Topic: [Chart] Bitcointalk statistics on impression counts for ads (Read 1319 times)

Nothing against its graphics. They are right based on the numbers presented. 
The system's accounting of these numbers may not take into account some parameters that we are not aware of.

You are right. I mentioned about the ad sales pause in this thread:


Thus, the forum has stopped promoting all casinos, mixers and other types of cryptocurrency related businesses from the 353th round (inclusive), however, these slots still count all impressions to provide statistics.

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I can't speak for the published numbers, but I can confirm that my charts accurately illustrate these figures.

Look, this registered number certainly does not include bots. Maybe only with unregistered visitors.
Furthermore, the statistics system should not account for all topics on the forum, probably some boards are not accounted for.

Because notice, according to these users logged in, only each user saw a topic 6 times over 30 days.  Just you and me, in half an hour we saw twice as many topics.

That's why I say that these numbers are very superficial and do not reflect 100% the dynamics of the forum.

Ah, now I understand, and it makes much more sense.
MY value was too unrealistically high and based on the wrong number of users.
Of course, the number of users logged remains low, but the "bot" (either users casually browsing or proper AI agent reading posts) activity seems to be the real reason for this.
I'm not sure if and how to account for or react to this bot-proliferation.

I can see the holes LOL.
Before making a post I preview them, not one or twice but many times if the reply is long. All these count too.

Now I don't understand your calculations.

In the last 30 days registered, there were 9 867 673 impressions/views.
The same data says that only 1 877 155 users logged in.
This gives more or less 6 impressions/views per registered user for 30 days.

If for each post you make, it gives at least 2 impressions, as the banner space does not record the page where the post was created (contrary to the number I indicated before). So, this means that the number of impressions/views is very low compared to logged users. The value should be higher.

If every reply generates 3-page loads, this means 4,700 "replies" per registered user monthly.
I guess that makes you understand the amount of traffic generated by unregistered users.
It would be nice to streamline this amount of pages more profitably for the forum.

Look, it's not that difficult a number to achieve.

Note, each of us for each topic we reply to generates 3 pages loaded. At the very least.
It's the page when you enter the topic and read it, it's the page where you write the post, and it's again the page Topic.

Now it starts to multiply that by the remaining pages and thousands of users.

Let's analyze the data from the round 379. We have
379   Oct 19 2024 16:00:00 UTC   Nov 18 2024 16:00:00 UTC   30   10   9867673   1877155   391358   6903

This means we have 10x9867673 impressions for the slots?
98,676,730 that's above 98 millions of page loads per month with 6903 unique logged in users.
Surely there are so many bots are running by different organizations to consume the resources from the forum host.

Basically this page was created to present the forum's statistical data, with advertisements in mind.
In other words, the page is configured to display forum statistics, related to each announcement cycle.

Ultimately, it's not about the statistics of the ad itself, but about access to the forum.

Because the forum is an SEO powerhouse. Whenever someone searches for something related to Bitcoin, a link or two to a post/thread in the forum will appear in the top 10 Google search results. According to SimilarWeb, 39% of all traffic comes from "organic search" and 50.1% is "direct", which is us + people who just copy/paste a forum link. Referrals make up 8.76%

Whats kind of interesting is ChatGPT accounts for 3.69% of referrals, which is 0.32% of all forum traffic. I expect the number of AI-driven referrals to get bigger over the next few years. I even get hits on my website from ChatGPT these days. Exciting times.

I feel stupid and I am sure I am missing something. The forum is not providing any ad service [the top banners] then how it's generating the impressions on the ad stat page?

I see no reason why there should be more unregistered users.
I, on the other hand, understand why someone who registered to a forum from the year 10s feels compelled to open many threads and read many posts.
Anyway, given the price action, I would have expected the number of users to grow a bit more sharply.
We are so early!
 

Yes, that could be it.
In other words, whenever you open a topic, it counts as a view/impressions. If you open this topic 10 times, it's 1 user = 10 impressions.

Another thing that could be happening is more unregistered people (guests) viewing the forum.

