Giant Bomb and Ads. What do you/would you do?

I don't mind banner ads if they are quality ads, stuff like those teeth whitener ads and the my mom makes 500k just watching tv bullshit ads should be banned from the internet, nobody ever clicks them so they don't have to pay anything to be a fucking irritation to everyone that uses the internet.

I really hate video ads though, especially the ones on twitch that we have to watch, especially when the stream gets interrupted and I have to watch the same ad over and over again.

Video ads are my most hated of all ads. I've just turned off videos on IGN dozens of times because the content I was vaguely interested in watching wasn't worth the 30 seconds I'd be wasting. Especially if the "content" is just a trailer I can find elsewhere. I would maybe sit through some ads for the pre-recorded content here but like you said, the twitch ads are the worst because they're playing over a live feed and who knows what kind of amazing I'm missing. Also, whenever I refresh the page due to something breaking, I have to rewatch it. Bummer.

I use AdBlock but i have about 20 sites whitelisted. Giant Bomb was one of those sites before i became a premium member. I don't think giving the option for premium members to disable ads will do much of a difference as the money received from ads is extremely small unless they are being clicked.

Use an adblocker everywhere, because why not? Have you ever tried to use YouTube or Facebook without one? It's horrid. The internet should be better than that.

pretty sure i used an adblocker even when on GB before subscribing. only subscribed because I wanted to support these guys, it pretty much is the only way too, since i doubt anyone is clicking any ads in this day and age. even if they do i doubt there are ANY conversions coming from GB users. the ads i saw here on the site never really seemed to mesh well with the target audience.

I pay them. I would pay other websites that cover other things as well if I liked them as much. It really seems to be the only reasonable outcome to the current situation regarding revenue for sites that employ full time writers/personalities.

I'm a premium member and still use adblock.

BREAKING THE LAW. POLL LAW!

@atta said:

I think this is kind of intentional. Integrity and staying neutral is something that is very important to Giant Bomb and i think that is why they rarely advertise games. It does still happen though occasionally, a month or two ago GB had Destiny ads on the front page.

@expensiveham said:

It's pretty damn bad. The article didn't mention how much more a site gets if an ad gets clicked on but $5 per 1000 views seems super low. Where do you figure their revenue comes from then? Memberships and merch are the only things I can think of. Unless they've secretly been promoting things like breast milk.

I enjoy browsing Giant Bomb free of ads thanks to being a subscriber and wouldn't enable them if it were an option, if I weren't subscribing I'd definitely be browsing without an ad-blocker. I turned off ad-blocker for most of the sites I regularly frequent a while ago.

I use ad-block everywhere. I'm a premium member since I love the site. It looks horrendous without ad-block though when I use it at work without logging in. I'm ok with eye sore banner stuff, but video ads really annoy me.

I only use ad blockers on annoying ads; if it's just a banner ad, side bar ads or... footer ads (dunno what you'd call them) I'm fine with them for the most part.

I used to use Google Adsense on a site of mine. Website ads would grant me about $1 per click and video ad clicks would be about 0,1$ per click. For every 1000 views i would barely get 2$.

When selling ad space directly you get a lot more but it should give you an idea of the difference between click and view.

This is 100% false.

I use AdBlocker everywhere I go. Although I pay for Giantbomb and its the first and only website I've given money to for a subscription. I get that many of the sites I visit including Giantbomb operate via the Ad Revenue but also even reputable sites can sometimes inexplicably get some sort of awful Malware or Script hidden within the ads. Which is why I have a No Script and Ad Blocker extensions. I just like to be really really careful about not getting any awful shit that is going to fuck my PC up.

If I do really like the site though like Giantbomb I will straight out pay for a subscription.

The article suggests that the standard rate is $5 per 1000 views. Maybe you were getting a lower rate due to being a smaller business/website? Though, that 1000 views is skewed by people running ad-block software. The clickthrough of $1 per click is pretty damn high. At least, from an advertiser's point of view. Getting someone to your site and paying a buck per visit (possibly more since I'm sure the ad company themselves take a cut somehow) is pretty expensive.

I'm a premium member, and I do have adblock, but I have Giant Bomb whitelisted so I get video ads from their Twitch streams because in the end it's all about supporting the guys for me.

The main reason I got adblock was because of the annoying ads on Facebook. When ad companies figure out how to make ads that aren't annoying, intrusive, or otherwise bothersome then maybe I'll reconsider.

Since I probably spend equal amounts of time viewing Giant Bomb as I do television as a whole, I do not mind giving them $50 a year. If, for whatever reason, I was not able to give them $50 a year, then I would gladly do whatever I could to support them. In the end, the only real way of supporting them aside from giving them money is to view the ads they place on their website. I will inconvenience myself for 15-30 seconds just so I can see Patrick troll Brad one more time. Don't take that away from me, Adblockers, DON'T TAKE THAT WAY FROM ME!

