ORIGINAL: MikeChilson
Mark,
New site looks really good! However I must take exception to the business descision to FORCE full page ads on non-subscribers. I design commercial websites for a living and I can tell you (as I'm sure you know) the importance of the the user experience. I completely understand the economics of running a site this size. But aggravating your users with this behavior is an unacceptible commerial practice IMHO.
The given revinue stream for full page ads is not a profitable method of advertising capital. The typical full page ad plays out like this...
1. You sell a full page ad
2. You aggravate your users
3. User stop coming to site
4. advertiser drops full page ad
You have accomplished two things:
1. Aggravated your user experience/lost users
2. Lost advertising revenue
I hope you will consider these points I have mentioned. It is pretty frustrating to see six ads (that's including new products) on the first page and then on the way to your forums get hit with a full page ad.
Would you appreciate that? There is a fine line in web advertising and I believe you guys have crossed it. BTW... This is EXACTLY the reason I would not use RCAirport but would use RCU..
Thanks for your consideration!
some users insist on using ad blockers. how do you deal with that?
users can change to one in every 100 views on full page ads.
users can pay $20 for an entire year to remove them, get unlimited classified listings and no insertion fees on auctions plus a free magazine. A decent value proposition. If a user does not want to upgrade then seeing a full page ad once every 100 pages is reasonable I feel especially based upon user feedback in our recent poll. The site is still free and the cost to maintain and develop this is huge. Advertising is not a winfall on the internet anymore as you know being in the business.