Poll: More ads on The Excpaist - Problem solved?

[Jodah]

For me it's just baffling how they can be 14 months behind on payment and hire tons of new contributors at the same time.

That is exactly what irritates me. They knew they couldn't pay their employees, they should have been slashing content and telling the public why in the hopes that the community loved the site enough to buy more pub club memberships. Instead they hire new contributors and try to screw over existing ones.

 

[JezebelinHell]

Honestly I think the solution is to not hire so many damned contributors. They're struggling for money yet they keep adding loads of shows. Seriously, only hire what you can pay for guys.

No kidding. Didn't they just take submissions for reviewers as well? I can only imagine how EC was feeling watching them add more shows while they were being nice and letting them slack off on paying them. It really is like loaning a friend money for bills and seeing them sit at a bar and drink. You are going to get pissed and feel taken advantage of. It should not have been allowed to get so bad that you are $20k behind on paying anyone no matter how nice they are being about it when you ask them.

 

[lacktheknack]

What I'm curious about is, when you came up with this idea OP, why wasn't your first thought the following?
"This is a business that's been doing ... business for years. If they are in financial trouble, the first idea that pops into my head would not be something they would find hard to come up with. If they don't have more ads, I doubt it's because they were waiting for ME to put the idea in their heads".

I don't mean to sound like a dick, but I probably am so I apologise. I'm just always curious why some people think they can solve other people's problems with the first idea that pops in their head, especially when the involved party is experienced in the sort of problem in question.

Also, the new pop-up ads are bloody annoying!

However, the Escapist MUST be in financial trouble. See: The Extra Credits debacle.

However, they keep putting up new kinds of ads, only to take them down.

Presumably, this is because everyone goes "BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH ADS" every time they try.

Thus, these types of threads are good for increasing goodwill towards ads via discussing their PURPOSE versus how annoying they are. Thus, these kinds of threads are perfectly warranted.

Personally, I think they should get some Pay-Per-View ads and hold popularity contests bi-monthly. March Madness attracts some traffic.

 

[lacktheknack]

For me it's just baffling how they can be 14 months behind on payment and hire tons of new contributors at the same time.

They're probably trying desperately to attract more viewers. It's the only situation that makes sense.

They should try more popularity contests. March Madness is a big success every year (in terms of traffic, anyways).

 

[BoredDragon]

Where's the "I'm already highly annoyed by the spam of ads we currently have so if they add even more I'm going to leave" option? Because that's what I'll do. I already think there's too many ads as it is. They add more and I'll just take my business elsewhere, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

lol you kidding? Other sites that I go to do all the wall paper adds plus they require you to watch an ad everytime you start up a video even if it's only 5 minutes and have those annoying pop-ups during the video.

There isn't such a thing as a free lunch. One has to give up something for a service and since that something in this case isn't money out of you're own pocket I don't see the problem.

 

[Alexander Cunningham]

Escapist can beam ads directly to my brain as long as it lets them keep all these excellent contributors (and Jim Sterling).

 

[LostintheWick]

Honestly I think the solution is to not hire so many damned contributors. They're struggling for money yet they keep adding loads of shows. Seriously, only hire what you can pay for guys.

If they stop bringing in new content, repeat visitors will decrease (less money). The show must go on. Content that doesn't do well should get canned. Ones that do, should be encouraged and rewarded to continue.

Successful shows and entertaining content... that is what's key. I also fear mismanagement on the escapist end may play a larger role...

EDIT: Maybe mismanagement ISN'T playing a larger role... Tough economic times make for tough business decisions. Those unavoidably leave someone unhappy somewhere.

 

[TwentyEight]

I'd be fine with more ads, but not the kind of ads that are animated, and definitely not the kind of ads that have sound and streaming video. I come here to watch videos one at a time. My computer can't handle a website that shows three different videos at once that I can't pause.

 

[Jumplion]

The thing about this is that the Escapist has had plenty of flings with ads.

From what I can gather, The Escapist seems to be at the mercy of ad agencies rather than the other way around. The recent Gaikai advertisements where they literally took up half the page stirred up some annoyances, and when I wondered why The Escapist allowed them to do this kind of thing they responded "We don't make the call" or something like that, which I find incredibly odd. Not only that, but they need money so desperately that they put ads in the goddamn captchas!

