When did irrelevant site-skin ads become a part of Giantbomb?

@CptBedlam said:

@Humanity said:

Him saying no dick ads is basically under the same umbrella as cell phone ads or blender ads etc.

Disagree. There's a huge difference. Reputable (!) non-gaming advertising is the best case scenario for a videogame site.

+1

And I'd love to see people complaining come up with a better model than what's on offer. Ads and 90% of the content for free or a small fee and no ads and a little extra content - it works. This is their jobs, they have to get paid. Cut them some slack.

Meh, what is currently happening right now bothers me less than the little advert bar that appeared on the bottom of the site for a while.

I don't pay for a subscription so I am pretty understanding of the advertising going on right now.

@Humanity: They have talked about this in the past, and it's been talked on 1UP and other places: the non-game ads really are the best case scenario. Ideally it's something that the audience is at least mildly interested in, but unlike games, it doesn't set any expectations with developers or publishers, so that another "gerstmanngate" can't happen. Or you know, pay a few bucks every month and don't worry about it. Or subscribe on youtube.

No one's complaining about the business of advertisements. No one's saying they want everything for free either. People are just complaining about the nature of the ads, and to a lesser extent the lack of staff feedback on community issues. The amount of people misconstruing the OP is really annoying and somewhat sad.

@PeZ: It worked out swimmingly for 1UP. I don't really care who talks it up - it's a terrible idea. I don't want to see any ads that are non-game related on a site like Giantbomb. If I want a new vacuum, radio, or skiis I'll go look for them. Just give me ads like Steam has - game art with a price and I'd be fine with that. God knows when I'm on Steam I click a lot of those "ads" just to see what a game is all about after seeing some interesting artwork. While other sites may need to fall back on this idea in order to not compromise their integrity I think GiantBomb has since earned the right to advertise whatever because ultimately we know they will shit on a game on the Bombcast or Quicklook if it's bad. I don't think Jeff would be so ill informed as to sign with Gamespot again without securing some sort of side clause that ensures he won't get fired again over this sort of advertiser nonsense.

@Humanity said:

@PandaBear Noone is saying that. People simple want game specific ads that aren't completely garish. This has been said countless times. Bedlam thinks non game oriented ads are a best scenario for a video game website and I think that's ridiculous as he might really enjoy fly fishing but I couldn't care less but we both like games so why advertise anything else? If after everything you still think game ads on GiantBomb would sway their review scores then I dunno what to tell you.

Think about this for a second - who is most likely to visit a video game website? Men, 18-40, interested in new technology, probably with disposable income that stretches beyond video games. This is the ideal target audience for advertisers in most case. Put up ads for fast food places, new mobile phones, action movies, video games, comics, new cars, etc. You took it to such an extreme when you brought in fly-fishing, I'm talking broad appeal here. What about during quite months when game advertising dries up? Should they just say "no ads, lets all take a pay cut and run a loss for a while" or sell the ads at a lower rate? Non-game ads work because it's a constant stream.

And I never said reviews would influence score. Not once. I said that advertising snakes can put pressure on editorial, it's a fact. And if Jeff thinks the next Assassin's Creed is shit (I doubt it, but follow me here) then why on Earth would UbiSoft want to keep buying ads on the site? if you focus on one type of advertising you're done. This happened in EGM - they didn't like the first Assassin's Creed, UbiSoft pulled their ads, Dan Hsu basically said 'that's their decision' and that the advantage of non-endemic advertising as they are far less likely to piss of Coke or Subway with their reviews.

And game ads are less garish? Check IGN more often. 80% of game online game ads are as bad as any Verizon ad.

@CptBedlam (figured I should add you... if you're going to be talked about I'd consider it common courtesy)

Complainers, I urge you, find a better way for the site to make money or just buy a subscription.

@Humanity said:

If only I could play Pokemon on my new Sprint Evo.. is there an app for that.

There's an emulator for that, yes.

@BestUsernameEver said:

@Humanity said:

If only I could play Pokemon on my new Sprint Evo.. is there an app for that.

There's an emulator for that, yes.

Looks like Giant Bomb just sold itself another Sprint Evo.. Thanks Verizon.

@PandaBear: At a certain level it's personal taste. I'd take any game ad, literally the worst World of Warcraft elf in metal bikini ad over a phone ad. I guess I am looking at it a little close minded so I will agree with you that there probably is broad appeal out there - from my perspective though I just don't care about seeing that stuff here. Sure I like gadgets and pizza but I also like boundaries that separate those things for me. I don't want pizza ads on my video game website, I don't mind it in other places though. Again, I concede that I am just one voice and a ton of people probably would love to see sick deals on pizza when browsing GB (no sarcasm intended.)

I might think there is never any downtime for games in theory. You buy out ads on a site for a month usually. There are also games on the horizon. Nothing coming out in June? Well surely some game company has ads ready and in place for a game coming out in August - get those pre-orders in etc. There are a lot of developers and all of them are constantly working on something. Heck, GB, if they were so inclined, could get into that PPC/SEO biz by making ads for games that are coming up reach out to the publishers first "hey Sony we made this sick banner and skyscraper variant of The Last of Us - take a look if you're interested in running it on our site for a month or two before release." They have limited staff now but maybe they could get someone to do it on the side.

