New Banner Ad System

Thanks for doing this! It's a much more efficient way of handling advertising and it removes that extra step of having to log back in ASAP after approval to confirm payment...

Now if you can get approvals/rejections to happen faster we will really be making progress

Do we need to resubmit ads if they were pending prior to this update?

Notice you have removed the ability to see all adverts via link bottom right of the ad space, this was a cool feature which I first suggested within the suggestion form.

Problem now is that just as you click off a page you see an ad but you can't get back to it because the page refreshes with new ad.

You have reduced traffic for your advertisers in preference of your own.

Also, I know this isn't a suggestions thread and I'm sure this has been brought up before but I know that we all (advertisers on WF) would really appreciate the ability to upload multiple variations of ads that rotate within the same 24 hour period while also being able to track the CTR for each variation.

If you're looking for ways to improve on the current system you're building please do us all a favor and add that in there

I'm sorry but I have to play Devil's advocate here.

In regards to the bottom ad, did you guys even test if this area of the page is even looked at?

Did you create some test ads, or allow users to test some ads down under to actually see if that space is viable?

I mean seriously it's a total abyss down there!

It's even WORSE when some one is in the quick reply window! No one is going to see those ads at the bottom when replying to a thread and that's what I'm doing right now and as my reply grows in length the footer ads gets pushed even further away from my eyes. lol

I don't think any one is going to see the bottom ads enough to justify the price you're asking for the ad space and I don't think any advertisers will re-up those ads at the bottom of nowhere after paying initially.

My suggestion is still the same as the one I made in the suggestion forum on May 9th, that no one from the forum bothered to even acknowledge! READ HERE

Why not try and improve the features for the existing ad space so advertisers have a better ad experience! i.e. Tracking, Clicks, etc. You know BASIC stuff.

By all means prove me wrong and show me that the ad space at the bottom is effective BEFORE taking money for the ad space.

Thanks for this! It will be help for the Advertising ...

I'm with Rus Sells. I never, ever get to the bottom of the page.

Even replying to the thread I'm not even at the bottom.

great news, we will try it

One more comment -

If you do go ahead and allow us to split test ads and track CTRs and even conversions then I would love to see the option to auto-renew my ads when they expire or to purchase weekly ads at a discount (maybe $500/week).

Thanks,
Anton

The advertisers would have a better conversion rate If they could target specific sub-forums. Currently none of the ads are targeting same niche traffic, it's all random product ads.

Think Google Adwords, target traffic that's looking for the advertised product.

Example, traffic in the Website Design sub-forum should see ads for web developers for hire because people in the Web Design forum need help with web design, they're not looking for the random ads that are currently showing up (How to make $10,000!, etc... ( nonsense)).

Focus on the traffics needs & the advertisers will get higher conversion rates which will cause the advertisers to compete with each other for laser focused ad space that has a good conversion rate.

BTW, nobody in their right mind would buy that footer ad because it's basically hidden where traffic won't find it. The hot spot for CTR is the top of the page (above the fold).

Again your wasting header space that could be used for a better purpose (ex: targeted ad space):

• What's wrong with this picture? (30th May 2014)
• Banner in Header (3rd November 2012)

[edit]
Lets do some math & see how much money Warrior Forum is losing out on by allowing sitewide advertising instead of targeted sub-forum advertising.

With 11 advertisers ($100 each) targeting the top banner space your maxed out at $1,100 revenue per day, without targeting any traffic (random ads).

If Warrior Forum allowed advertisers to target sub-forums that's at least 34 sub-forums, not counting things like the OT forum, etc... So now advertisers have 34 laser targeted traffic sources.

Now allow only 5 advertisers max per day per each sub-forum (creates competition to buy ad space). Drop the per day advertising fee down to $13 per day (stay with me on this). Lets assume WF has sold all advertising slots because everyone can afford to spend $13.

Now WF income has doubled at $2,210 per day, advertisers are happy because they're only rotating ads with 4 competition instead of 10 competition. Traffic CTR is increased because the ads are targeting what they need/want.

No doubt it will take a few months to fill all the $13 ad slots but the long term advertising money is a better deal for WF because you're no longer maxed out at $1,100 per day (top ad space).

This example allows WF to potentially profit an additional +$400,000 per year assuming you keep the ad slots filled which should be easy considering you already have the contact info for every forum member that's sold a product/service on Warrior Forum (ad slot promotion).

Even If you only filled 50% of the sub-forum ad slots (worst case scenario) at $13 per advertiser (day) you would still earn the same $1,100 that your earning today with irrelevant ads (poor user experience).

