Yet another advertising update

Offer a 'no adverts' subscription @ x times the current rate. I'd suggest that x=2 would be
appropriate. Slashdot has something along those lines.

Could project leaders also have an option to turn off image ads while keeping text ads? Or
turn off animated ads while keeping static ads? Not to mention that it might be a good way of
soliciting non-annoying ads if advertizers noticed that people with money only look at ads
that aren't animated.

Just upgraded to Project Leader.  Thanks for your continuing work, Jonathan.

Animated ads are annoying. I disabled them in my "project leader" account customization but
that didn't seem to work. Oh well back to FF image blocking unless that's just a bug? Anyone
else have this problem?

I suggest we trust the grumpy editor's judgment. If he can live with it so can we.

thanks,
dave

Thanks for the about:config tip. I hadn't realized that I have the option to turn off all ads
in LWN, but really I don't mind them as long as they're static.

Truth is, it really isn't more obtrusive than 90% of the other news sites out there, which is
good. The 
"disable less obtrusive advertisements when paying more" also sounds reasonable to me. You
could 
easily layer it this way with the current LWN.net subscriptions:
 * Starving hacker -> Access to the latest content (with all ads)
 * Individual subscription -> Starving hacker + ability to turn off obtrusive ads
 * Project leader -> Individual subscription + ability to turn off non-obtrusive ads

This way people clearly get added benefit from a higher subscription level.
But the bottom line is: Ads are good, especially for all non-subcribers. And to maximize
income 
pherhaps adjust the front page for non-logged in people to be more like the logged in version,

which makes the site a much more attractive site for non-subscribers. I actually had a few
people 
that were suprised at how LWN.net looked when one was logged in, for they only knew the
default 
frontpage and a few of the topic pages they were personally interested in.

I found this animated ad also disturbing. It was sufficient for me to enable "play animated
images only once" option in my browser.

The disturbing thing about this change, to me, is that with Epiphany's ad-blocker on, my front
page now looks like:

http://roberts.vorpus.org/~njs/lwn-with-ad.png

I.e., one of the articles is clearly and unambiguously marked as being an advertisement, as
one sees, inferior, publications.  Very unfortunate coincidence of layout...

Interestingly, because I view my front page as headlines-only, I don't see the advert, even
though I'm on a standard subscription.


Jody

The web has just become bearable by using the AdblockPlus plugin for firefox. I don't really
want to start to extend it's rules for LWN. It isn't the content of the ad, which is perfectly
fine for me. It's really just that it slows down reading to less than half the normal pace and
it I'm really pissed of by this loud attention-grabbing. I really pay more attention to less
intrusive advertising.

Apart from that, I think that the normal subscription level should allow to at least turn off
annoying advertising. Someone who turns it off wouldn't bother to look at it anyway. Again: No
problem with non-annoying ads.

I have a suggestion for a layout that allows you to fit more advertising space in, which will
hopefully not annoy too many people, but at the same time actually get click-through.

One of the problems with the current ad setup, is that the ad appears right in the middle of
the text that I'm trying to read, and the animation really causes an annoying distraction. For
a large widescreen user, the ad appears right in the middle of the screen making it even
worse.

I'm not against ads at all, but I do really hate having them nestled in the text content that
I'm trying to read.

I've attached a suggestion for a 2-column layout that might work better... of course, this is
a case of personal preference so feel free to disagree. :-D

http://www.jethrocarr.com/index.php?cms=image:lwnadsugges...

I would suggest only having the 2nd column on the main page, and have it disappear once you
open articles to give more reading space.

Posting here, rather than via email as some other lwn readers might wish to add their thoughts
to this suggestion.

PS: Please forgive the horrible rough editing job I did on the image, it's 12:30am here and
I'm on a laptop without a real mouse. :-)

I'm totally fine with idea of ads on the site. You can add my name to the list of people who
think it's a perfectly reasonable idea.

One thing though; the placement of the in-page ad (currently SonicWall/Untangle) is a little
jarring. It looks like it's been tacked on as an afterthought, which is more or less correct.

In the next site design I'm sure you can make it fit more naturally, but in the meantime
perhaps putting a couple of square ones on either side of "Welcome to LWN.net" and a text one
down the side would work. That might junk up the header though.

Alternatively you could add a right hand column to the site for two or three ads and maybe a
couple of useful widgets ("Search" for example). Personally, I think that would be best.

Incidentally, the left hand column text ad does not show up on the comment submission page.

Dractyl

I am at a Project Leader level, and just made sure I had the advertising on. Funny thing is
that I had not seen it until it was pointed out because I read the site through the RSS feeds.

I guess it is a tragedy of the commons in the sense that some will take more 'pain'
(money+advertising) so that other can take less (less money+artificially blocking ads). To
each its own I guess but it seems somewhat unfair to the rest and the LWN team.

Sometimes I wonder why they even bother.

Keep up the good work.

I read the daily updates via RSS.  I actually visit the site for 2 things:-
  1. To read a full article I found via RSS
  2. To read the weekly article/review

As it happens I am a subscriber at an appropriate level to be able to avoid the ads *and* I
use Firefox with Adblock and fairly aggressive settings, so would not be personally affected
by this change in ad policy.