As to the subscribing I don't think it should be such a do-or-die situation. Giant Bomb is the ONLY video game website I've ever seen that charges money for content. Some of the subscriber options in my opinion are a little ridiculous. I understand that subscribers should get bonuses, but to completely block some things off is awful. If you live in Europe and are not a subscriber then you can just fuck off if you like watching TNT's because they come on at 1am and aren't archived for non-paying users. Maybe college students are cool with that, but people who have work Mon-Fri 9-5 aren't staying up till 3am to watch those. I just think the model should be changed to incentivze premium memberships rather than require it. You want people to see your content so they can get more of it. How are people supposed to know about Jeffs Jar Time when it's like a secret subscriber only thing. Anyway thats a completely different conversation.

So to close, I don't want to argue - I concede fully that there is market value for non game specific ads on video game websites. At the same time it is my personal opinion that you could and should stick to game content instead.

Yeah I noticed my videos weren't working right away, didn't think ad blocker was the cause ( they seem to start up after a minute or so )... Never turning off my adblocker, I don't care what GB is getting out of it. I'll just watch what I can on youtube and read the articles and make controversial posts on the forums. If that's the kinds of ads I'm going to see there's no way I'm going to burn my eyes out with crap like that.

@PandaBear said:

@Humanity said:

@PandaBear Noone is saying that. People simple want game specific ads that aren't completely garish. This has been said countless times. Bedlam thinks non game oriented ads are a best scenario for a video game website and I think that's ridiculous as he might really enjoy fly fishing but I couldn't care less but we both like games so why advertise anything else? If after everything you still think game ads on GiantBomb would sway their review scores then I dunno what to tell you.

Think about this for a second - who is most likely to visit a video game website? Men, 18-40, interested in new technology, probably with disposable income that stretches beyond video games. This is the ideal target audience for advertisers in most case. Put up ads for fast food places, new mobile phones, action movies, video games, comics, new cars, etc. You took it to such an extreme when you brought in fly-fishing, I'm talking broad appeal here. What about during quite months when game advertising dries up? Should they just say "no ads, lets all take a pay cut and run a loss for a while" or sell the ads at a lower rate? Non-game ads work because it's a constant stream.

And I never said reviews would influence score. Not once. I said that advertising snakes can put pressure on editorial, it's a fact. And if Jeff thinks the next Assassin's Creed is shit (I doubt it, but follow me here) then why on Earth would UbiSoft want to keep buying ads on the site? if you focus on one type of advertising you're done. This happened in EGM - they didn't like the first Assassin's Creed, UbiSoft pulled their ads, Dan Hsu basically said 'that's their decision' and that the advantage of non-endemic advertising as they are far less likely to piss of Coke or Subway with their reviews.

And game ads are less garish? Check IGN more often. 80% of game online game ads are as bad as any Verizon ad.

@CptBedlam (figured I should add you... if you're going to be talked about I'd consider it common courtesy)

Complainers, I urge you, find a better way for the site to make money or just buy a subscription.

What if the advertising isn't even relevant to my country, as most of it seems to be? That means I have to put up with shitty ads and the advertisers get nothing out of me.

@Marokai said:

@ThePickle said:

No one's complaining about the business of advertisements. No one's saying they want everything for free either. People are just complaining about the nature of the ads, and to a lesser extent the lack of staff feedback on community issues. The amount of people misconstruing the OP is really annoying and somewhat sad.

That specifically is more the issue that I'm miffed about, at least. It seems downright crazy (and on some level just sort of insulting, I guess) that if you get a couple hundred people on your own site to comment about something uncool that you said you'd never do regarding the site's business model, you won't hear a peep from Jeff, but get one or two people in a NeoGaf thread to insult our comments and user creation procedure, and he'll hop right to giving them some background info. The fact that more people aren't upset about that is surprising, to me.

Its certainly a contributing factor to why Ive cancelled the renewal on my subscription, it truly astounds me how little input the staff have into the community.

Just want to add to this that I'm now getting a Transformers ad that actually pops up a video of a dinosaur robot over the homepage.

@Khann said:

Just want to add to this that I'm now getting a Transformers ad that actually pops up a video of a dinosaur robot over the homepage.

Haha, I just got that too. It's both shitty and awesome.

@Marokai said:

That specifically is more the issue that I'm miffed about, at least. It seems downright crazy (and on some level just sort of insulting, I guess) that if you get a couple hundred people on your own site to comment about something uncool that you said you'd never do regarding the site's business model, you won't hear a peep from Jeff, but get one or two people in a NeoGaf thread to insult our comments and user creation procedure, and he'll hop right to giving them some background info. The fact that more people aren't upset about that is surprising, to me.

You are absolutely correct on this matter.

It sucks but they have to make some money i suppose, one more reason to support the site when you can afford to.

Wow...I was on vacation when all this happened...

