Postby Retro STrife » September 8th, 2021, 10:31 pm
Well I want to say first that you’ve been doing this for 20+ years - for no financial gain - so I can’t begrudge any efforts at finding a way to make the site break-even or better. You’ve also always prioritized site quality over ad revenue, so I think it’s fair that we give a fair shake to trial runs of any ad campaign you want to try.
With that said, I pretty much would echo everyone else here. I used the desktop site earlier today- no problems. I had one video pop-up when I opened the site.. no biggie, I closed it. It’s pretty small anyway, so I could have even left it open while browsing. Would it scare off a new user? Maybe. But I think long-term followers will get used to that one pop-up pretty easily.
The mobile site is a different story- it’s much less bearable. The pop-ups show up every time you change screens, and they take up 25% of the screen, meaning you have to close the same video 10+ times as you browse around. If I recall correctly, Critic, you don’t have a smartphone and maybe haven’t seen the mobile site with the ads yet. But, knowing your standards for the site, I think you’d be trying to change it asap if you saw it in action. And these days, I imagine mobile is a main way people use the site.
Me? I’ve been here so long that I’d suffer through the 10 pop-ups to use the mobile site. A new user? No chance they’d stick it out. I wonder if the mobile site could be changed to just one pop-up like the desktop site.