I still think you should consider putting a more prominent banner advert at the top of a couple of the more popular sub boards, especially the Gambling Section. It's seemingly mostly gambling sites that bid on the auctions anyway and it's usually from reputable casinos so there's not much issue with them. I'm sure that banner would attract a premium price as many casinos seem to quite obviously want to target their audience there (and we see this with their signature campaigns where they often require x amount if posts in the gambling section or pay more for ones in there). You could even maybe sell it for a fixed price or issue them for longer periods of time like monthly, quarterly or bi-annually or something so you didn't have to waste too much time on them.
Yeah, the forum is definitely under-monetized; wouldn't hurt to have at least a single banner at the bottom of a page, feels less intrusive than at the top.
I think people would miss that one as well. The reason I suggest top is it's far more prominent at the top and will probably be the first thing you see. Theymos seems to be fairly against more advertising though, but I think a banner ad at the top would be less intrusive or annoying than signatures which the forum receives nothing monetarily from. Donator ranks would still be a good idea though.
A lot of the time the ad slots do go for quite cheap, but the slot isn't very prominent in my opinion, hence why most probably prefer signature campaigns. I've actually even had numerous people over the years enquire why we don't have ads. They probably just blend in as another signature to most.
I've had numerous people ask me how to advertise on bitcointalk at all in the first place. Four clicks are required before a user finds themselves on the topic of the current ad slot auction, and that's
if they know where to look in the first place.
Yeah, same. Auctions is probably one of the last places someone would go to. I know a few of us have received requests to buy sticked threads/promoted posts as well.
I've had numerous people ask me how to advertise on bitcointalk at all in the first place. Four clicks are required before a user finds themselves on the topic of the current ad slot auction, and that's if they know where to look in the first place.
The link ("Advertise here") is right there under the banner, which is a logical place for it. So one click away if you're already in a thread, or two clicks if you're on the main page and need to click a thread first.
Well, that's if they even spot that in the first place.
But whether the forum could use more banners is another story... I would imagine more users would start using the "Disable ads" option so it might defeat the purpose.
Well you can already turn signatures off and they're still very popular. If someone wants to get rid of ads they'll probably find a way with an ad blocker or something and many people do use them and yet the internet is still full of adverts. If people are still paying for signatures or ads it doesn't really matter how many people may or may not be blocking them at the end of the day.