Obviously play with the numbers but keep the advertising cost low with targeted traffic & more advertisers will keep the ad slots filled which could help create a waiting list for future advertisers.

This is very nice

Instead of ads at the bottom of the page why don't you guys add it at the end of the forum post. i.e after "Post Reply" button. I'm sure it'll be much more effective for advertisers. Just a thought.

The bottom banner seems a little expensive at a 50% cost compared to the top one. It will probably not get 50% of top banner CTR.

At the time of posting, your current banner ads are being swamped with this one:



It accounts for 7 out of your 11 banners.

Forum users really will develop banner blindness if this continues.

Thanks Great addition

Believe or not, people do view the bottom of the forum.

Not everyone is internet marketing SAVVEY like yourselves, I'll explain more in a moment.

BUT... It would be cool if the forum would ask us what we want and need rather than popping changes all the time.

Furthermore,

When changes are going to be made,

possibly have a few warrior test it for free and provide review on there results they got with it to see if it's viable traffic source and worth opening up to the rest of the forum.

It doesn't seem like a lot of people are finding the stick post profitable so it's something to consider.

People are here to make money!

The end results is always to help people and make money = PROFIT!

If we are not getting the people or the money... what's the point?

The forum will lose customers fast but then again there needs to be a balance. I'm pretty sure there are people who felt like they were ripped off with the sticky post... (I am just being honest).

This is totally unbalanced and only the forum wins!

I've probably seen one marketer who runs the sticky post consistently.

Plain and simple, if someones running ad consistently they're making money.

SO back to the BOTTOM BANNER

A few years back there use to be TEXT ads at the bottom of the forum.

How do I know that and remember it? I was using it from time to time.

If I recall correctly it was $30 a day or $200 for a week

It was profitable for me... but on $50 a day or $350 a week, I gotta work harder now to make it profitable.??

It's something has to be tested because now.. it's is a Banner and not a text ad so it could be promising who knows?

It's about time we had an organized system in place. I like the part of getting an email notifiying if its approved or not.

Great job with the new easy to use banner system = a major overdue needed update

Remove the posting rules box (or just move it down) and put the banners right under the text box for quick replies and you'll get a better result for the advertisers.

I think Yukon is on to something with the section-specific ads. Raise the daily price to $20 or $25 and do the math. At that price, you'd have non-members flocking in to advertise. Track what banners get clicks, put together a tutorial for advertisers, and you'll see more of them creating ads that turn a profit. Those spots would then stay filled, day after day.


Paul

I agree, I've never actually reached the bottom of the page before, even when replying to a thread. It wouldn't get as much eye balls as the top banner and to be honest, I wouldn't want to pay $50 a day for it. I think it'd be a good idea to start side bar ads maybe? Not sure if many of the warriors would be pleased with that but it may bring about some additional eye balls and help people spend more on the ads.

Just my 2 cents.

If you're going to have that ad at the bottom, you need to remove all the junk above it. For example, remove the "Posting Rules" section and Forum Jump so it show directly below the quick reply.

Also, do the same thing on the threads list.

Wonderful improvement. I'll check out the footer banner ads... I think I need it!

Thanks for all the feedback and thoughts. We'll be constantly improving this as we go.
I'll be going through all of your replies to see how we can improve on what we've done.

I think we're definitely moving in the right direction.

Thanks guys.

Hey Alaister, Igor Kheifets here.

I've been an avid WF advertiser since 2011 and I'm experiencing some issues with the new banner system.

1. One of my banners that was approved has a wrong non working link! (I have PMed you with further info on this)

2. I got an email this morning saying my banner is approved and gone live. But when I check the current banner listing, it's not showing up in the rotation at all... :/

Appreciate you taking the time to look into this matter.

Thanks,
Igor

Thanks, Alaister!

Got the PM, appreciate the timely support on a weekend!

Igor

Is there any possible to buy a banner space for 30 days at one time?
Regards

If I were you, I would put the ad just above the quick reply section. It would most probably get more attention than the top banner.

Hi,

I got the following error when I tried to pay for an ad space "{"status": "error", "error_code": "wsomanager.INVALID"}"

One Very Important Thing:

There should only be one ad allowed per link/product.

Because some people clearly have larger budgets and buy 5+ spots per day. This creates monopoly and in short term WF will profit from it but in long term people would stop paying attention to that ad space because they would that it's the same thing over and over again.

