen the amount of blank space that the site has, diminishing the usability and readability of the site and increasing the visual clutter. Besides, if the number of clicks help bring in money, then having them near where people would click and accidentally add to the count is a good thing for bringing in money. (Yes, I hate it when I accidentally do that myself, but....) That means near the links at the top or the left of the page.

My preference is to have the ads on the left side, with a new organization of that side. From top to bottom: Navigation, Lunch Money ads, Search, Sponsors, Toolbox, and finally Plug-ins. I still think that a Donations box next to the "Send to a friend" box would be a very good idea, by the way. Having the ads between the Navigation section and the search would increase the likelihood that the ads would be noticed and clicked, I think. The size of the ad will possibly drop the search box below the fold, however.

Another option is to have the ad at the very top, above everything else that currently resides there. (Except, perhaps for the LyricWiki logo which could be moved.) This would leave added space at the top, however. But perhaps this could be used for linking to Pedlr, or creating a new Navigation menu or some such. This would drop the articles about 100 pixels or so, but that's not too bad.

A third option is to change nothing and leave it as it is. I have to admit that I saw the notice that the ads were coming and I was wondering how long that was going to be until it happened, without realizing that the ads were already in place! (I told you I kind of blur out ads on the left side!)

--Kiefer 13:30, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

I think it should be a combination of the right side ad, following TrevorP's comments. Also integrate an add at the top of the page, either the very top, after the page title, or SONG tag.

YukataNinja 17:09, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

I would stay away from putting ads into the text of article; I think it would be intrusive. Intrusive banners either flash, shake, take up a large amount of screen space, or are inside the content. Apart from that, I would prefer a slim horizontal banner on top to a banner on the right; I have my task bar at the right side of the screen.

If we end up using a banner at the right side of the window, I think that TrevorP's suggestion of having the article text wrap around the ad should be done. I usually only have problems with the width of the screen with the side-by-side translations of Japanese to English on some of the pages (messes with how the lyrics line up).

- teknomunk (talk,E) 18:33, 11 April 2007 (EDT)

Awesome guys... thanks for the input. I'm working on creating three new ad layouts now: top-above-everything, top-below-title, and right-with-wrapping. It appeared (unless I missed something) that everyone seemed to think these were fairly livable. I'm not sure how they compare in actual revenue... so now, the best move may be to put each layout up for a couple of days, get some numbers and then figure out how we want to continue from there. We've got to find which of the "okay" ads can give the highest CPM.

I'll keep you guys updated, and when I have links to the three new ad-positions, I'll post them here.

Thanks for all the input guys!

-Sean Colombo 01:30, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

I got the top-below-title banner in there, but can't seem to get a banner to behave how TrevorP was describing above.

Anyone with CSS skillz able to haxxify it to behave?

• top-below-title
• right-with-attempted-wrap (need help here)
• right-side
• right-left-combo

Hrm... sometimes nothing is showing up and they're serving a blank ad. If there's nothing there, then that's the problem I think (I'll have to figure out why that's happening... it's supposed to default to AdSense if they don't have an ad for us).

If anyone can get the right-side banner to behave, please let me know how.

Thanks!

-Sean Colombo 14:56, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

I messed with the wrapping some more and couldn't get it to listen to me. It's been a week since I changed the layout to the top so I figured we needed another swap... the top worked fairly well, so we'll try the right-side for a little bit I guess. When everything's solid I'll put some stats up here if I can.

One of the major problems with the bar being on the right was that the main page doesn't have room for it. I hacked the skin so that the ad is on the right everywhere except for the main page.

-Sean Colombo 23:23, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

Hey, been a bit slow, sorry. I did spend some time trying to figure out how to get the adds on the right hand side of the page as suggested, and although I don't like to give up, it think that it is (unless there is some cryptic css workaround) impossible. The problem is with the clear tag, there is no way to use it (it is needed to stop floating items from sitting left-right of each other), while telling it to ignore the existence of the add (and not clear its left-right sides). I thought you may be able to separate them into different divs, thus getting the two to ignore each other, but my experimenting and reading has failed to find a solution.

I don't know if the add position has been finalised, but my preference (failing solving the above problem) is a horizontal add, at the top of page or under the title. I have noticed the add on the right will hide things such as wide diff dumps, and other that runs off the right of the screen.

Just my opinion - TrevorP 06:57, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

Support bar

Ever think about putting a donations bar? Make an estimation of a Year costs and put the bar telling thats the money you need and how much have you received. Right now the Donations link it's almost invisible to most of the people... Progress bars are cool and fancy and you can see them grow and encourages a lot! :p Not sure, just a idea, maybe now that we have ads in the top of the page a progress bar it's a little too much... --Unaiaia (please, reply here) 12:21, 19 April 2007 (EDT)

Actually, TrevorP has written an extension to do just this. I'm still working on installing it... I think I got it in there, it just doesn't show up. There is a way to view the progress w/the install: refer to this post

