Too many ads,

[No pseudoscience]

I get that this site needs to make money, but this is too far, I am getting bombarded by ads, advertisements shouldn't make it harder to use a website, please make the ads less intrusive (like removeing the ads in the top menu and between pages, moving large ads to the bottom of the page, and avoid ads that have videos or sound), the ads are intrusive, destracting, and can turn people away from the site. Please take this into consideration.

[Christopher S.]

If you are annoyed by ads on the sides of the pages, use an extension to hide them. If you want to support SWL you'll let ads run. These are productive options, while expressing that ads are annoying really isn't - you even acknowledge that the ads keep the website up, so you are effectively wishing for a reality in which money is not necessary to keep a website fun/functional. You would be supporting the greater science community by lending patronage of some kind by donating or allowing ads, so decide for yourself how to defeat this issue. Be grateful you have this choice.

4 hours ago, No pseudoscience said:

can turn people away from the site

This isn't a blog site. The ads keep it running, but otherwise, the objective is not necessarily more traffic, as that then drives up cost, requiring more ad rolls. Anyone visiting SWL regularly are doing so with focus and purpose, usually academic or alongside a hobby. There is no sense in pandering to those who don't acknowledge the work and cost involved with the subject matter or independent sites like this one, run mostly by one guy, as that would be suicidal. You know that:

 

4 hours ago, No pseudoscience said:

I get that this site needs to make money

Rather, you conflate "make money" with being self-sustaining: We use SWL, so we pay for it. SWL attracts/earns donations and support through years of upkeep and good management. It's free to use but not free to maintain. Gotta make concessions sometimes, to hold onto the things you are deeply involved with, and hopefully like-minded people find their way here and build a strong community backbone.

[No pseudoscience]

7 hours ago, Christopher S. said:

If you are annoyed by ads on the sides of the pages, use an extension to hide them. If you want to support SWL you'll let ads run. These are productive options, while expressing that ads are annoying really isn't - you even acknowledge that the ads keep the website up, so you are effectively wishing for a reality in which money is not necessary to keep a website fun/functional. You would be supporting the greater science community by lending patronage of some kind by donating or allowing ads, so decide for yourself how to defeat this issue. Be grateful you have this choice.

This isn't a blog site. The ads keep it running, but otherwise, the objective is not necessarily more traffic, as that then drives up cost, requiring more ad rolls. Anyone visiting SWL regularly are doing so with focus and purpose, usually academic or alongside a hobby. There is no sense in pandering to those who don't acknowledge the work and cost involved with the subject matter or independent sites like this one, run mostly by one guy, as that would be suicidal. You know that:

 

Rather, you conflate "make money" with being self-sustaining: We use SWL, so we pay for it. SWL attracts/earns donations and support through years of upkeep and good management. It's free to use but not free to maintain. Gotta make concessions sometimes, to hold onto the things you are deeply involved with, and hopefully like-minded people find their way here and build a strong community backbone.

I'm  17 and i have no income, sorry

[No pseudoscience]

9 hours ago, Christopher S. said:

If you are annoyed by ads on the sides of the pages, use an extension to hide them. If you want to support SWL you'll let ads run. These are productive options, while expressing that ads are annoying really isn't - you even acknowledge that the ads keep the website up, so you are effectively wishing for a reality in which money is not necessary to keep a website fun/functional. You would be supporting the greater science community by lending patronage of some kind by donating or allowing ads, so decide for yourself how to defeat this issue. Be grateful you have this choice.

This isn't a blog site. The ads keep it running, but otherwise, the objective is not necessarily more traffic, as that then drives up cost, requiring more ad rolls. Anyone visiting SWL regularly are doing so with focus and purpose, usually academic or alongside a hobby. There is no sense in pandering to those who don't acknowledge the work and cost involved with the subject matter or independent sites like this one, run mostly by one guy, as that would be suicidal. You know that:

 

Rather, you conflate "make money" with being self-sustaining: We use SWL, so we pay for it. SWL attracts/earns donations and support through years of upkeep and good management. It's free to use but not free to maintain. Gotta make concessions sometimes, to hold onto the things you are deeply involved with, and hopefully like-minded people find their way here and build a strong community backbone.