I couldn't reconcile the surge in the impression count with the decreased number of users.
What does it mean? The user number decreased, but they are actually more active on the forum, so that the impression number actually increased?

I haven't updated this thread in over 10 months, so I decided to renew all the charts to show statistics as of October 19, 2024, when the last 378th round ended.

As I can see from these graphs, in August 2024, the "Total daily impression counts for ads" index has surged from 200,000 to 350,000. The "Daily impressions from logged-in users" index also increased, but not as sharply. It is clear that the current state is more positive than it was before.

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Yes, these trends are interesting. I think people see the growth of the cryptocurrency market, so they come to the Bitcointalk forum as one of the most reliable sources of information.

Thanks for the update.

Logically, there are always many factors involved in the variation of numbers. And many of these factors will be completely unknown, and it will be difficult to understand what motivated such a movement. But such movements are still interesting.

I have updated all charts with new data as of November 24, 2023.

The minimal recent value for the "Daily impression counts for ads" parameter was recorded in May 2023 and averaged 100K per slot. Over the past months, the "Unique IP addresses" and "Unique logged-in users" parameters seem to be more stable.

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On the second post of this thread, I now show recent statistics starting from January 1, 2020, rather than January 1, 2017. As I can see from these charts, the latest peak in numbers occured in 2021. In my opinion, some parameters are quite volatile. They rise and fall depending on many circumstances.

I think the numbers are quite interesting, bearing in mind that we are going through a downturn in the market.
They are better than they were, between 2015-2017.

The peak of 2017-2018 was a bit out of the ordinary due to the huge wave of ICOs and the like that came to market. If we remove those years, we see that the numbers have risen consistently over the years.

Forget about NFTs and DeFi... Bounty hunting was very lucrative during that time of ICOs so that's probably the time the forum received a big number of new accounts. This could be the reason why the impression counts for ads were high at the time.

Merit system may have had some impact too.

That's bad, after seeing the charts it's obvious that forum has lost it's influence over time after 2018, I wouldn't rule out merit system as the culprit though. I guess we can't have it both ways, to achieve something you need to sacrifice another, but was it worth the try?

I have updated all charts on the front page of this thread to the 358th round in order to reflect the new data as of February 27, 2023.

In general, all statistical indices look quite stable.

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It should be noted that on September 20, 2022, theymos said:

As far as I understand, rounds 353 and up did not advertise any service, but did show various dictums of the forum founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, and other Bitcoin-related expressions. Now each round lasts exactly 30 days.

All charts are current for round 351 ending on July 29, 2022.

As I can see from the graph, the "Total daily impressions per slot" metric hasn't changed much, but the similar metric "Daily impressions from logged-in users" has significantly increased (actually doubled) from 11250 to 24400 in the last 6 months. Perhaps this means that people came to the forum to talk and not just read Bitcoin related topics. On the other hand, the "Unique IP addresses from logged-out visitors" index has dropped from 210K to 150K for one round. This looks strange.

Another half year has elapsed, so all charts have been updated as of the 346th ad round finished on February 8, 2022.

The current total impressions per day is about 160K, the number of daily impressions from logged-in users is 11250 that is relatively low but looks very stable over the passed 6 months. The other two indices also remained virtually unchanged.

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My guess is that most users visit the Bitcointalk forum on a regular basis, at least once a week, so after the ad round has lengthened, the indices illustrated in the latter two charts have no spikes as against the first chart. Therefore, I don't think it's necessary to split the data on unique logged-in users and IP addresses into four charts.

Ok, that’s important to state, since the first two charts are on the same scale before and after the change in duration from 10 days to 30 days (the both are averaged to a daily scale), whilst the latter two relating to the IPs are not, and the spikes shown over the last few months are due to the cumulous over divergent lengths of time.

Note: Conceptually, the latter two could be averaged likewise by dividing the number of unique IPs by the round’s duration, or separated into before and after the change charts.

I have updated all the charts again.

I noticed that theymos recently simplified the structure of the HTML page that lists impressions for ads.

