| abstract | - i stumbled upon the add on one of the macro for class pages; and i instantly frowned upon it - not that im pro or against adds - since i realize money has to come from somewhere to support the bandwidth and all that nice stuff thing is, when i first glanced over that part it felt like it was part of the site - then i realised it was a add. there is of course a pro and a con about that. but even going by a 'pro' point of view that at least it wont break the overall aesthetics of the site and wont be a awfully disturbing page breaking flashing bouncing twirling sound creating overall obnoxious advert - it still sucked to have to take a second look after glancing over it, realising its a advert on my favorite wiki. well, i'm still going to try staying out of that debate - but overall I do admit i prefer as little ads as possible and preferably not obnoxious ones. after finding it mildly ironic that i use wowwiki as my guide in the first place, and whenever I get questioned if buying any guide in general is a smart thing i typically respond with 85% of every guide is common sense and anything useful you could find yourself on wowwiki - i decided to see if it was a advertisement that was made by wowwiki or if it was genuine spam. which is my second reason for writing why in the world does it not link to a uneditable page that clearly states the experiment of ads - all the partners that can be reffered to through such a ad (as instant verification for everyone that the other page does not hold some random genuine spam which can be deleted!) - and various other usefull stuff now I happen to slightly know my way around a wiki in general and was able to relatively quick find my way to this page to rant that it lacked a couple things in my humble opinion. and this also needs a quick comment The only thing I can say is DOH - I make mistakes too - but as a group we all agreed to test this, so I guess we all get a big "oops" on that one. Now there were some positive elements of the test that I also want to share
* You may not have noticed, but we had 200x200 pixel ads for killer guides running at the same time on the left hand nav (see below). See lower left corner
* The number of clicks per day on the ads within the content on 75 pages I hand wrote were HIGHER than the number of clicks per day on the 2 ads on the left hand nav that were on ALL 71,000 pages of wowwiki
* This shows me that our readers did SEE and WANT to click on the ads and the PLACEMENT was the only thing that caused dramatically higher click-rates I disagree No, i did not notice - first I hardly use the menu in the first place.. secondly - that looks like a advertisement, I typically automatically mental block a advertisement at the first moment I recognize anything as advertisement the way i go through a page - especially a familiar one - is mainly focussed at the center - where the actual content is i come here in search of information - advertisements, menu's , all that nice stuff is not information whenever i look for it. 95% of my time on wowwiki is done while playing wow (gee, that may be true for some other visitors).. and at that time i look for additional info about a zone, quest, mob, instance, tactic, gear,material, npc, etcetcetcetcetcetc.. (and we thank wowwiki for having this all at our fingertips - thanks ;) ) - my point, info is important.. i scan the page while reading it trying to pick the most important parts - a advertisement is very nice and all and sure i understand the necessity and all that nice stuff.. but i'll have to admit that it's not something i'm looking for when i browse the internet and especially this place. so i tend to ignore them over the good content on any given internet page. and there is a lot of people that do the same, so .. "This shows me that our readers did SEE and WANT to click on the ads and the PLACEMENT was the only thing that caused dramatically higher click-rates " is i hate to say, in my opinion utter gibberish if you have no way of backing it up, i saw the add. i did not click on it because after "being forced" to read it i still recognized it as advertisement. potentially other people saw it as a advertisement which in it self potentially mean nothing but since it was presented in a way as you (wowwiki as entity) not only read it but actually used it and was so delighted about the guide that you think we actually should try it. - which brings me to a related point of what Graptor said in his comment - how much of those that potentially saw it as a !wowwiki endorsed guide! (granted that person would fit the "oh if Mr T uses that kitchen appliance on buy-tv it must be brilliant lets get one" profile) - versus a 'paid advertisement' just statistical "clicks" say little: how much clicked it to check if there was some sort of advert system being introduced and the page would first explain that test ? how much clicked it doublecheck , for example; to see if it really still went to the guides website and not a rogue website that modified an 'existing advert' to redirect to a phishing site and should be reported/removed from wowwiki and mainly - how much people actually look at the menu ?? - i hardly ever look at the menu of a wiki page i typically instantly recognize spam/advertisements in a regular website menu and avoid reading those long but since this page is a wiki in the first place... if i need to know something and want to look it up on wowwiki i just type woww in my browser bar , then press down .. this gives the url and then I add whatever the heck directly after it (keeping in mind that annoying feature of capitals) the only thing you can really tell from the amount of clicks on one day is the amount of revenue your advertisements bring - not much more as that , at least not for your experiment, in my humble opinion Think back to the comment of Graptor how much people may think now that they were fooled onto reading about a guide which they didn't want to buy but felt compelled to since the mighty wowwiki says to? - and will never ever come back ? "This shows me that our readers did SEE and WANT to click on the ads and the PLACEMENT was the only thing that caused dramatically higher click-rates " i also disagree on that , well aside that it's your view and that you're entitled to it, i'll admit i saw it - because i was actively reading a large slab of content and didn't expect a add to appear at the bottom of it - and as noted before, i normally try to focus only on actual important content, and when i'm still looking for it i tend to ignore non-content wise items... but i did not want to click after realising it was a advertisement and not leading to more actual important content. - the only good about the placement at the bottom is that its not al too intrusive. i could suggest doing it better, but i personally in general can live with ads at the bottom of a general website. my thought is that its more the other way around , this placement makes it look like wowwiki is endorsing the product. the placement is different from a regular ads banner thus the first time when you see a add there with a wowwiki skin a person might not recognize it as advert quickly enough.. or .. bottom line, placement was relatively nice (although i understand from the comments that at bottom was not the initial place).. but certainly not the main thing why it got clicked so much I think i've done my best to make myself clear. and its getting late and all. i just wanted to share my current objections; - it doesnt look like a add if your sleepy and just browsing the page - it needs a slight distinction from the general information if you want it similar to the wowwiki gui, fine. but still make it difference put it in a nice box- but not full page width, but give it a header that says ---- advertisement ----- or sponser like now (i realised in hindsight) - but centerd- .. or something like that and make the colors just a tad similar but still based on the general wowwiki background - add a link from every advertiment to a non editable page that explains why adds, and which adds. as reference - with a central talk page for discussions and all that nice stuff ;) my suggestions -aside colors and width - (couldn't get that right quickly)
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