@demoskinos: Couldn't you just not click any of the ads that seem fishy? Pretty much the only ads I ever click are those that are for a video game or Amazon or something like that. If you say that those ads can sometimes have malware, then why don't you simply not click any ads. I imagine that there is a way to track how many people actually saw the ad (page views minus adblock users) and that would factor into how much money a company would be willing to pay for ad space.

My problem with ads doesn't stem from the ads themselves. As long as they're sensible and don't interfere with the content, I'm fine with them. The reason I use an ad blocker is that I don't trust the companies that decide what ads go on which sites. Unless you're visiting the website of a company that actually deals in ads (Google, Facebook), chances are high that the website has made a deal with another party to actually serve advertisements. And if these companies are very loose about which ads they let through to their network, then you get instances where malicious JS gets run, or otherwise legitimate sites get served with Google Chrome's "This is a malicious site" warning.

There should be a better way. I'm wondering how much money GB would get if there was a way to track games that content on this site inspired visitors to purchase. Games like Deadly Premonition, or even 999. But for now, whitelisting the sites I frequent and ad blocking everything else is my happy medium between protecting myself from the Internet and making sure people get paid.

I use an ad-blocker, but I'm premium (which I guess is a flimsy justification, but it works for me).

Aside from the ads issue, I wonder to what degree gaming sites perceive stuff like youtube and reddit (and I guess NeoGAF? I don't hang out there). The recurrence of "game journalism" panels at PAXes ought to say something about how bloated the market is for people who want to write about games. Moreover, people will cover games for free and make pretty good content. I get all my Dark Souls and FFXIV (don't judge me) updates from their respective subreddits, so I don't need to go to Polygon or Kotaku or wherever, ad-blocker or no.

@ubersmake: My guess is that could only work through such devices as referral links and / or coupon codes? The only problem I see with that is the question of editorial integrity (as if the whole Doritosgate and its aftermath last year wasn't already talked to death...). How can you guarantee that GB isn't promoting games editorially to rake in more advertising money. I trust the guys here (though I might not always agree with them), but even the slightest hint of "foul play" is enough to set gamers off nowadays.

@brad: I'm curious: my hunch is that dealing directly with advertisers is more "lucrative" than dealing with Google Adsense? No intention of poking my nose into things where it doesn't belong, but genuinely curious (and happy to be proven wrong).

Oh, the thread at hand! Adblock user (begrudgingly so), whitelisted GB, and silver subscriber. No offence, but I don't feel like inflicting international shipping on guys for a bloody T-shirt.

I use Adblock mostly because the state of ads on the internet is a little too much these days. I didn't have a problem dealing with banners or the occasional pop up back in the day, but goddamn are there a lot of invasive and annoying ads on the internet. The worst of them being the ones that activate when you mouse over them or take over the web page in some way or another.

When I like a site enough I don't have a problem using their subscription model to put my money where my mouth is.

Oh ok, sorry. I was just making assumptions based on how partner ad programs tend to work. I don't have any insight to how things work when you are selling ad space directly so i just assumed they worked similarly in that there is a big difference in the revenue from views and clicks.

Well way to advertise adblock to those few who never used or heard about it before, this thread should be locked unless GB want all their users using adblock.

I'm a Premium fellow and I pay for Premium service. If I weren't though, I wouldn't use Adblock on here. Duders deserve my support. And unless they're popup ads, banner stuff or margin ads don't bother me in the least. I can not look at them.

I'd allow non-video ads if possible, why not? It's wouldn't affect my experience much and it would help keep the site going.

Video ads, on the other hand...

@nail1080: You can only imagine what happened when they were on front page of Google Store for months. Idiots.

I whitelist GB. Mainly because I feel bad for not being a sub.

I think it's fair to pay for a subscription and not see any ads. While I don't mind page ads that much the site just looks so much nicer. Would activating ads that I never ever click on actually help the site anyways?

I can't stand video ads. On any website. The problem is they repeat too often. If there were many, many, many ads and they were max 15 seconds I doubt people would complain as much as having to watch the exact same 30 second ad on every other video. Obviously people despise this type of advertisement which is why Ad Blocker is so popular, so I say keep using it - companies will figure out something smarter than video ads.

Kotaku often has paid article-advertisemts/trailer type things. If I came to GB and there was a similar thing for Sleepy Dogs or another game that had been well-featured on the site that would be fine by me.