The stats for the 271st round mentioned in the first post of this thread are now displayed in the following format:

Round number	Start	Stop	Duration (days)	Slots	Impressions per slot (all users)	Impressions per slot (logged-in users)	Unique IPs from logged-out users	Unique logged-in users
271	Mar 20 2019 15:49:07 UTC	Mar 30 2019 21:18:53 UTC	10.2	10	3429084	1026072	161241	22787

So I modified my parser and redrawn all the graphs.

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On March 29, 2021, theymos also said that ad rounds will now last for ~30 days rather than ~10 days, as it was before:


Therefore I decided to remove the chart that illustrates the number of ad impressions per one round. I will only maintain daily statistics for the first and second indices.

Since it's been over 4 months, I have actualized all the charts up to the 332nd round which ended on February 26, 2021.

I noticed that in early 2021, the number of unique IP addresses from logged-out users increased significantly, as well as the number of unique users who logged-in for one round. Perhaps people from all over the world wondered why the Bitcoin price skyrocketed to $58K, so they came to the Bitcointalk forum as the first and best place to discuss cryptocurrencies.

Almost 3 months have passed, so I decided to update all the charts to reflect the data as of the 320th round which ended on October 17, 2020.

In August 2020, daily impression counts dropped to 190K (on average per ad slot) and were relatively low during that month, but in September 2020, this index has soared again to 300K. Perhaps the reason for the recovery in statistics is the bull run on the cryptocurrency market which occurred at the beginning of last month. People were actively talking about Bitcoin and altcoins on the forum.

I've updated all statistics on impression counts for ads up to the 312nd round (inclusive) which ended on July 17, 2020.

The number of daily impressions has rebounded to 250000 in the past three months. Visitors read the forum and see ads from approximately 80000 unique IP addresses. 11000 unique members log into their accounts during one round. In general, the current statistics have a positive trend.

All charts have been updated to the 305th round which ended on May 1, 2020.

As I can see, the number of daily impressions increased from 200K to 300K over the past two months.

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These statistics are only on ad impressions, not clicks. I assume that advertisers should log the activity on their services and estimate the profit from promotion on Bitcointalk.

As far as I understand, an advertiser should hire a designer here and create an attractive and "eye catching" banner to promote a website on the forum. Afterwards the advertiser should go to the Auctions section and post the bid. Website owners will compete with each other, so the advertiser should offer a price that is high enough to buy at least one ad space (slot) for one round (~10 days). I am sure that the website traffic will increase significantly.



I guess that you are asking about advertising services on local boards. No, these are common statistics for all sections of the forum.

The CTRs, are there such statistics that of the clicks generated by each impression.

Us can know (link) "publicly" this impression data in each of the communities.
(?)
Regards.

Since another 5 rounds ended, I updated all the charts up to the 298th round.

The daily number of ad impressions was slightly reduced to 210 thousand. The number of unique IP addresses from logged-out visitors and the number of unique logged-in users have not changed much over the past two months. About 13500 users view forum threads for each round (~10 days).

All charts are now updated to the 293th round which ended on December 22, 2019.

As I can see, the number of daily ad impressions has significantly decreased, especially from logged-in users. According to the chart, in October 2019 there was a short-term dip. However, the number of unique IP addresses and unique logged-in users looks more stable.

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As far as I understand, during the 10th anniversary art contest there was no advertising on the Bitcointalk forum, so theymos divided the 291st round into 3 periods:

I have updated all the graphs up to the 289th round which ended on October 16, 2019.

In general, all displayed indices are not volatile. Total ads impressions is about 300 thousand (per day). Unique IP-addresses from logged-out users was reduced slightly over the past 4 rounds, but there are no significant changes in the trends.

Another 5 ad rounds are over, so I updated all the charts again.

Daily impression counts for ads look stable enough. The number of unique IP addresses from logged-out users for one round has slightly decreased. About 18500 unique logged-in users have visited the forum for the last ad round (~10 days).

All charts have been updated up to the 279th round which ended on June 26, 2019.

Interestingly, impression counts for ads in the 277th round exceeded 5 million, that is, in the beginning of June 2019 about 410 thousands impressions were counted per day. The number of unique IP addresses from logged-out users and the number of unique logged-in users did not significantly increased.