-Sean Colombo 23:19, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

Ad messing up site

I've noticed over the past month that there is one horizontal ad that will prevent the side bar and top header from loading. It looks like a default XP window and has the title "Important Free Information!" This is the only ad I've had that issue with, anyone else ever have this problem?
-YukataNinja 14:53, 1 June 2007 (EDT)

I've now started to notice this, too. When an ad with the title "Important Free Information!" is loaded on the Main Page, the sidebar and the links at the top of the page do not load. Can anyone fix this? --WillMak050389 14:28, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

I have noticed the left side bar and the top not loading sometimes, usually when I'm just visiting for the first time in a day (like when it has to log me on). I just hit refresh and they load, so no biggie. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 20:01, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

I've noticed I can fix it with a refresh too... but that is kinda annoying to users. It seems like some sort of bug in the JavaScript that loads the ad could be causing the page to crash before it finishes loading. Has anyone heard of this sort of thing before or possibly of any fixes we could do to prevent it? (if we could figure out a way to force that ad to appear, it would be easier to test it).

-208.40.186.103 06:47, 14 June 2007 (EDT)

Where I put my ads.

I saw that you're trying to integrate ads, and I thought you'd like to see how I did it: VortexWiki. I hope this helps. 74.114.200.49 20:12, 2 June 2007 (EDT)

Maybe a footer ad?

Hey all,
If you haven't noticed... the site is running a bit slowly. The front-end and backend servers are running above 30% all the time. Memcached is the only reason we can do ANYTHING with the traffic we're now getting (the API has gone up a ton, and so has the Facebook app). Memcached is our friend :) I'm going to see if I can slap some Amazon/iTunes links into the facebook app w/o disrupting gameplay so that it can support itself.

Our webhost works with us pretty well, so we're now only paying $400/mo (since we dropped back from the loadbalanced solution to just a front-end box that was twice as fast), but we're hitting a wall on that solution. Now with the CantoPod plugin, we're going to be getting thousands more requests per day from the API... so I'm going to see how much we can upgrade and how soon. To support this, we need more blingola.

In the past, I've switched through about half-a-dozen ad networks (you probably noticed) to try to increase revenue w/o increasing ad space. AdSense is winning again though (they all do really well for like 2 days, then drop off).

Anywho, I was thinking a pretty non-invasive solution might be to do an AdSense text banner across the bottom of the page. Illegedly adding another ad doubles revenue... I doubt this, especially since the new ad will be in a lamer location, but hopefully it'll get us enough to get us at least one more server.

Feedback and other ideas are welcome.
-Sean Colombo 17:24, 6 October 2007 (EDT)

I popped it up there :-/

Let me know any thoughts,

-Sean Colombo 14:25, 7 October 2007 (EDT)

Hrmm... every now and then (primarily for short pages) I get a bit sick of the double-ad-maneuver. Maybe if there was a way to guarantee that at least one of them was text-only?  :-/ I dunno... if they were more relevant that would make me dislike them less. More music, less dating.

-Sean Colombo 14:27, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

No popups plz...

I don't mind Ads, but Popup Ads will kill the entire idea of LyricWiki faster than a cake made with bleach instead of batter. Aside from the fact that Firefox blocks half of the popup ads already (and IE blocks the other half), popup ads will only prove to send people fleeing from the site (and in the future, pre-emptively not-clicking on any lyrics that google tells them are hosted here).

Embedded ads are fine. I just hope they give you guys good revenue. I tell you, if I ever need... um... Lets see... "Freelance Writers"... or... "Personal Ads Dating"... You know, I'd click the ads here instead of the ones that MSN probably has... ;P

Thanks for the feedback. I completely agree about popups (and popunders). You can quote me on this: as long as I own LyricWiki, it will not have popup or popunder ads.

Thanks,

-Sean Colombo 11:54, 14 October 2007 (EDT)

Printable version

Please take the ads off the printable version... or at least have google text ads only there. Printing out colour pics with the lyrics is bloody irritating and results in copy/pasting to a text editor instead.

Top vs. side && new ad network.

New Network

First off, we got into a new ad network. It's the network run by Break.com. This is a good thing, because they will sell our ads directly, so we'll be getting more ads for movies, Mt. Dew, that kind of thing, and less horoscopes & dating sites. Also, they let us approve/deny ads before they get run. This has one restriction though: only the ads directly sold to advertisers get this privilege. So after the whatever-percent of ads actually get sold, the rest of the ads will still default to our old network, so those are at risk. Over time, as the site becomes more popular, the ads should get less and less annoying (please!).

Layout changes

Also, I've been messing with the layout. You'll notice that they ads are on top now, not the right. For some reason, this seems to be making the page load slowly. That may just be because I changed the skin-file so no pages are in the cache anymore. If the problem remains, then it may have to do with the new network.

If the ad is on top, it wastes less screen real-estate, but flashing ads seem to annoy me more on top than on the side. Does anyone else have opinions on the locations?

This might just be personal preference, so I'm considering letting logged-in users chose where to put the ads. It would take a little time to code that up, but it might be worth it.

As always, my talk page is a great place to give me feedback of any kind.
Later,
-Sean Colombo (talk|contribs) 11:20, 24 April 2008 (EDT)