Most online advertising (assuming Giant Bomb works likes this, I know Polygon does) is based on impressions, which is the measure of the number of times an ad is displayed, whether it is clicked on or not. Every time an ad is displayed, that is one impression. Ad blocking software obviously blocks these impressions. The reasons clicks aren't factored as much is because of things like "click fraud" where automated scripts can imitate the clicking of an ad over and over.

I wish it would work like MBMBAM ads work. Where the guys get a product and have to advertise it themselves. They could have photoshopped banner ads and video ads would be hilarious.

I have been using an ad blocker for as long as I can remember. I also started using Ghostery about a year ago and I love it.

Premium user because I want to support the site. Adblock is on 24/7 though. I refuse to support ANY site through ad revenue. Make your site kick ass and give me a way to donate. That's how you get my money.

I have Firefox's click_to_play enabled. Flash ads don't show up automatically but text and image based ones do.

I use adblock because ads are usually ugly as hell and a lot of sites don't take into account the fact that not everyone is American. What does a geico ad even mean to me?

Also why would you design a nice looking website then fill it with ads? I just opened up a logged out giant bomb on my nexus and there were two huge yellow boxes there, ruining the layout and look of the site. If I didn't know better that would put me off coming here.

The other day I was on some website and noticed an ad for Kickstarter, advertising a range of T-shirts that had been funded. Needless to say I clicked the ad and probably earnt that website a few bucks. When sites use ads like that, ads that actually interest me, I'll turn off Adblocker. Giant Bomb is not one of those web sites.

I still use Hulu, so I don't mind. I kinda built up a resistance to them over time.

If the video ads came at the end of the video I'd be okay with them, but as it is I wouldn't mind page ads as long as they were gaming/tech relevant. I'd probably turn them on and occasionally click on them even as a premmy. I like how GB looks without em, it's certainly a perty site but I care about the content over everything else. As long as it isn't delaying or altering the content, I'm okay with ads. I'm apparently one of the few people in the world who isn't deathly allergic to seeing a dumb box on the side of my screen.

Hey, that's a good point. I -hate- ads before a video, but I'm okay with ads at the end of videos. If Giant Bomb just put ads at the end, I'd certainly let them play.

I'm happy with the current premium membership arrangement. Ad free site is not only a perk I enjoy, but probably one the staff likes as well, placing ads into my user experience seems like it might be counter intuitive as someone who enjoys the content and pays for it. Additionally I feel like the content I consume on this site meets and exceeds my premium membership price, this is really the best of all worlds as far as a content site is concerned IMO. I forgive the twitch opening ad as it's more a service issue than anything else.

Premium user anyways but even if I wasn't I use an ad blocker on everything, if ads are so intrusive and disgusting on web pages that I can't believe I used to not use one

I hate articles like this. Yea, it sucks that your old business model isn't working like it used to and that people are losing jobs because of that, but don't guilt trip me. If your business model is dying, find a new and better one. I know that is not an easy thing to do, but posting an article like this just makes me want to never visit your site again. I had GB whitelisted for a while, but got rid of it because of the video ads. If I have to sit through an ad before watching a video, chances are I'm just not going to watch that video.

Well, since I am no longer a premium member I see the website presented to me with ads. I honestly don't mind, except for the front page which gets blown up with ads. I will probably be switching pack to premium soon.

ad block. simple. id become a premium member if i thought the content was worth it. IT WAS worth it, but it has degraded significantly in quality imo.

I'd probably turn them on if I was given the option, when I'm not logged in they don't bother me enough to care, so I would turn them on since they probably would help the site a lot.

In general, I don't use Adblock on any site at all.

Just like free-to-play games, if ads are done right, I don't mind them. It's when they have that slow pop-up that slowly fills the screen, or the ones that follow your scrolling that really irk me. Knowing the GB guys though, I doubt they'd let the site become a messy piece of shit like that. If it's a sleek integration and it helps the content rolling out, I'm game.

I have ad-block on, but once I'm sure a site isn't going to flood me with those fullscreen popup ads I white list them (and that's all sites, not just ones I frequent). People gotta eat, ya' know? Especially on sites like youtube or kongregate, where independent creators are trying to make a living, I figure I can watch a 5-15 second ad in order to make sure someone I like can continue to create their stuff.

People are also way too sensitive about ads, if it's that painful to you to see an ad for something you don't care about then I feel real sorry for you, going out in public must be hell.

I don't like ads. Even if I wasn't a Premium Member, I'd still use adblock to disable ads.

I don't mind ads, page ads at least.

Video ads can die in a fire.

I don't care at all about ads, after all that's how the vast majority of online-based services earn their living. Really annoying when a site starts streaming an ad with audio out of nowhere, but that's a failing in the site, not ads themselves.

I'm not going to go around saying people who use AdBlocker are being selfish or spoilt, but I will say if you enjoy the content produced by the site the least you could do is support them by watching them with ads.