Since another 4 rounds have been completed, I parsed the ad stats and updated all the charts up to the 275th round.

As I can see, in February 2019 there was a dip of impressions. According to the latest data, the indexes look stable, especially "Unique IPs" and "Unique users".

I think that "logged-out users" means "visitors". In other words, they probably do not have an account on the Bitcointalk forum and come here just to read discussions about crypto currencies, etc.



This is true. We are "unique logged-in users". The All-Time-High of this index has reached on the day the merit system was implemented, on January 24, 2018, and as I can see, the number of active members decreases every month.

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I agree. All ads on Bitcointalk look beautiful and are not annoying, so not many high-ranking members have such banners disabled.



Thanks! I have really ranked up. I will endeavor to contribute to the forum.

Probably! The visitors graph looks a lot like the Bitcoin price graph, you can quite literally see all the historic price spikes in there.

Bitcointalk has one of the least intrusive ads I've seen, I too see no reason to disable them.

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Coin-1, I merited your post, then realized you only needed 11 more to become Hero Member. Congrats, you deserve it!

Nice stats you've created, thanks.

The first charts, related to the number of impressions, are more oriented towards potential advertisers and de-facto advertisers, and give a measure of potential impact in terms of máx. achievable views.

What’s interesting for a broader audience are the charts related to the unique IPs and users:

- The Unique Logged-in Users would be "us" I figure, where the latest reading on the stats (round 271)  indicate that nearly 23K distinct users logged-in during a 10 day period as of late. It would be interesting to know how many distinct IPs are behind, but that is just curiosity.
The charts show the evolution there, and I’m curious if they will rise with the BTC price evolution over these past couple of days (we’ll see that in current round 272).

- The unique IPs from logged-out users are I figure really users who have not logged-in to browse the site. These are nearly eightfold lately, in relation to logged-in users, although there are many variations under the hood (i.e. 1 user -> n IPs; 1 IP -> n Users; user can be logged-in and logged-out during the run, etc.). Even so, if we hypothesise the relation 1:8 to be real, there is still a large potential of users that could at some point proceed to log-in and post.


I’ts also curios to note that the stats indicate that only 265 users have ads disabled, although this option is only available to Hero, Legendary, Donators, VIPs, and moderators (roughly 6.500 accounts – that is 4% aprox. have adds disabled).

Reserved.

The following charts illustrate the same statistics for only the last 3-4 years in order to view the latest data.

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This post is relevant for October 20, 2024, and has been updated on November 12, 2024.

Since October 2011, ads are shown on the Bitcointalk forum. Each round lasts about 7-12 days. There are 10 rotating slots which are sequentially displayed for logged-in users and logged-out visitors. It should be noted that some users who are Hero Members or Legendaries have ads disabled in their profiles.

Since April 2012, the administrator theymos publishes statistics on impression counts for ads:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats


Each ad slot has 4 statistical indices:

• Total impressions
• Impressions from logged-in users
• Unique IPs from logged-out users
• Unique logged-in users

For example:



There are no statistics of the first 25 rounds. The round 26 ended on April 4, 2012. According to the comment, the round 141 which lasted 15 days in January 2015 has an incomplete data. Since the round 243 which began on May 16, 2018, the "Unique IPs" index has been changed to "Unique IPs from logged-out users" that probably reduced values of this parameter.

It is weird that the round 74 which lasted a week in March 2013 has zero values for all indices. There are no notes related to this round. Perhaps this is an error.

• UPDATE: On September 20, 2022, the administrator decided to suspend ad sales, but these statistical indices are still provided.

The charts below illustrate the dynamics of all indices on average per slot.

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The following chart illustrates the daily statistics for the first and the second indices of ad slot.



The chart parameter which is illustrated in blue is calculated by the formula:

The chart parameter which is illustrated in green is calculated by the formula:

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The chart parameter is calculated by the following formula:

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The chart parameter is calculated by the following formula:

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Statistical data since the round 27 which began on April 4, 2012, till the round 378 which ended on October 19, 2024, have been parsed and analyzed to create these charts.

This post is relevant for October 20, 2024, and has been updated on November 12, 2024.