But Thank God for the Freelancer team to come in and make improvements on the WF Ads. The previous management only got ads from the people who were well connected. I once added an add which followed WF add rules and guidelines 100% but I got no reply about whether it was accepted or rejected for 3 weeks and then after that it was deleted and even then I wasn't notified. I even contacted Paul but he only said it is in queue, for 3 damn weeks lol? The thing was only 5 ads were being accepted during that time yet 11 were open slots. And it's not just me many people had the same problem, you can go check their stories on the previous warrior forum ad thread.

-Rizzy

Hi Alaister,

I love the way you in particular attend to many of the issues I've seen raised since freelancer took over. It's great to see that kind of hands-on service. Thomas with Support seems to be on the ball too.

Now, I should point out that you're also swimming in a gold mine of ideas with over 700K internet marketers (not all are savvy but I'm sure many tens of thousands are) and just one idea from Yukon could easily double or triple income from the site. I think Yukon was way too generous with that one lol... but good one him/her for being more concerned about helping everyone here and the WF out with a superb concept.

Then others have added a couple more ideas that are awesome too, The ads under the "Post reply" concept is genius too. You really shouldn't waive them aside because we would all be losing out.

By the way, I would expect that you can actually end up charging MORE for certain forums because they will get better results than others even all being targeted. So an ad in the offline section will do well being targeted there, but ads in the main section may make money because that forum gets more traffic etc so keeping it at a flat $13 or whatever rate would not be maximizing your profits. Not saying blow the ad costs to the heavens, but consider testing different price points etc. Or just keep at one price, that's fine too, just saying... you could even increase profits without ruining advertiser experience.

Off topic advice... set up a warrior forum activity/competition whatever for the best ideas from warrior members that will help the forum help others better (since they know the users better than you could--they ARE the users AND are marketing masterminds---you get a double whammy here, and once the forum can actually help us all better, the effect would easily triple your profits within a year.

For instance, some recent changes made by the forum are just killing the experience and costing you visitors, trust me on that, you own the site but if you come in and start turning things around without checking out the possible effects you'll lose more than you gain.

Some sub-forums were moved recently without notice, one of them was the best forum in here! I was told by Thomas it's still around but neither he nor I could find it! Terrible user experience that stopped me coming here as often as I normally did. It's just one and thing and just one person but consider that I may be representing tens of thousands of others who said nothing? That simple move may already have cost more than you may know now or later.

In any case, I think making changes by brainstorming in-house is OK if that's what you've been doing, but you're dealing with truly savvy marketers here, many are multi-millionaires from web marketing and are silent about it... tap into the brains of these people and maximizing user experience and your profits will be much easier than anything you're likely doing now. Just another idea;-)

Keep up the good aspects of your input though, I love your own customer-centric approach in particular and think it can only be improved on from here.

Good luck!

Purchase page is blank
https://wso.warriorforum.com/add-banner

So, no one in here has any issue sending $100 without any traffic stats or info regarding the ad spot? I don't think there's any place on the net where you're asked to send $100 and that's it. At least you could help people understand what they're buying by showing us some stats: impressions, average CTR, and of course click geos and so on would be quite mandatory as well.

You've created some great forums related to growth hacking, conversion rate optimization, so asking for people to blindly pay $100 for a media buy looks too middle age really :-)

thank you so much

i know that new banner ad system are very important ad.so very good banner is good marketing...

Would help if it is working. I have been trying to create a banner ad for an hour now and every time I upload it I get redirected and have to start all over again. FRUSTRATING!

Top Ads:
Great news! except now you have taken away the ability for the advertiser to CHOOSE when to start the ad. Would be great if after approval there was a way to say, start my ad on "this" available slot (first come, first serve naturally)

Some advertisers time the banner to other activities and want to know/control the minute the clock starts running.

Bottom ads:

Good idea! Just below the last post -- right above the breadcrumbs - THATS where your bottom ads will guaranteed to be seen. You might even consider the old school text ads that used to run there and later became the staple CYN...

I'm not getting an error, its just redirecting like I pointed out. I click to upload the image, it automatically redirects away from the advertising page and goes to the home page. Thats it.

By the way, I created an ad finally and paid for it and was told I would be notified when it was approved. I would assume it doesn't take that much time to get notified if it is approve, you don't have that many ads. Second, at no point was I able to choose a date or anything, shouldn't you be showing people options for dates before they pay for the ad? I don't know who came up with this new system but it is lacking in many ways.

May god bless you lol.

