Is online dating a suitable advertisement?

[o_man_ra23]

Just had Internet Exploder do its thing and lose my username and password for Toymods, so it brought me to the forum site without logging in. It then had an ad which looked peculiar to a technical oriented automotive forum... it said I had a friend request from somebody 2.8 miles from my location, which also had a picture of an attractive young lady.

Questioning the ad like somebody who knows how these things work, I said to myself, why is the location in miles, why does it show a female of an age which is young enough that they would not have an interest in me, and why is it in a car forum? Clicking the link, it took me to an online dating service, who's website looked extremely like facebook (and the ad looked a lot like that too).

Can I ask why this sort of advertising, whereby the websites of online dating services are known hangouts for viruses (and I can tell this one is foreign as we work in km not miles in Aus, thus exacerbating the virus situation), are hanging around Toymods? Surely we can find better sponsors than that? Even Fast Fours was clever enough to realise that the phone sex line ads weren't good for their business. I understand why we need the outside ads for non-members to keep the forums ticking along, but surely this just isn't appropriate. Oh, and fucked if I'm going to be called a fucking prude or some shit like that, but this sort of thing just isn't in the best interests of the club... surely??

[masterofsinanju]

Agreed. Plus any advertiser too dumb too know you have an 18rg an thus no need of dating assistance doesn't deserve space here.

Seriously, no can we get other advertisers?

[Lambolica]

Owen,

Whilst I don't disagree with you, The ads served to either the banner at the very top (near the login) or in the threads are served to the forums by way of keyword to either the site, or the thread that the user is in.

Where there is no match, random ads from a set list of categories is used, and unfortunatly you can't simply set it to "automotive" only, so some randomness is to be expected.

The only thing I can offer is that seeing that ads are served by google and that google makes you jump though hoops to be able to have ads running, that they should check any sites that the ads refer to for viruses etc. (thou I have no proof of said opinion.)

Cheers
Simon

[o_man_ra23]

I guess it is unfortunate the world we live in. I wonder how much the forums are costing per regular non club member user per annum?

[masterofsinanju]

Thanks for the explanation Lambolica. If we have some level of assurance as the ads are served through google it eliminates the technical concerns about viruses.

I expect the same goes for the ad content itself. As long as it's not blatantly sexual and is family friendly and it helps defray costs, I'm ok with it.

O'man, it might be interesting to see what the forums are costing for non paying users but (as has been pointed out somewhere, but CBF finding it) the large number of users we have makes the forum as useful as it is. We start levying a fee for those who are only midly interested, we lose potential paying members down the track and we take a big chunk out of the knowledge and community.

[fly ryder]

I found it slightly amusing when a ford add started playing in the corner, had a slight giggle.

[o_man_ra23]

I was just wondering the cost. I wouldn't charge an access fee, but if a PayPal donation button were easily accessible, then I wonder just how much of that cost could be covered (with the obvious long term goal of removing the ads again). Then again it may never eventuate.

[caam]

I must be doing something right as I haven't seen one ad since I joined Toymods.... >

[masterofsinanju]

I don't think club members (as opposed to the free sign up to the forums) see the ads. If you check Owen's first post he came across the ads after going to the toymids forums without logging in.

So it was more a concern about the technical risk and appropriateness of dating site ads for casual users. That is, did the ads send the right message about toymods.

I think from Lambolica's explanation we understand how the ads work and the risk (virus wise).

A one click donation option might be useful but I don't know the difficulty of setting such up.

[TheToyman75]

Financial Toymods members only see our primary Banner ads.

The additional in post advertising gets seen by Guests and Non Members. We resisted having it for as long as we could but the membership base can no longer cover the financial costs of running the site so it was more ads,or no Toymods Forum.

[o_man_ra23]

Where there is no match, random ads from a set list of categories is used, and unfortunatly you can't simply set it to "automotive" only, so some randomness is to be expected.

I'm no statistician, but I would have thought that random means that a different one should appear each time, and with a decent enough list, it should be rare that the same one comes up twice in a row.

Now, going with my understanding of randomness, and the fact that 3 times Internet Explorer has dropped its guts, and 3 times the same ad about online dating has come up, I would say either the list of ads supplied by google is extremely small, or it isn't being very random.

Might be worth looking into??

[trdee]

from my understanding you can tweak the preferences to show certain types of ads more often than others. lambo was talking about this at the board meeting on tuesday. he said he is going to try give the ads a bit more tweaking to get them a bit more relevant, but at the end of the day they are driven by google thus the amount of control we have is limited by some extent.

also we will NOT be levying fees on forum members, and paypal donations will not provide a steady failsafe source of income. we've been through this before in other threads.

[tomvale13]

Maybe it's aiming at specific target-markets?

i.e; In this case - Rona?


I've been getting the 'EZIBUY' one a lot.

I don't even mind the ads really - But yeah, if they crashed my machine it would suck though.

[RONA]

Funnily enough whenever I am not logged in all I seem to get is banking ads.

[ra23celica]

Is Stephanie 2.8 miles away from you right now too?