Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5070188-20151202130010/@comment-26402117-20151228130309

"The end of the year is always a heavier time for ads." It is, and to be very honest with you, I don't doubt that any issues with adverising changes are coincidental - its just that none of the updates rolled before the start of December when the Mediawiki namespace went read-only, the Verbatim extension got shuttered and there was a lot to be done. It also seems like any advertisement updates are usually scheduled twice yearly for this time and the summer in general.

At the end of the day, Wikia wouldn't get money if they ran zero ads - but responsible and layout-separate from the article is what should be the case unless bad engineering is at fault. On top of that, any feature that directly hinders existing navigation for ad implementation is not to the site's benefit in any way (like rollover ads vs. wikilinks and content-reccomendation adverts vs. categorical navigation). I'm just unhappy that this update hammered my wiki to -20% the estimated traffic. It's when a new ad update results in 5 less pageviews from every visitor and lost revenue WITH more ads served when I draw the bloody line.

And we wonder why the founder of the Internet named advertisements in their current form as "Internet's Original Sin". Navigation is a necessary benefit while advertisements are a necessary burden - it would thus make sense to prioritise navigation over advertising.