Banner ads work wonders if you know how to use them (My first wso sold over 800 copies thanks to them)

It's been many days since i submitted banner however i dont get any update on approval?

So is there no way to know how far booked you are until after we have paid?

I mean, if after the approval and you say are ad will go live 21 days from now, and we need it for a promotion in the next 2 days, can we then cancel?

So, I guess I am saying scheduling would be an awesome addition as well

Coach Comeback definitely got a point. +1 on this.

Igor

very good .

This may have been mentioned but I haven't seen it. I wonder why you folks have removed the option for people to see all the current ads. I sometimes catch a glimpse of an interesting banner and there's no way for me to easily bring it up again so I can check out the offer. I don't see why the current ads couldn't be displayed alongside of the add-banner info.

This would be an added benefit to advertisers, more impressions. People could actually click a link and see all the current banners. I miss being able to do this.

Awesome Thanks so much !

Hey Aliester, I sent you an PM days ago regarding a banner ad refund.

You scheduled me for 21st when the launch was on 18th .

I even created a support ticket and yet no response.

Sam.

I noticed that in addition to the banners being shown there is another banner by the Warrior Forum which appears often. It is entitled: "Advertise Here! Get your business in front of thousands" That is an advertisement being shown IN ADDITION to the 11 ads already in rotation which means LESS ad exposure for advertisers. I can't believe advertisers were not informed by this damaging change.

I wonder how advertisers are doing with the color in their ads. That would be nice to know. I however, somehow don't like the color in the ads. It just seems like all the other forums now. hmm

Can somebody tell me how many views can i expect from one banner in the top of the forum for 24hrs please ? I don't care about the CTR (Click-through-rate), only the numbers of views i can expect from that spot for 24hrs.
Any WF member tried that, his help will be appreciated .

Started running at about 10pm est today. So it is running now :-)

Thank you

Hello, I have bought the banner Ad on Warriorforum by paypal.
But still dont see the banner in rotation neither have any information regarding statistics.
Please guide me if there is any advertise panel where I can see the status of my ad.

Thank you

curious if there is a way of predicting when (if ever) a banner ad will be accepted and added to the rotation. For instance: I click on the link showing current ads (it shows 5 active banners). I added, paid via paypal, was sent a message that said I would be told when it went live...

is there any way to predict when an advertisement would go live?

100us isnt more than I might be playing at a blackjack table or other game at a casino...
but this isn't a casino game for me (or I imagine many of us...) so having knowledge of how many cards are in the deck is a critical issue for me (and I imagine many of us...)

I want desperately (and can pay readily) for the 7 day (or more) banner- but will not lay out that kind of money until I know the odds of the game (a one day banner ad will tell me PLENTY- certainly enough data to understand if a 7 day (700us) layout is positive or negative expectation...)

any help would be certainly appreciated!!!

Alaister, just tried using the 'renew' option (great touch btw), but it doesn't work, when I hit pay, it just won't redirect me to pp

Igor

nope, simply didn't go to paypal... when I click on "proceed" nothing happens, specifically on the "renew screen', I resubmitted the banner from scratch and it worked.

Igor

Interested in the top banner ad.

Could you confirm.

You run up to 11 ads per day, so a particular ad receives just under 10% of the impressions a day if all ads are filled.

What you see here https://payments.warriorforum.com/li...rs/warrior_top are today's ads (I see 6 today 16th October) so if I added an ad right now it could go live today as the 7th ad? Assuming you approve quickly.

Appreciate you don't know how many impressions will be generated a day, but you must have an average daily impression number for the entire site which can be used by advertisers to estimate how many impressions their ad will receive,. What's the average number of impressions per day over the past 30 days or September?

Right now don't have a clue what number impressions it will likely generate (could be 10,000 or 10,000,000, no way to estimate) , would help at https://payments.warriorforum.com/add-banner to have some basic details. I had to read this thread to known an ad isn't the only banner ad shown (1 of up to 11) and still don't know impressions, not even a rough ball park figure.

One poster said they generate around 200 clicks, which for $100 a day isn't too bad (50 cents a click), on this I'd need a 0.25% conversion to break even.

I sell the product I want to advertise for $200, if I can make one sale a day from here would be worth buying long term ads at $100 a day (100% profit = no brainer). But I can't make an advertising decision with so little information and not spending $100 on a test.

David

What kind of impression is the bottom banner getting on daily basis and is it shared by a total of 11 ads as well?

Can we no longer advertise through Warrior forum? The advertise link just shows a blank page?

wonderful news! Thanks for doing this!