Hey HP!

I've gotten a lot of questions about ads - and if one person has a question, a lot of other people probably do too. So I'm going to make a post addressing some common concerns.

Why do there need to be ads? Aren't upgrades and the cash shop enough?

HP is largely well-funded through upgrades and the cash shop. I don't foresee that changing.

However, as most of you know, HP is my full time job and running for-profit as a small business, and I need to be able to maximize the income that it brings in. Not only so that I can continue to support myself and make HP my priority, but because HP has continuous development needs/future plans that could use some funding help to make them a reality.

Some of the bigger things I want to do (like making us truly mobile friendly), as well as continuing to keep things up to date/optimized, bringing you new stuff on a regular basis, and advertising HP on other sites to bring in new players all cost a lot of money.

Aren't there other alternatives to ads?

Yes, there are! But at the moment, I think working with an ad network is the best option for HP.

I don't want to raise prices for upgrades and in the cash shop because I think that would be worse than a few ads.

It's also possible to sell custom ad space (in the same spots), but it would be A LOT more work to do that and potentially not pay off - plus there would still be ads on the game.

There seem to be a lot of random ads that look like spam. Are they dangerous or malware?

We are using Google Adsense which has pretty high standards about what they allow to be shown. It's still only the second day, though, and right now the Google crawler is not fully set up to see the inside of the game. After a few days, the ads should get more relevant to HP and to you.

The ads are meant to be served based on the content that you search on the web because they use cookies to bring you things that are relevant to you. In that respect, I don't have a lot of control over what is being shown. Ads for me so far have been things like shutterstock, a few random things, other horse games, local schools, and I think maybe Vistaprint?

You should always use common sense when following any ad or link, but the ads from Adsense are generally considered safe - and if that changes, or they bring malware or something unexpected, I'm not going to keep them on the game. I've never done anything to the detriment of HP or it's players, and I'm not going to start now.

Are they going to be all over the site? Where else will they show up? Isn't the footer ad enough?

No, they will not be all over the site. I've laid out the plans for this several times over the past 6-8 months, and nothing has changed in my statement that I'm not going to let them be intrusive. They will not pop-up, initiate downloads, hurt your computer, play videos, make noise, or do any of those terrible things that everyone (including me!) hates. They will look like the ad we currently have in our footer (but be different sizes/shapes to fit the space).

For now, there is just the ad in the footer, but there will eventually be ads on other parts of the site. The footer ad will be the ONLY ad that shows on every page. Below I have detailed some of the future plans for ad placement.

Where ads will NOT be: in the header (on top of each page), by the navigation, anywhere on home or club pages besides the footer, on top of chat, on the sides of each page, anywhere in the art of the game.

Where ads MIGHT be:

What if they end up being terrible?

Then it will be time to reassess the situation. While ads can be unsightly, they are a huge part of internet businesses, and I am committed to making sure they are not intrusive on gameplay.

There is also a lot of trial and error with placement and sizing, so as time goes on and I can see what ads are working and what ads are not doing any good, I can move things, re-size things, etc.

I hope that this helps answer some questions and alleviate some of the concerns that you have about ads! As always, I am trying to be as upfront about my reasoning and plans as possible.

I cannot make everyone happy all the time, I am aware of that. I am truly doing what I think is in the best interest of the game and the business, and I hope that over time, everyone will be more used to the ads and they won't be quite as shocking.

If you have any other questions, let me know!

Happy Thursday!

-Sam

I didn't even notice the ads until I saw the FAQ update and looked for them. I haven't been on compy  yet, but there are no issues on mobile. I know that one thing I was concerned about was it slowing down loading times, but like I said, no issues so far!

Will it slow down the more you add though?

I mean i can understand the footer add cuz its outta the way....

But ads in the middle of pages?! Im not liking that idea....

I do alot of hping on my phone and now its gonna be harder with trying to not click ads on my small screen while trying to do other stuff...

Ads are tacky...and i realize hp needs funds....and ya gotta do whatcha gotta do...

It should not slow down the site if we add more. If we were to add 4 ads on every single page, I imagine there would be some lag, but our server is capable of handling the one in the footer and a few more spread throughout! :). In the event that any pages do lag as a result, then we will remove them from those places.

I didn't even notice the ads until I saw this post. Haven't experienced any lagging yet :)

Thanks Sam!