User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/Making Ads Better: The Basics/@comment-28667791-20170117084733

Hey there!

Here's my 2 cents about Ads on Wikia/Fandom;

Ads should not "blend" into the page's content. All ads should follow a certain standard that clearly distinguish them from they actual content. A red border (or any contrasting colour) box around the ads is a "dirty" yet honest solution. It act as an "in good faith" measure so not to trick visitors into thinking that an advertisement is part of the actual web page's content.

Another solution would be to place ads at specific predictable and redundant areas. I guess "youtube" is a great example of this. Trust is everything, and having ads "pop-up" in unpredictable places and random intervals can destroy a website's credibility and "trustworthiness".

What about wikia's right column section? All of the limited user customization in this section is very limited. And mandatory extra features (such as "popular" or "trending" wikias) are often unrelated, useless, unwelcomed and of nuisance to visitors. Replacing all of the right column features with ads would be a great idea! I would gladly welcome a right column full of ads rather than a confusing hodgepodge of user content, wikia features, and sponsored ads inconstantly placed all over.

Also here's an important observation I made about "everyday Joe/Jane" on the internet; my wife, when searching for stuff that interest her, often came across a multitude of different websites all offering virtually the same content. It dint take long for her to "adopt" her usual web pages of choice and ignore/discard other websites. All of her choices resolved around the same main coloration; clean and un-intrusive ads.

Let me continue rambling a little...Take for example what people used to call "television". On those "television", the content used to be interrupted by advertisements at regular and predictable intervals. Also during the actual content on "televisions", some pop up ads would sometimes show up at the bottom of the screen for up to 10 seconds before disappearing without any "human" input. Never did those ads block the visual or audio content. Ads were always at the same key locations. Watching content on "television" never became a chore. Web pages on the other hand (like wikia/fandom) immediately overwhelms users with decision making, precision clicking on tiny "Xs" to close ads blocking the view, fear of trick ads that will redirect to another page, ect ect ect.

Were am I going with all of my incoherent rambling again? huuuummm....tabarnack...

Ah yes! WE HAVE NO PROBLEM with wikia/fandom using ads to pay for the free website. We all love this site, or else we wouldn't be here. But please, keep our wikia clean looking and get rid of “dishonest” ads that uses cheap tactics. Or what about this: create a program with “noteworthy” wikias creators, giving them extra control over ads placement or something like that...

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