Also, I'm not asking about removeing all ads, I'm only asking for less intrusive ads.

[Vancanneyt Sander]

The only new ad positions are in the sidebar and on desktop a sticky ad. Vignette ads are also new, but their occurrence is limited. Bottom and top ads where already there. The ads itself we don’t have control over, those depends on advertisers that want their ads on our site. 

we want to keep SWL free for everyone but to be able to do that we need ad revenue to keep it up. Donations only cover 2% of all our expenses so that doesn’t pay the bills.

[Sam Warfel]

The full-screeds ads that sometimes pop up when I try to click on a link are way too intrusive in my opinion.

I have only seen those on like sketchy sites or malware, it’s not a good look for the website 

[Newbie]

20 minutes ago, Sam Warfel said:

The full-screeds ads that sometimes pop up when I try to click on a link are way too intrusive in my opinion.

I have only seen those on like sketchy sites or malware, it’s not a good look for the website 

Definitely agree on this Sam. 
The ads are ridiculously large and impact on the experience of using the site. 
just as an aside I’m not really interested in Ukrainian women. I suppose I don’t speak for everyone here 🤣

N.

[Jesterface23]

The complaint would be the interstitial ads on all devices

[Vancanneyt Sander]

The interstitials are once per hour. You get them pretty quick when navigating but not again for an other hour.

15 uren geleden, Newbie zei:

The ads are ridiculously large and impact on the experience of using the site. 

The sizes are still pretty close to the same as before. 

15 uren geleden, Newbie zei:

just as an aside I’m not really interested in Ukrainian women. I suppose I don’t speak for everyone here 🤣

ads are personalised for countries outside EU and California so you only get ads that should be closer to your interests (like the washing machine I’m looking for that I now constantly see in the ads). Inside EU and California users can opt out of personalisation and cookies in accordance to the GDPR en CCAP privacy laws, when declining you’ll get random ads that likely aren’t close to your interests (like Ukrainian women). 

ps. Thanks for the feedback, as always ☺️

[Sam Warfel]

I understand the need, but I really do think the “interstitals” are a step too far 

[hamateur 1953]

Just as a possible compromise: A “ premium membership sans ads perhaps?  I have no idea of SWL’s budget.   Is the approximate amount of 60% representative of all of SWL operating budget?  I also assumed that merchandise purchases help SWL to stay afloat.   Bandwidth costs, naturally. Could Sander or Marcel expand on this a bit please? The Google Ads really have become a headache especially when they block content during some  operations.  Thanks. MIke. 

[Vancanneyt Sander]

1 uur terug, hamateur 1953 zei:

A “ premium membership sans ads perhaps?

That would be something, we’ve done it for the app but it’s a whole other technical implementation plus it would generate more load to the server because of separate caching layer and the development of a payment portal which we currently don’t have either. 

1 uur terug, hamateur 1953 zei:

I have no idea of SWL’s budget.

Our expenses are about 40K per year currently. Donations last year where 1,5K, merchandise 0,4K. So ad revenue is the major part we need to keep SWL online. This year we saw our CDN costs rise with 400/month extra, delivering free push notifications costs us almost 1K per month and rises each month the more app users we get. It doesn’t get cheaper running SWL.

1 uur terug, hamateur 1953 zei:

especially when they block content during some  operations.

Keep in mind that you get the interstitial once per hour during the active session. Yes you get it quickly upon first or second internal link is clicked but won’t come again within an hour. Or do you get it more frequently? Please let us know what operations you’re referring too.

[Drax Spacex]

Personally, I find the ad density on SWL to be quite reasonable and unobtrusive as to be almost unnoticeable - but perhaps my brain has adapted to filter out most internet ads (subconscious effect I cannot say).  Certainly the ads do not interfere with site navigation or content viewing.

