Originally posted by riffola
For subscribers, when logged in, will you consider removing the ads, especially ones that are trying to sell subscription to the site. Such as "Buy now and get free access to Autosport-Atlas!"
Let's separate this into three issues:
1) The existence of ads at all;
2) The abundence of animated/flashy ads.
3) The Autosport Magazine ad;
With regards to point 1:
I think people are grossly exaggerating the correlation between subscription and advertisements. You pay for a newspaper or a magazine in print, and that comes with ads too. Where does it say that when you pay for a publication, it shouldn't have ads?!?
Let this be clear: Autosport-Atlas.com costs a lot of money to produce and is not a profitable business at the moment. So we will not turn down the ability to cover our costs from advertisements alltogether.
Nevertheless, there are NO popup ads and there are NO ads AT ALLl on the "closed" pages (i.e. pages that require a paid subscription to access them).
With regards to point 2:
The Atlas F1 Index pages always carried ads, although we didn't have as many. This wasn't because we refused to have ads - it was simply because no one wanted to advertise on Atlas F1, or we were bad salesmen (probably the latter ;)).
What I do think, though (but cannot promise) is that there can and should be
less ads on a page, especially once a subscriber logged in. Kevin (my publisher) and I were talking about this yesterday and it's a point we are willing to explore and see if there's a way to improve it.
I also think there are too many animated ads. It's not that there are ads there, it's not that there are 6 ads - they're all small and nicely aligned - it's the fact that most of them are animated which creates a complete sense of chaos. I don't think it's a very good thing.
So this is definitely an issue we are exploring and looking at how we can optimise it and find a balance between maintaining the advertising opportunity a website offers, while not grossly overdoing it to a point of alienation.
Finally, with regards to point 3:
Imagine that on every FORIX page there would have been a small and NON ANIMATED image of Atlas F1 with the line "subscribe to Atlas F1 and get free access to FORIX!" That would have made perfect sense, no? After all, we'd like people to subscribe to Atlas F1 - the "bigger" and more money-making package.
Likewise, Autosport Magazine subscribers pay much, much more than Autosport-Atlas.com subscribers; and the Magazine subscribers get free access to Autosport-Atlas.com. So as a company, it is in our interest and benefit too that subscribers will go for the "bigger" package.
I don't find this Magazine marketing spot obtrusive at all, and I completely fail to accept any form of criticism on that issue. Sorry.