(no subject)

[pearwaldorf]

Okay. So in the Fandom Platform of the Future (FPOTF) discussions one of the things that's been strongly presumed is no advertising. I agree this is something that would most likely remain a thing, but I was looking into things like Ravelry's ad model and I think it could be adopted for FPOTF. The secondary purpose would be revenue generation, but I think it could function more usefully as another way to connect creators and commissioners/possible customers.

Ravelry's ad model has an incredibly narrow scope: fiber arts-related stuff only. Advertisers have the ability to pick different types of ads that display in particular places: forums, patterns, yarn, stuff like that. It allows them to target very specific products/audiences. What I'm thinking for FPOTF is similar:

• Creators only/small indie businesses like Dual Wield Studio (disclosure: both co-founders are friends of mine)
• Can also be used to promote communities/fic challenges/themed weeks
• Ads on dash (between posts/on the sidebar), never on your personal blog
• Ability to black/whitelist tags for ad display (ie show only next to NSFW, never next to NSFW, ship tags, etc)
• Paid accounts would get a small monthly credit (use it or lose it) for advertising which they can donate to somebody else

There would be stringent requirements on size and placement similar to this, but probably even stricter. 

Yr thoughts are welcomed.

Comments

[dragonlady7]

I like this idea. I'm not familiar with Ravelry, but I have read about that. I would absolutely *love* to have an easy way to find small creators to buy things from, I think that's a fantastic idea, and if the advertising thing could be made to be 1) unobtrusive, 2) relevant, 3) screened heavily, and 4) offset the cost of the platform, that would be fantastic.

[sabinetzin]

As a pretty regular Ravelry user, I can say that the ads are both unobtrusive and generally actually relevant to my interests. I don't mind ads that want to sell me things I want.

[lizbee]

I like this idea, especially if you expand it to, for example, podcasts and fan-run conventions. Or books. (A lot of small press authors are expected to take on the burden of promotion, and this would be a good outlet for genre fiction.)

[theherocomplex]

As a long-time user of Ravelry (almost since its inception), I've honestly never had a moment where I said "these ads are annoying me". They're unobtrusive, well-integrated into the page, and I've actually refreshed the page to reread an ad more than a few times.

I definitely support this idea!

[dhampyresa]

Artists offering comissions, maybe?

[lovelythings]

I'm okay with ads that are curated/not gross.

[mecurtin]

The trouble with imitating Ravelry is that it is *small*, compared to where we're headed. Ravelry's traffic is 2-3x that of Dreamwidth, but an order of magnitude less than AO3's. NO3 can expect to be an order of magnitude *higher* than AO3.

Are there any sites significantly larger than Ravelry that use its ad model?