No one has posted in like a week, but I'm just going to ad my two cents. The biggest problem I have with all of this is that the GB guys are simply letting themselves get pushed around. Yes, they may be owned by CBSi, but that means nothing. The company already knows that firing one of the guys means firing all of them and completely ruining the site, so, the GB guys really do have all the power if they really want it.

Ads are part of the site and people need to deal with that, but at the same time there is no reason why Jeff can't stand up at certain points and be like "This is too far, and this will simply not happen on this site". I even see it in the fact that it's taken them 6 fucking months to actually get the office rearranged the way they want it to and start getting the site back to the way it was even before they moved. I know there's only so far they can take it, but I don't think they realize they actually have the power to just do whatever the hell they want to a certain extent, because CBSi can't afford to lose a single one of them.

I've never seen an ad on Giant Bomb because for a while they didn't show them in Canada, and then I became a premium member. That screenshot looks like a crazy site I've never seen before.

@GenocidalKitten said:

@DoctorWelch: The one that I thought was bad was the pop up eye blaster that was on the site for a while. did you see that one?

No, I've been a premium member since the beginning so I haven't really ever seen ads on the site.

@Carryboy said:

@Marokai said:

@ThePickle said:

No one's complaining about the business of advertisements. No one's saying they want everything for free either. People are just complaining about the nature of the ads, and to a lesser extent the lack of staff feedback on community issues. The amount of people misconstruing the OP is really annoying and somewhat sad.

That specifically is more the issue that I'm miffed about, at least. It seems downright crazy (and on some level just sort of insulting, I guess) that if you get a couple hundred people on your own site to comment about something uncool that you said you'd never do regarding the site's business model, you won't hear a peep from Jeff, but get one or two people in a NeoGaf thread to insult our comments and user creation procedure, and he'll hop right to giving them some background info. The fact that more people aren't upset about that is surprising, to me.

Its certainly a contributing factor to why Ive cancelled the renewal on my subscription, it truly astounds me how little input the staff have into the community.

I think that people on the Giant Bomb forums are just regarded as a little bit less important, or the comments are seen more as background noise or typical Internet assholes raging like they're wont to do. Since NeoGaf users have to use a paid e-mail to be verified on the site, whatever they say carries more weight (to the staff) than what people on this forum say, since anyone can sign up in less than a minute. We're the riff-raff, and listening to the guys for more than about five minutes will tell you how dismissive they are of the Internet user base at large.

Of course, as an Internet asshole myself, what I say or think probably doesn't reflect the actual situation or matter that much.

@GenocidalKitten said:

@DoctorWelch said:

@GenocidalKitten said:

@DoctorWelch: The one that I thought was bad was the pop up eye blaster that was on the site for a while. did you see that one?

No, I've been a premium member since the beginning so I haven't really ever seen ads on the site.

Heres a link to the thread talking about it.

Wow...I still enjoy their content, and will still be subscribing, but all of this is extremely disheartening. For me, it's not even the crazy ads as much as it is the staff not really caring enough to actually respond to the community. More and more it seems like they are shifting away from everything this site was about.

@GenocidalKitten said:

@DoctorWelch said:

Wow...I still enjoy their content, and will still be subscribing, but all of this is extremely disheartening. For me, it's not even the crazy ads as much as it is the staff not really caring enough to actually respond to the community. More and more it seems like they are shifting away from everything this site was about.

Yeah, but sometimes I feel like the staff not responding is more because they don't know what to say, I have definitely noticed that they seem to read most comments on Bombcasts and videos. Hopefully as time goes on they can start doing things their way again.

Yeah, I mean, as I said in my first post, I feel like they need to realize the have more power than they think. I'm sure the guys want the best for the site (or at least I hope), it's just sad to see them have to pretty much bend to anything CBSi wants, and then not being totally upfront with the community about exactly what is happening and why, even if we aren't happy about it.

I'm pretty much alright with any advertising for my free content with two exceptions.

1: Anything that gets in the way of clicking things I want to click that take over sections of the webpage outside of the advertising area.

2: Any play before video advertisement that can't be skipped after the first few seconds of the ad starting up.

Beyond that, I'll take some visual offense and consider it the cost of getting free content. Just my 2 cents.

My sub ran out a couple of days ago, and wow...it's so weird to see GB with huge ugly ads everywhere and 30 sec commercials before running a video. I feel kind of dirty for thinking about re-subbing again just to make it go away again, when the whole point of not re-subbing was to vote with my wallet about the direction of the site.

When they decided they wanted to stay in business I guess. The ads look fucking atrocious, but there's really nothing I can do now but pay to get them off? My membership just ended, but I am still debating whether to sign back up. We'll see.

Who dumped this fucking necro-thread? It was better off dead.

@alternate said:

Who dumped this fucking necro-thread? It was better off dead.

Why? Seems like there is quite a lot of civil discussion in this thread. I wanted to say something about it and instead of creating a new thread I thought I'd go with one that is 3 weeks old. Is that really that old or has something changed wildly from the earlier posts making it irrelevant?

What really troubles me is the annoying "do not text and drive" and "don't drive drunk" ads that I keep getting a lot. Is this because I am Finnish or because of that time when I accidentally killed that one family with my car?

Ugh, these ad placements and colors are just insulting.