And yet, The Escapist is apparently hiring more news reporters, picking up a show or two and then dropping the same shows relatively early, and generally are just fumbling with their money. They haven't payed many of their contributors for a while, so lord knows why they're still trying to spend money elsewhere.

I don't think more ads are the solution, that just seems to make the problems even worse. They just need to assess the situation and try to keep the money they already have and try to fix things up with everyone first.

 

[Kross]

If you look at most of the ads here, they are mostly for other features on The Escapist, like the Miracle of Sound, Jimquisition and the like. And I just watched the latest Zero Punctuation episode and there wasn't an ad while the older ones have ads. And I don't even have ad blocker!

Really, it doesn't take a genius to realize that they actually need to run ads for non-Escapist stuff! -_-' Methinks that their lack of funds is due to bad management.

This. Completely this.

So much of the ad space here is put toward things that are on the Escapist, and that most of the users already know about.

A good place to start would be using that space--ad space we're already familiar with and used to--for real ads.

Unfortunately the hard part is finding people to buy ads on our site. Even the ones we do manage to get often don't want to pay for non North American ad views. At all. So they get filler and house ads. We've gone months at a time with no third party ads on the site at all because nobody wanted to buy on a small site that didn't have the page views of some other larger gaming sites.

Now (like... this year) we're finally starting to fill our ad inventory because we have some ad sales people who are good at their job (or do it at all, we've had remote ad sales people who literally did nothing for months until we were able to tell it was more then business being bad and replace them) and are finally breaking into the top trafficked gaming news sites so ad buying people will look at us. But now we're suddenly rich corporate douchebag overlords and out to screw over the people who help make our site interesting.

As far as PubClub, it's great and helps us get ahead of some of our bills, and we love all of our supporters very much... but it's not a significant contributor to our ongoing bills as of yet. We would need to sell hundreds (if not a couple thousand) pubclub subscriptions a day to even come near to covering our various server/bandwidth/salary/office/contributor/etc costs. We are not selling quite that many yet, although we can always hope.

 

[Snotnarok]

It won't help, if anything the videos should be hosted through youtube and they should be partners. And they should stop hiring more people to do shows, it's ridiculous.

I worked for a company that did the exact same thing, they had us do more graphics for products and more designs, wanted us to redo the website and they hadn't paid us for 3 months. "things will get better" they told us over and over. The only way to get an inflow of cash is to change market plans and make cuts and sacrifices.

Edit: And the last I saw there were some malicious ads on the site, so adding more ads will probably only steer people away. If I got a virus off this site that damaged my artwork I'd never come back here again, that's just inexcusable.

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

Not more ads, better ads. That and all around better decision making. If you don't have enough money to pay your current content, don't hire more fucking content! However, if you need more ads because your sinking in debt, tell the community why your putting the ads up, and then do so. I'm sure we would have understood if we all got a PM saying "We're sorry, but we have no money, so here are some ads". AS opposed to the current flood of "spam protection" and advertising that they are randomly imposing on us. I mean now that I know they have a huge financial program a few ads inside of captchas don't seem nearly as offensive, but still honesty would have been nice.

 

[The Virgo]

If you look at most of the ads here, they are mostly for other features on The Escapist, like the Miracle of Sound, Jimquisition and the like. And I just watched the latest Zero Punctuation episode and there wasn't an ad while the older ones have ads. And I don't even have ad blocker!

Really, it doesn't take a genius to realize that they actually need to run ads for non-Escapist stuff! -_-' Methinks that their lack of funds is due to bad management.

This. Completely this.

So much of the ad space here is put toward things that are on the Escapist, and that most of the users already know about.

A good place to start would be using that space--ad space we're already familiar with and used to--for real ads.

Agreed!

And like I said, I have to wade through thirty second Slim Jim commercials to watch the older Zero Punctuations from way back in 2007, the ones that nobody watches that much anymore, but there was not a single ad on the new one released today, the one that a lot of collective people are going to watch and will be more willing to sit through! >:-/

I'm telling you, my guess is that bad management has something to do with this. And although they DO run ads for other things (mostly El Shaddi these days), like you said, it's mostly their stuff, which they have to give revenue to.

The space for ads that bring money in are being used on video that they have to pay the creators for. And then people wonder why they're broke! Meanwhile, those of us who know how to fix these things are sitting here unable to do anything about it. Life is crazy, I tell you.