However the RSS feed is an end run around the advertising, and as I understand the new policy
it will avoid the new ads entirely by avoiding the index pages.  In fact this article is the
only reason I knew there had been a policy change :-)

Do you have an idea of RSS usage for LWN?

I think that LWN deserves to what they like with the website, it take time and work to keep it
up and yes some people have subscriptions and that helps but on the other hand there are a lot
more people that don't but yet LWN keeps delivering the news every day. whether is animation
or written advertising we should fell proud of them because is open source. They may be
annoying and they may not but as open source enthusiast we all have a choice, you can simply
turn it of on you're browser or just simply support it.

Just one more voice from a Project Leader-level subscriber who intentionally keeps all lwn ads
enabled.  lwn.net is also in my Adblock whitelist, and will always remain there.  I also
click-through on ones that are interesting in any way.

Whatever it takes to keep lwn solvent and the editors paid.

I don't know, maybe its because I'm a paid subscriber, but I've never 
noticed any ads. Perhaps I'm just too used to ignoring all images in side 
bars?

Anyhow, the quality of information on LWN isn't found on any other news 
feed I read, keep it up. Thanks.

Sam

As a fairly long-time subscriber, I join the "advertise if you must but _please_  don't
animate" crowd. Yes, stupid animation is all over the web. That doesn't mean it doesn't suck.
LWN has a history of being a classy, informative, human (albeit techie) site; a nice respite
from the much of the web (Thanks, Jonathan!).  It'd be nice to keep it that way.

(Cognitively, "abrupt onsets" in the visual field are known to (automatically, without
conscious intervention) attract attention; there's a large body of literature on this. I want
to read the informative text without having to block out an attention-grabbing flashing
object)

I wonder if it would be possible to create a whole new breed of advertising that is engaging
to the reader, genuinely advertises products that are useful to the audience and possible even
has a "rate this" option for engaging readership.

Then reading ads on LWN would be a way to find out about useful products that work well, maybe
supported by the readership and value for the advertiser would be way up.

A long term relationship between LWN and the advertiser might be more beneficial to both
parties.

This, I think, is a much better option than the in-text advertising that was tested not too
long ago.

While the ad that is currently up is animated and thereby a little bit distracting, at least
it's a relevant and everything still works as expected when viewing the site. (No turning the
text into a minefield.)


Of course not having extra ads would be more pleasant, but if that's what it takes to keep LWN
afloat I'm not going to argue against it. (Especially with the option of the higher level
subscription that removes the ads.)

Syndicate our Grumpy Editor's articles. They are always of 
distinctly superior literary quality, wryly amusing, and very
informative. In fact they are the main reason I subscribe to LWN. They 
would more than hold their own in many print magazines such as 
Linux-Magazine, or Linux Format, etc. Also you might care to consider 
offering them - for a fee - as pdf files formatted either for printing on 
Letter and A4 paper, and for viewing on the 4 by 3 screen. 

To me, the animation of the current ad is "loud" and rather distracting...but I know you need
to pay the bills.  

However, THANK YOU very much for removing those text flyover ads that were on the site as a
brief experiment a while back. Those drove me nuts, and I appreciate that they are gone.

One reason I subscribe at project leader level is to be able to turn off advertisements.
Still, even though I don't like to view the adverts while reading content, it would be nice to
have a page which provides a summary of all the current ads. Maybe even with a simple ranking
system which would put the best or least annoying ads at the top. This is somewhat like the ad
inserts in the Sunday paper. I ignore ads in newspapers, but I scan the Sunday ad inserts
(well, actually, here in Portland, I scan the Friday Fry's ads regularly; but I do scan the
Sunday ads fairly often as well).

Animated ads?  No thanks.  The flashing penguin on the main page is so irritating that I had
already fired off an outraged email before I got to this article.

I'm going to have to block images or unsubscribe, so your ad content is wasted on this reader.

Please reconsider.  

I think you should advertise as much as you need to stay above water. I'd rather have a
tastefully ad-driven lwn than none at all. I don't pay-subscribe to any online news source,
and as the main stream news organizations are discovering, that's the future. You're either
open and ad-driven, or you simply lose readership to those that are.

Having said that, please to do not use any popup-driven adds, and avoid the flash ones (if you
can). Firefox of course blocks the the popup ones, and I personally have the flashblock plugin
installed, since many sites will put 4 flash ads on one page, that go way paste my annoyance
threshold.

I think image ones are fine (even obnoxious animated ones), and readers shouldn't block them
as this simply deprives their favorite sites of money. Plus they're a lot less resource
intensive as the flash alternatives.

Keep up the great work!

Actually, yes, I'd like to see more ads on LWN.

The crutial two points here however are 1. __on topic__ and 2. not in my 
face!

A lot of the stuff I read on LWN is very interesting, and, I also know 
that a lot of the commercial offerings around Linux are very interesting, 
only that - I don't know about them and usually only stumble over them by 
chance.

Why not give those companies some space "in the rightmost frame" to let 
the world know about their brilliant stuff that makes ones Linux life 
easier, better etc.?

But again, the ads need to be on topic: if you have an article on 
filesystems then seeing what companies are doing in that space would be 
certainly interesting. What gets on the nerves are ads trying to stick it 
up. The current one is a bit like that with it's mind-out-blinking, 
unconditional focus to grab ones attention at any price.
*t