IndieHackers Text Advertisements
I noticed recently that IndieHackers has some great text ads such as this one:
https://imgur.com/zvjBSi6
I loved these advertisements the first time I saw them for a couple reasons. First, it looked great and fit the whole design of the site very well (which I am also a big fan of). Second, it was for a product that most of the site's visitors would be interested in. Third, it was integrated well into the website so that it was not intrusive enough to be annoying, but still managed to attract my attention. It also did so in a way that wasn't tricking me into thinking that it was part of the content (a common trend in native advertising). Furthermore, I knew that these brands are probably hand-picked by Courtland, and since I already trust the IndieHackers brand, I also trusted these brands. And lastly, the ads weren't blocked by Adblock Plus, which is very rare.
I'm thinking of implementing ads like these on my own site, or even starting an ad network based around these simple ads. I'd love to know what you guys think about these ads, and also a question to Courtland: how did you set this up and how are you getting paid for them? (per impression, per click, per action)
Glad you like the ads I've put up! As FrederikET mentioned, they're hard-coded into the site (rather than loaded over an ad network), which is why they aren't blocked.
Your ad network idea is interesting! Your main competitor will be BuySellAds (and by extension Carbon, who they bought), as they're doing a lot of what it sounds like you're interested in doing. Specifically:
I use BuySellAds myself — 1 out of 4 ads on the home are served by them (although you'll see a donation link in those spots if your ad blocker is enabled). My biggest complaint is that they don't pay very much... it's been something like $1 CPM for me. Also, I don't really have much choice over which of their advertisers appear on my site.
I make way more money negotiating individual deals with sponsors, although of course that requires more work on my part. If you could solve that problem somehow I'm sure people would go for it, but I think it's a tough one. A company called Sponsorama is trying to do it, but they've only found me one sponsor in ~5 months. And BuySellAds itself has a sales team that's doing this and taking a commission, and they've found me one sponsor in ~3 months.
First of all, thanks a lot for the reply!
Now I know why the ads weren't blocked by adblock - it wasn't seen as ads, but rather as just another piece of content.
By the way, which BSA solution are you currently using (from here: https://www.buysellads.com/publishers)?
I run a blog myself, and I do find that finding advertisers directly pays way more, but it's quite hard to find them. Thanks again for the info about Sponsorama and Carbon - I'll make sure to let you know if I do start something about this.
I had this same idea a while back. There was a term for these types of ads. I cannot recall, but it was something related to the term "native advertising".
On a related note, video ads on YouTube are not very aligned with the demographic of the respective video. That would be an interesting problem to solve. I witnessed an inappropriate video ad being shown before a video suitable for a 3 year old.
Yeah, Native Advertising has been one of the biggest trends of 2016 in terms of online advertising, with the goal that ads are less intrusive and blend into the website better.
About Youtube, I think they do try to serve more relevant ads if you are logged into your YouTube account, but I do get some very weird ads at times (e.g. ads about beauty products even though I have never visited a website about them). Might have something to do with how much they bid and whether I was part of a targeted demographic.
I am logged in and even have parental controls turned on. Its very strange.
The native advertising is really nice given the whole ad blocker trend. I have been on sites with my phone and without the ublock origin on firefox mobile, the site is unusable with the pop-ups
Yeah they are really nice, i have lookked at all the products, and they seems good!
The reason it is not blocked, may be because courtland have made the design by him self and implemented it into the design. He has not just used some sort of code from third part.
Try check the blog out, he have writen a little blog podt about the affiliate links, and is mention how much he is making in the month of review.
Oh, right. I thought that since the ads were from BSA, they would just give him some code to copy on the site. But Courtland's replied and said that they serve the ad information by JSON and allow you to display it how you want, so that explains why it wasn't blocked by adblock.
3/4 ads on the site are manually hardcoded.
However, 1/4 of them are from BSA: I make an AJAX call to get their JSON ad data, and then I use that to draw the ad. Ad blockers actually do interfere with this, because they intercept and block the AJAX call.
Of course, I could bypass the ad blockers if I made this request and updated my HTML on the server rather than doing it client-side. Then there wouldn't be any AJAX call for them to block.
Finally, some ad blockers still block hardcoded ads. They simply crowdsource lists of CSS selectors that target ads. It then becomes a game of cat-and-mouse, with website owners changing their HTML/CSS.