The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.
Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style.
No images, JavaScript, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link
directly to any NSFW page. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.
For round 200, there will be
20 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in twenty chance of appearing. All 20 of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post, and only for people using the default theme.
Duration- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 8 or 9 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if
past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.
StatsExact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstatsInfo about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfoAd blockingHero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.
I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.
To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP.
You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.
To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload,
but you must request this.
To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.
Designing adsMake sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.htmlAlso read the comments in that file.
Images are not allowed no matter how they are created (CSS, SVG, or data URI).
Occasionally I will make an exception for small logos and such, but you must get pre-approval from me first.
The maximum size of any one ad is 51200 bytes.
I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).
Auction rulesYou must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should
PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.
If you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You
must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all twenty slots are filled.
The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC total.- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- The bidding starts at 0.05.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. For round 200, I will try to end the auction sometime between 2 and 5 days from the time of this post.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots
If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.
I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.
You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35)
after announcing the auction results in this thread.
You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.Round 200 bonus prizeTo celebrate 200 rounds of forum ads, in this round, if you win an ad slot, you have a chance of winning a bonus prize. The bonus prize is that you will be given the following abilities:
- You will be able to change your display name at will in your profile settings.
- You will be able to set a custom title of your choice at will in your profile settings.
A custom title is a short piece of text which appears above your poster rank like this:
These abilities are subject to moderation, and can be taken away for any reason at our sole discretion. Furthermore, it is not guaranteed that you will be able to do these things forever, since software changes could conceivably make either or both of these powers impractical to support.
You can transfer the bonus prize one time immediately after winning it if you wish, but not later.
One person will win the bonus prize. Your chance of winning is proportional to the percentage of round 200's total revenue which comes from you. So if for example you bid 5@0.5 for a total of 2.5 BTC, and the other 15 slots were sold for a total of 7.5 BTC, then you would have a 25% chance of winning the bonus prize.
I will select the winner randomly by relying on future block-chain data. I will post the details of exactly how to calculate the winning numbers, which winning numbers each person needs to hope for, which block will be used to generate the winning numbers, etc. after the auction is over and the slots are paid for.