[Marcel de Bont]

Thanks for the support and feedback everyone.

As Sander mentions, bills are rising and ad revenues are declining. We had to take action in order for SpaceWeatherLive to remain the way it is. We are growing so fast and the ad revenue was not increasing in the same pace as our explosive growth when it comes to the amount of visitors but also expenses.

We realize the interstitial could be intrusive but it makes good revenue for us and during active sessions it is only displayed once an hour which is very reasonable I think. I already got used to it despite being very hesitant at first. We try to find a happy balance between ad density and optimal revenue without creating a negative viewing experience and we think we achieved that. We hope you get used to it as well.

[Jesterface23]

Working on a map myself, I think the map currently on your app may have a lot of potential if you bring it over to the website and continue adding more features. Hard to say what may be for subscription only if it is built up more though.

[Vancanneyt Sander]

3 uren geleden, Jesterface23 zei:

I think the map currently on your app may have a lot of potential if you bring it over to the website and continue adding more features.

It’s on our project board and it’s halfway done 😎 it’s only missing some texts, I think. The map itself for desktop is done

[hamateur 1953]

Its a minor thing really.  The lower ads obstruct the delete function. However this is only a minor inconvenience. Aside from Newbie’s comment, I wouldn’t hold SWL accountable for those Ukraine gals failure to arrive, this is a separate matter I have dealt with directly with the purveyors 😜

[Vancanneyt Sander]

1 uur terug, hamateur 1953 zei:

The lower ads obstruct the delete function.

Hmm 🤔 haven’t seen any obstructions. Can you screenshot so we can see if we can fix it? Bottom sticky banner can be minimised if it obscures anything.

[3gMike]

On 5/30/2023 at 4:38 PM, Vancanneyt Sander said:

delivering free push notifications costs us almost 1K per month and rises each month the more app users we get. It doesn’t get cheaper running SWL.

That is almost one-third of your total costs, which suggests that if all of us only selected push notifications when we really need them that could save a fair chunk of money.

[hamateur 1953]

The “ delete” function is obstructed by the google ads when you are in a private message and attempting to delete that post only.  It may still be deleted from the main menu as I discovered later on.  This issue may be unique to IOS. Anyway I forwarded a complaint to google ads regarding this issue.  Hopefully it will be dealt with.  For the present, no big deal.  Mike. 

[3gMike]

Perhaps you could make the default setting for push notifications to be 'Off' 

[Vancanneyt Sander]

47 minuten geleden, 3gMike zei:

That is almost one-third of your total costs, which suggests that if all of us only selected push notifications when we really need them that could save a fair chunk of money.

Push notifications is pay per device, and we grow each month so each month it gets more expensive. So it doesn’t matter if you disable some categories of notifications.

46 minuten geleden, 3gMike zei:

Perhaps you could make the default setting for push notifications to be 'Off' 

People that installing the app get the option to wether or not they want to receive push notifications, it’s not turned on by default.

50 minuten geleden, hamateur 1953 zei:

The “ delete” function is obstructed by the google ads when you are in a private message and attempting to delete that post only.

Ok, but tapping the arrow minimises the ad so that it’s reachable.

[hamateur 1953]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nS5_EQgbuLc

In regards to the “ ukraine girls”. The Beatles made reference to them in the above link. .    

Edited May 31, 2023 by hamateur 1953
clarity

[Jesterface23]

Noting that the adhesion banner at the bottom of the page is blocking popup notifications. Maybe the notifications can be moved up 90px for the larger screens and 50px smaller screens? (I'm not actually sure if mobile has the popup notifications)

[Vancanneyt Sander]

2 uren geleden, Jesterface23 zei:

Noting that the adhesion banner at the bottom of the page is blocking popup notifications. Maybe the notifications can be moved up 90px for the larger screens and 50px smaller screens? (I'm not actually sure if mobile has the popup notifications)

Minifying the ad should do the trick. But it has to be done at each page load 😕 . It’s a hard one to fix unless I can move the forum notifications balloons to another place 🤔