 

[TheScottishFella]

I pay for the pub club, so I don't think I have much of an opinion on this. On the other hand the reason I payed for the pub club was to get away from the ads, but you know it ain't expensive unless you are a kid so I don't see why more don't just go for the pub club.

 

[Blaster395]

Silent banner ads are fine.

Having to wait for an ad to finish before watching something is annoying.

 

[Whateveralot]

Ad revenue goes by a simple formula:

amount of viewers * amount of ads.

What does this mean? Increasing the amount of ads might give you a boost in revenue on one side, but on the other side, less people WILL visit the website, no matter what the content, thus reducing the ad revenue (and so many other forms of revenue).

The amount of ads must be acceptible. They are now. No(t a lot of) moving ads, no pop-ups. It's good the way it is. I hate pop-up advertisement (or the ones that block your view from the website for a certain time), or the ones that play a sound when you mouse-over (or not even that, just play sound, no escaping). And I hate the ads that tell you you've won a prize with a passion, knowing that there are people that click on this, believing they've actually won something -_-.

 

[The Virgo]

If you look at most of the ads here, they are mostly for other features on The Escapist, like the Miracle of Sound, Jimquisition and the like. And I just watched the latest Zero Punctuation episode and there wasn't an ad while the older ones have ads. And I don't even have ad blocker!

Really, it doesn't take a genius to realize that they actually need to run ads for non-Escapist stuff! -_-' Methinks that their lack of funds is due to bad management.

This. Completely this.

So much of the ad space here is put toward things that are on the Escapist, and that most of the users already know about.

A good place to start would be using that space--ad space we're already familiar with and used to--for real ads.

Unfortunately the hard part is finding people to buy ads on our site. Even the ones we do manage to get often don't want to pay for non North American ad views. At all. So they get filler and house ads. We've gone months at a time with no third party ads on the site at all because nobody wanted to buy on a small site that didn't have the page views of some other larger gaming sites.

Now (like... this year) we're finally starting to fill our ad inventory because we have some ad sales people who are good at their job (or do it at all, we've had remote ad sales people who literally did nothing for months until we were able to tell it was more then business being bad and replace them) and are finally breaking into the top trafficked gaming news sites so ad buying people will look at us. But now we're suddenly rich corporate douchebag overlords and out to screw over the people who help make our site interesting.

As far as PubClub, it's great and helps us get ahead of some of our bills, and we love all of our supporters very much... but it's not a significant contributor to our ongoing bills as of yet. We would need to sell hundreds (if not a couple thousand) pubclub subscriptions a day to even come near to covering our various server/bandwidth/salary/office/contributor/etc costs. We are not selling quite that many yet, although we can always hope.

Hey, after I just posted I read what you said, so forgive me if I end up double-posting.

It's nice when somebody from the inside comes out and says what's really going down. Now if only our government would learn that.

I have never thought that you guys were evil (although I do think warnings for "low content" are, lol!) and I'm sorry to hear about those douchebag ad guys. However, like I said, today when Zero Punctuation came out there wasn't a single ad, yet there are plenty of ads on the older ones. Right there, you have a high number of people coming onto the site at one time that I'm sure a lot of people trying to get their product out would love to have their ad on. I know nothing about how advertising works, but to me that seems fairly logical.

Anyway, I wish you guys the best of luck in these hard times and I hope you pull through!

 

[BRex21]

My only problem with the adds is that they don't have variety. it may sound crazy, but watching El Shaddai over and over and over and over and over and over again is just annoying. I am however fully aware that they need the money and will keep watching the adds and willing to accept more if it keeps things free. Although i keep telling myself im going to pay there necessary pittance to join the publishers club, but I have never gotten around it.

 

[psivamp]

As long as the ads don't do any of the following, I'm okay:
play audio that isn't muted by default
rollover expansion

Actually, that's it, I guess. There was some rollover ad for Whatever: Ascension of No-one-cares (supposedly "one of the most anticipated games of this year," which I find hard to swallow with all of the huge releases and solid indie titles) that would activate as I was pulling my mouse away from the collapse button.

It should go without saying that playing audio without asking is unacceptable in all instances on any website for any reason.

 

[GoldenShadow]

If you dont like ads, buy a publisher's club membership. Its worth it.

Its not just the ads on the site, but also the ads are removed from all videos as well.