Hello everyone!
Fandom’s biggest product commitment this year has been to build a better user experience, and we believe that a better ad experience is central to achieving that. As we talked about with our users throughout Community Connect, we understand that the ad experience for logged-out users has been a sticking point for a number of communities.
We’ve continued to make incremental improvements on the ad experience throughout the year.
- We’ve audited the technical performance of our ads and made performance improvements to improve page loading speeds as well as avoid memory concerns on users’ devices.
- Dramatically lowered situations where an ad loading could unexpectedly shift the position of content on a page.
- We have been strengthening and enforcing our policies with third-party advertisers who show ads that our company doesn’t sell directly, ensuring that disruptive or unexpected behaviors are actually removed from our user experience, particularly on mobile.
- Lowered the number of interstitial ads shown on mobile.
- Testing new ad designs that will ultimately lower the number of sizes we have to support and test against.
All of these changes have improved the experience for our average user. But that doesn’t mean that subpar experiences don’t still exist on our network. Sometimes the way a page is coded, the device you use, or your geographic location can cause ads to load or stack in unexpected ways.
To that end, nothing beats having many people - across the world and on different devices - actually testing the experience and note any problems they see. Internally, we did this recently with an event we called the “Ad Bash”. Over 40 staff members spent one day browsing Fandom on our mobile devices, viewing dozens of articles, and documenting for our Ad engineering staff where they saw something unexpected - maybe it was an ad covering content, a blank spot showing where an ad should be, or the wrong size ad appearing in a slot. Fandom Staff worked together to provide comprehensive feedback, drawing on their collective experience about the platform’s challenges.
- Over 100 examples of subpar behavior were ticketed for review for our Ad Operations team
- 26 tickets showed a clear and previously unreported bug with the ad display type.
- 25 tickets showed an ad functioning as intended, but with an unintended behavior that needs to be addressed.
- We terminated 12 specific campaigns based on how we saw they impacted the user experience.
And now, we want to bring that same program to you, our passionate users who use the site every day. We believe at this larger scale of testing, we can make a significant improvement for all fans. On July 30th, we’ll be having our first-ever Community Ad Bash, and you’re invited! This is an exclusive opportunity to draw on your collective experiences and provide feedback alongside fellow editors. If you’re a member of our Fandom Discord server, we’ll set up a special channel called #adbash. Throughout that day, we’ll have staff in that channel helping you identify and report bad experiences. We’ve got some cool tricks up our sleeves to help you grab the information we need. Plus, some prizes will be available for our best reporters. While your report has the potential to win a prize, it’s important to note that not all reports receive this recognition. So be sure to submit your best report! Your detailed feedback can directly influence how ads shape and improve the user experience for everyone on Fandom!
Community Ad Bash[]
When: July 30th - 31st
Where: Fandom Discord server, channel #adbash
What: As you browse Fandom throughout the day and see a bad ad experience, we want you to use a special form to report the issue directly to Fandom’s ad staff.
I'm a huge fan of Law & Order, VEEP, and a long list of anime.
Click here to follow the Fandom staff blog.
Click here to sign up for the From the Desk of Community email newsletter.
Join our Official Discord server for registered editors!