Topic: Advertise on this forum - Round 353 (Read 1348 times)

Note that I've decided to suspend ad sales. These auctions will probably be permanently ended, and I'm not sure whether or in what form advertising in general will be continued. Maybe some ads will go up again fairly soon, or maybe there will never be any more ads; I haven't decided yet. The main reasons for this decision are:

Firstly, I'm finding it too difficult to determine which services are legit/safe and which are not. It takes me 30+ minutes to research each new service to reach at least some level of confidence in it, but at the end of this I often still don't feel fully confident. Bitcointalk.org is meant to be operated "as a service to the community", so it's very important to me that bitcointalk.org not be seen to be putting profit above the interests of its users. (I've been kind of shocked at the crypto-related ads that are shown on TV, which are often way beyond anything I'd accept here. And I'd like to tighten our standards.)

Secondly, there is a high amount of friction in the current process of auctions and manual ad processing. I often feel that it's more trouble than it's worth on bitcointalk.org's end. I also think that the revenue is substantially less than it could be because the market of advertisers willing to deal with this difficult process is much smaller than the market of advertisers who would be willing to advertise here if only they could do so effortlessly. So I think that we're "leaving a lot of money on the table" due to friction, which makes the other issues feel even worse.

Finally, bitcointalk.org has a large reserve of BTC, so we're able to continue operating without ad revenue for many years. It's not even necessary to cut expenses or find replacement sources of revenue anytime soon, and I currently have no solid plans to do these things. I do regard it as less than ideal to be operating at a constant loss, especially because it constraints any desired future growth in expenses. Improving this situation will be on my mind in the coming years, but luckily it need not be a high priority.

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If you'd like to advertise: I will consider offers to advertise, especially if you've advertised before. Send me:
 - What you want to advertise
 - How long you want to advertise for, and starting/ending when
 - How much you'll be willing to pay
 - If you would prefer some change in the format of ads (ie. something different than the banner below the first post), let me know and I'll consider it

However, my standards for the type of service I will accept will be stricter than previously, and I will also not accept advertising if I don't think that the proposed price is high enough to make it worth the trouble. Due to these changes, I will probably accept few or no offers to advertise, and the majority of the time there will be no ads.

A possible good long-term solution would be if we could use some ad network in the same vein as AdSense which has extremely high standards, does not track users, and is otherwise as visitor-friendly as possible. If you know of or operate something like this, please let me know.

The main thing that I'll miss about these auctions is being pushed to closely investigate a wide variety of different crypto-services, many of which have been very interesting and innovative, even ones which I've had to reject. Thank you to all advertisers, auction participants, and ad designers over the nearly 11 years since the first auction. I'd especially like to point out that many, maybe the majority, of ad banners over the last few years were designed by jayce.

The rules require that bids be evenly divisible by 2mBTC. When someone violates this rule, I always round down to the next lower valid bid.


As I mentioned in previous auctions, your bids will not be accepted.

Auction ended, final result:

Slots mBTC/slot Person
1 28 BetCoco
2 28 Hhampuz
2 28 Myleschetty
4 26 Alpha Affiliates

2 @ 29mBTC

3 @ 20mBTC

2 @ 28mBTC

1 @ 28 mBTC

1 @ 28 mBTC

9 @ 26 mBTC

1 @ 26 mBTC

9 @ 24 mBTC

Oh, thank you

My brother, perhaps it is time to check on the rules as I keep seeing your bids being bad. "- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC."

9 @ 23 mBTC

1 @ 22mBTC

2 @ 20mBTC

9 @ 21 mBTC

3 @ 20mBTC

1 @ 20mBTC

9 @ 18 mBTC

1 @ 18mBTC

9 @ 16 mBTC

3 @ 16mBTC

9 @ 14 mBTC

1 @ 14mBTC

9 @ 13 mBTC

9 @ 12 mBTC

9 @ 11 mBTC

9 @ 10 mBTC

9 @ 8 mBTC

5 @ 8 mBTC

9 @ 6 mBTC

1 @ 12 mBTC

9 @ 5 mBTC

9 @ 4 mBTC

2 @ 6mBTC

5 @ 4mBTC

9 @ 3 mBTC

9 @ 2 mBTC

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration/timing

 - Ad slots won in this auction will run from noon August 30 (US Eastern time) to noon September 30. (31 days.)
 - This auction will end sometime between August 19 and August 25, but August 23 is most likely.
 - You must pay within 48 hours of the auction ending. Only Bitcoin is accepted. If you fail to pay in time, your ad slots may be resold, and in cases where I feel that you're acting in bad faith, I may even give you a negative trust rating.
 - You must send me a valid ad (ie. one not breaking any of the styling or other rules) before noon August 29. If you fail to send a valid ad in time, then the ad round will start without you, and you will be "burning time". You can still send an ad after the deadline, and usually this ad will be put up fairly quickly, but no particular timeline is guaranteed after the deadline.
 - If extended downtime or similar issues cause your ad not to be displayed for a long time, we generally give prorated refunds (USD-denominated) for the lost time, but this is not guaranteed.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 2 mBTC.
- The auction ends at an arbitrary time between August 19 and August 25. Times closer to 8:00AM August 23 (US Eastern time) are more likely.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 48 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

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[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).