Text link ads

Riyad never swears. He also never wears trousers

 

Is he the only one? Or does "TR" stand for TrouseRless?

 

I had that video come up on this site. I wasn't sure where it came from and i went to close it and it just wouldn't close no matter how many times i clicked the little x so i had to refresh the page. I then went to start a tread about it because I know bit-tech has a non-intrusive advertising policy but found this thread instead.

Please don't use these. I hate them.

 

I voted "I would block them and blacklist all other adverts on bit-tech" as it is the closest to what I am currently doing. Banner ads down the side and across the top / bottom are fine, but the intellitxt ads are nasty and nothing other than a nuisance. This is especially true of the ones that don't auto - vanish when you move your mouse away from them, having triggered them by accident. Sadly, I found that these are the type that Bit-tech is currently using.

I'm currently using Firefox and running Noscript. Following the appearance of intellitxt on Bit-tech, Noscript is now enabled when browsing the site. It blocks the intellitxt ads fine, but also blocks any other ads that aren't simple animated / static GIFs. I would however revert to allowing the other ads should the intellitxt cease to be.

 

I am truly disappointed in BT...

/me turns off whitelist for BT

 

Hold on guys, this is NOT bit techs fault, I can fully back tim up on that, this thread & the blog post are tims idea, don't blacklist the flash ads, just the javascript intellitext ads, add:

to your windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts file.

 

Unfortunately its not just the intellitxt ads that are now annoying, the Be There ISP ad is incredibly bouncy and annoying, and really has a very tenuous link as a product to Bit. There just no longer seems to be the quality and targeting the ads had before

 

I wouldn't say it's tenuous, people around this time of year are moving house, and with a housemove comes a change of utilities, including broadband.

 

Seconded. Don't shout at bit, shout at Dennis.

And while the be ad may be slightly annoying, it is relevant to bit users.

 

if that was the reasoning for the ad appearing it would be better placed on home moving sites, the only link i see between Bit and Be There would be that Bit is on the internet and Be supplies it, in which case following that logic the Ad could appear anywhere on the internet. Its just doesn't appear to me to be a well targeted Ad.

 

Ok, change of the internet is best for everyone, if anyone can get a speed upgrade by changing to an LLU supplier then that's obviously going to be better to anyone stuck on upto 8Mb.

 

Be targets gaming and tech sites as it (rightly) sees itself as the logical choice for tech savvy people.

 

I've had some time to think more about this topic and wanted to go into more depth on why changes in advertising would adversely affect my experience. Bit-Tech, like many technology sites, provides two main resources the standard technology reporting and the user forums. Many other sites have very active user forums and contain a wealth of information but I think Bit is unique in that user's project logs generate a massive amount of traffic due to their quality, numbers, and diversity.

I've seen more links on Giz, Engadget, Digg and other popular Tech News sites to Bit-Tech project logs than any other forum I know of. This helps to drive advertising numbers and of course to encourage other modders to post their logs here. Part of the great user experience has been the quality of the ads that complement and don't interfere with the experience. I'm sure some users disagree and block all ad's out of the principle of the fact but I have chosen to support and thus whitelist Bit-Tech.

After the acquisition of Bit-Tech by Dennis I was worried about possible changes to drive online revenue for Dennis since they acquired Bit to shore up that area of their media portfolio. Obviously having separate ad systems doesn't make a whole lot of sense so I tolerated the change to more invasive ads that happened recently. However, it's obvious that Dennis is not an expert in generating revenue from online technology resources or they would not have needed to acquire Bit-Tech. This becomes obvious when the idea of Textlink ads is being considered and trialed without fully considering the reason Bit generates ad revenue and occupies a relatively niche space in the online technology market.

I have confidence that the Bit-Tech staff is looking out for the readers an users and would trust them to do the right thing if it was their sole choice to make decisions about advertising. However, if Dennis chooses to add more invasive advertising techniques I'll likely find ways to circumvent them and probably begin to spend less time here.

From a pure business perspective if ad revenue from Text link ads can increase the content enough to offset the losses from users leaving and users who block all ads then it makes financial sense and it's hard to argue with making money. I do believe long term success is about continuing to do what Bit-Tech excels at, and that's have a great online experience and have great project logs along with tons of modding knowledge.

Sorry for the long post but I would be quite saddened to see Bit-Tech lose part of the quality that has earned it a great reputation.

 

They are the biggest PITA ever invented. For what ever reason they are always right under my mouse and the dame things just don't go away unless you click the dame "close". I'd put up with those dame ad pages you have have to click "skip this" on all the time before i'd allow these things.

 

oh god no. if those are coming i will simply have to stop visiting this site, they can't even be defeated with adblock.

 

A bit off topic, and perhaps a bit premature... But I have a tendency to look at worse case scenario.. If Dennis continues to make poor decisions regarding Bit-Tech, can Bit-Tech divorce Dennis?

If it came down to some kind of fund raising, I'd be down to buy like a Bit-Tech T-shirt, case sticker etc. to bail them out. I get a lot of entertainment value reading Bit-Tech articles that keep me up to date on the tech. I'm getting real aggravated by the idea of some big business messing around with what I think has been a very well ran, admired organization.

Tim, your a cool guy, thanks for the email back. By the looks of it, you have a very big and passionate community at your back, I'm sure most of us are wishing we could do more for you. Perhaps they need reminded that Bit-Tech is not theirs to own, that its the community that has continued to support it.

-Evre-

 

I personally know how to selectivley block different types of adverts, but am considering blocking every damn advert type from Bit until the text adverts are confirmed as gone. Somethings are just a matter of principle, and i'd rather offset the extra revenue gained by the text adverts beeing viewed by some, by costing them revenue in normal ads.

And i fully accept this is not Bit's 'true' staff wishes, but hopefully dennis will realise the text adverts are not wanted.

 

Tim its not jsut the work you've done to create appropriate and tasteful advertising, its also the work done in building and keeping happy such a great community. This may start to see the loss or angering of users, and that won't be good for anyone and it will undo all those years of work in teeny tiny steps. Maybe Dennis aint bothered by that, but i am.

Poor poor Bit

 

What you're talking about is called an MBO - Management Buyout.

The value of a company is based on its revenue and profitability (although for acquisitions, quite often a multiplier of the profitability is used) - although I don't know the exact figures, I'd imagine that bit's vaule is worth somewhere in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

Add in the fact that Dennis would probably inflate the price due to the fact that they'd only just acquired bit, and you'd be looking at a considerable amount of money.

There are a whole host of other factors to consider too (such as moving the team to a new office - again, third time in a year).

Something that would require slightly more than sales of a few t-shirts or stickers

 

Done, after shouting "F*** OFF F**** OFF F*** OFF" at the CSI advert when it started playing sound after I accidentally moved over it.

Sorry bit, hope you can get this sorted Tim.