Foundation Do Ads Ruin the Integrity of Online Communities?

[Cpvr]

In today’s digital age, ads are everywhere, even in the most niche online communities. While they’re often necessary to keep platforms running, they can sometimes feel intrusive or even misaligned with the values of the community.

• Do ads disrupt the authenticity of online spaces?


• Are there ways to integrate ads without sacrificing user trust?


• What’s your experience—have you ever left a community because of excessive or irrelevant ads?


Let’s brainstorm solutions and share insights on balancing monetization with a genuine user experience. How can online communities thrive without selling out?

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Why not use the Wikipedia strategy?

Do a donation drive. Don't just do one campaign. Do a few a year to meet your cost goals.

Back when I was an assistant fire chief, our department needed money. Our village was poor and underfunded. We couldn't justify raising taxes or charging more money if we responded to their fires.

We all were 100% volunteers as well.

So, we did multiple boot drives each year. That's when you stand at an intersection with a firefighter boot and ask drives to donate. If you did that a few times a year, you'd usually make enough for the annual expense of your firehouse.

The same concept can work with a forum.

Although, I think it's important to go into making your forum if you can afford it in the first place. It might take years to make money, even through donations. If you're too broke, you might consider not making a forum or at least using a free hosting platform.

 

[Nomad]

I do not like excessive, irrelevant, and intrusive ads on any website, not just online communities. However, I do not think ads ruin the integrity of online communities. If you run ads in moderation, for instance just 3 ad units per page, ads will bring you revenue and invest back to your community to help them grow. Forums are older than social media but forums lost the battle to become popular. That's because forums could not utilize ads to bring in revenue.

 

[Cloaked]

I prefer banner ads over those full page pop ups that seem to be the norm these days.

Banner ads are normally placed in spots where they aren't real intrusive.

 

[Arantor]

The answer is 'probably'. It mostly depends on the community and more widely on the intent of monetisation.

If the intent is to simply make a little money, maybe cover hosting and addons and stuff, the advertising will be light touch, it will be reasonably unobtrusive and likely the ads will be fairly well curated as to be things the members will actually care about and might even click on. Result: the ads are not fundamentally against the integrity of the community.

The problem begins when trying to make primarily a profit with the community as a vehicle for this, and in particular where the community is thrown under the bus in favour of profit. a.k.a what happens on social media. You'll see ads mixed in with regular content, and done so subtly enough to imply that the paid-for content is on par with non-paid-for content.

You tend to see this in forums as an ad that pretends to be a post - though thankfully most of them are tellingly obvious - but this is the point where the integrity is compromised. The moment you stop putting the community first and make it about the money first, the integrity is compromised.

 

[fdk]

Ads absolutely don't ruin a community in my opinion, if the website administrator is thoughtful and considerate with his placement of advertising spots. If a website administrator goes for what are suggested to be the "best performing" ad spots, generally they are more intrusive and annoying naturally, as they capture more of our attention - that's why they're "best performing"!

However, having a banner ad in the footer and maybe a sidebar ad doesn't necessarily put me off. At the end of the day, I understand that running a website involves costs, even small ones, and I'm completely fine with administrators seeking to recoup those costs and even make a small profit for the time they put into their websites, as long as their advertising doesn't majorly inconvenience or annoy me!

 

[CTS]

If you are a small or startup, I don't think ads benefit, especially in the pocketbook. So its just expensive real estate being rented out cheap.

Obviously when your server loads start to cost you, you have no choice but to monetize.

 

[Ravenfreak]

The only ads that interrupt and ruin a website for me are the ones that are hidden in text that look like clickable links as well as pop up ads. I don't mind banner ads at all.

 

[2TonWaffle]

Old enough to remember the beginning of the pop-up ads that ruined everything. Thoughtfully placed ads that don't detract from the rest of the forum would be fine and if it's relevant to the overall theme of the forums.

Of course going overboard with ads will definitely have me closing the tabs faster than anything.

 

[CTS]

My personal (added) perspective on ads are. ...

Unless you absolutely need the revenue, ads suck for everyone. Nothing like getting thousands of daily impressions, very few clickthru's, and you find out that in 6 to 12 months you may get a payout of a hundred or so.

Your members dislike them to the point of ad-blindness as well as your visitors. It trashes out valuable real estate that may have better uses for your visitors and website.

I dunno. I have done ads before, overdone maybe a couple times. And I now have disdain for them.