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Custom Ads?

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Master Administrator Samantha - see page to know who to contact directly!
February 4th, 2013 6:36:19pm
4,333 Posts
I've been thinking about this for awhile, but it's still a THOUGHT, not a certainty of any kind. But I wanted to get player opinions on the subject to see if it should ever even be a possibility.

If I were to offer ad space on HP, what would you think? Before you answer, keep reading because it's not like most other games in what I would do:

I would offer custom space, so a business would have to directly contact us to buy the space, and we wouldn't use google ads or anything that could accidentally send a kid to an inappropriate site. But it would be offered semi-cheaply to members of the game for their own small businesses (since I know so many people have photography, graphic design, or other businesses).

And it would only be on pages like http://horsephenomena.com/search.php, or on the search pages. Never in the header of every page or in talk or whatever, so they wouldn't be "in the way".

What do you think? It would bring HP some extra income and it would also allow for us to trade ad-space with other small businesses or game-related websites so we could get more exposure for HP.


 


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glitch
September 5th, 2013 3:49:35am
25 Posts
Good idea. I also agree that it should be limited to picture ads, nothing so blinky that it demands your focus. That would get old and irritating, very quickly... Advertising for HPD is also a good idea, although I know that doesn't financially support the game and upgrades to it, but it would definitely assist with HP's economy. Maybe the ads could alternate from RL money paid, to HPD paid..? Or if say you can't manage to find someone willing to pay RLD for a period of time, an HPD funded could be an option? Or it could be used as a HPD auction occasionally? Kind of like with Sola's sales? I would advertise my graphics/portraits for RL money with HPD. :)Just as long as it doesn't get out-of-hand... obviously. This is a biiig trust issue, as I know many of us play HP because it's so simple and is one of the few places that doesn't harass us with ads while we enjoy the game.


 

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Gothika - SEA's ( Lost 1 of my puppers :( )
October 14th, 2013 11:44:06am
1,146 Posts
Would sure be a nice idea, and good for the game income too!


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opal heart ✮ land's end nokotas
February 18th, 2017 12:57:04pm
465 Posts

I like the idea of players being to "semi cheaply" advertise, but I am bummed that the amount that folks spend on upgrades isn't enough to keep the site ad free. However I am all for your plan for ads! Hope it brings in some extra $$ for HP so we can get more programming updates! 




 

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Content Moderator Moorfine {Empire of Unruly Unicorns} - Let your soul gravitate to the love, y'all
February 18th, 2017 6:02:34pm
1,919 Posts

I think selling ad space to bring some more money to HP is a fine idea, as long as they are not obnoxious and in your face. 

 

But it I use my phone a TON on HP. I'm just worried how having ads on pages will effect this. Right now it's hard enough maneuvering between different pages. If the ads make the pages even "smaller" due to the ads being on the side of the page or w/e this would make it even more difficult to use my phone. 




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a z a l i e - 🌵 2024 APHA World,Reserve and Bronze Champion-blitzy still watching-
February 18th, 2017 6:12:30pm
1,856 Posts

I agree with moorf as i do 90 percent of my hping via phone....itd be nice to just have an ads page devoted to just ads...which i know defeats the purpose!




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Master Administrator Samantha - see page to know who to contact directly!
February 19th, 2017 2:26:33am
4,333 Posts

We will definitely play around with placement and optimization so that we can find the right mix of effective, but not in the way! I'm sure there will be some trial-and-error involved.

To start with, I am going to place an ad in the footer and see how that goes, and then go from there on placement. But, I don't have any plans to put ads on the sides of pages (skyscrapers) where there is not already a side column. For example, I think a skyscraper-type ad would fit will on the main page of the forum, under the "recent posts" column, because it would be the same size or smaller than what is already there. But I wouldn't be placing one on the side of every page or anything, because that's not cute!

As far as slowing down training, or using HP on your phone, I have two things:

1. If the ads are seriously messing with the loading times of pages, and causing the site to run slow, and there's nothing we can do to fix it, then we won't keep them. No point in having ads if no one can load the game!

2. If it's specifically an issue on phones, we can look at having the game optimized for mobile and removing ads from problem pages on phones. This is something I would like to do ANYWAY to make it easier/faster for everyone to access HP from phones and tablets - and something that having ads would give us the extra funds to do well! :P.

3. Actually 3 things, haha. HOPEFULLY the ads won't be any harder to load than the social media icons in the footer or the default images, since they will just be text or images, and not moving things that require a lot of bandwidth :).

Upgrade sales are HP's bread and butter, and even with ads, I expect they will continue to be. Having ads just provides an easy way for HP to get passive income even when people are just browsing the site or training or chatting, and also from players on basic accounts. For a long time, ads were not something that I had considered, mostly because I didn't think they would be worth it since we didn't "need" them. But after talking to other game owners to get a realistic sense of income on similar sites and analyzing our traffic, I think that it will be very advantageous to utilize them as a source of income.




 

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