best ad services to use? I really don't want to use google. even if they paid double, I wouldn't use them. anyone know? I'm talking about for websites and/or apps

@runfrodorun why?

Carbon ads seems to be the one everyone suggests.

@runfrodorun yes, lets instead of having actual positive/neutral ads, make the user the product and sell all his data collected by the app and website to support website/app development and server costs or even better - use a coinminer.

Instead of just acting like a total joke, why not actually suggest what other ways he could make the website/app profitable and please don't start some stallman.

I have no issues with ads, I have issues when you go to town with having 95% ads and 5% content .

If your page includes ad walls, pop ups, overlays, 10,000 ads buried at the bottom of a page, even a Ajax file on an infinite loop driving up impressions, or god knows what else to see 2 sentences before hitting a “click here for page 2” you should really stop now.

How ever if your just looking at covering costs in a responsible manner, use ads like google or carbon

... to continue:

If you can work a subscription model into your site? That might be a better solution to your problem as well?

@runfrodorun has a point, if your site needs to make money, try your best to avoid ads, unless you don’t have any other options to monetise the platform.

@C0D4
I agree. Ads aren't a problem unless they obstruct the content.

@runfrodorun
Having ads on a website doesn't make it "not worth making", that doesn't make any sense.

However, I would agree with you if the website is purely built so it can make money with ads, and not for the content. In my book, ads should be a side thing if you want to make a few bucks off your website that already has good content.

My bottom line is: Don't make your website for money if that's why you're doing it. But @calmyourtities never implied or stated that ads were the purpose of the website.
Who cares what it's main source of income is, many people make website for absolutely no money.

EDIT: Oh gee, I took to long to write this and now we've moved on 😝

@runfrodorun
That was well put actually. And I agree with most of your points.

What I'm wondering is how much you make?
We need some numbers to work with.

@runfrodorun
Sorry, should have worded that better:
How much do ads make

@runfrodorun sadly my internet is cutting in and out so I couldn't post almost exactly what @coolq wrote already, but addressing what I have on screen right now; it's great that you pay everything [most] out of your pocket and don't want to put ads to support it, but some people simply can't pay a website out of their pocket entirely, so rather than shutting down the website or forcing shitty subscriptions/addons/partnerships to the website, most just use ads to support a good portion of what they need to keep the site alive.

@runfrodorun also whats wrong with actual neutral ads anyway; that are [custom and] interesting to your target group, without being too intrusive like the usual random ads people use.

@runfrodorun to add a good example to what @coolq said and I initially wanted to address in my version of it: devrant is mostly choking under its own costs, even with the supporter program (which is basically exactly the model you wanted above - instead of any sort of ads), so devrant is not worth it in your opinion?

@runfrodorun just scrolled up again and from what you write I can assume that you're paying for some type of blog(s)? how is that even remotely comparable to anything that actually needs advertisement to survive/keep going? like websites offering a service or news etc.

You don't like the colorful blue. Then how about just blue?

I meant Facebook ad.

@runfrodorun "what is a neutral ad"
An ad that promotes a product, website, offer, sale (again, please focus on the actual point and don't start some bullshit like "all sales are fake, they are made to manipulate you with red numbers" or alike) - without manipulating any of said content. (for example a website that allows you to have a shared secure online whiteboard or some nice kanban website like trello or a solution to selfhost a libreoffice cloud etc.)

"devrant"
You don't get the point, devrant is not supposed to be a money grabbing scheme, the money is needed to pay the bills to run it, put money towards product creation like the devducks, buy inventory [shirts, ..], ideally to finance internships or to hire somebody and in the most perfect case, pay enough for @dfox and @trogus to be able to pay some of their own bills, to be able to give devrant more attention, since they currently are fulltime employed _and_ have to manage, maintain, push forward new features/functions of devrant.

cont.

@runfrodorun "high-traffic"
"would need to think about how much charity you're willing to pay" - it's not about willing to pay, its about being ABLE to pay, a website is not "not worth it", just because some people are against ads and won't use your service because of it [how the fuck do you know or care if a website has ads, if you probably adblock anyway?] - especially because you can't just offload everything to subscriptions, donations etc.
And as harsh it might sound, but if one loses 1% of their site due to "I refuse ads that I don't even see" - nobody of the site owners could really give a shit, since most part of the users are happy to help a website out they enjoy and can't directly support via money or other ways. (assuming the ads are actual neutral ads, since nobody wants intrusive ads)

cont.

@runfrodorun "hillary"
I was mostly talking about actual valuable tech-news, security updates, things like hackernews too etc., actual media I agree is trash, but its not fitting any mentioned case, where we already excluded garbage websites with adwalls, poor content etc.

"ads made me buy X or consume Y"
Some people are simply too easily affected by cheap advertisement, which we again - already excluded above. Just because you see an ad of some server sale on devrant, it won't make you buy one.

Yet again the tinfoil part of your comments is making a joke(r) out of yourself, because as mentioned multiple times above, we are talking about non-google and neutral ads.

I think there’s some really good arguments here for and against ads.

For me, the issue is pretty simple I think. If the ads are irrelevant and just an annoyance to nearly everyone who sees them, and are obtrusive, then I agree with @runfrodorun. Having to support an app/site like that means there are some major issues.

However, I agree with @JoshBent in the case that the ads are providing some value to as many end-users as possible who use the app. For example, and this isn’t from me, we get frequent requests from users to add job listings (this is a type of ad), and we’ve also had requests for ads for cool and relevant dev products/services. I personally think those are acceptable since they can provide value if implemented correctly.

The supporter program is great, and it goes a huge way to covering our costs (thank you supporters!) but in the future the kinds of ads I talked about could possibly give us a lot more capital to work with and grow and improve the app with. Anything we do with ads, supporters would always have the option to turn them off. And there’s no plans for any of that right now, I’m just pointing out how I don’t think all ads are bad.

Let me drop in as well, I'm mostly on @runfrodorun's side BUT, if you'd enable tracking ads, I block those by default and won't unblock them, that's all for me.

Ads, not a fan but not going to complain too much. Tracking ads? I'm going to block the living hell out of those because I kindly value my privacy over some ads.

Ad powered sites are great. Just run an ad blocker and you basically get content for free 🤣

@runfrodorun Btw do consider different living standards across the world. You in USA may be able to pay for all your stuff but a dude in Bangladesh probablly won't be.

@runfrodorun you act like ads are the only place with subliminal messaging. even devRant has some messaging. notice how the ++ is shown for users on *every* post and comment. that's because dR wants you to be part of the subscription. the more you see the ++ symbol, the more you want to buy it. its subliminal messaging, but I'm ok with it, everyone on devRant is ok with it, and certainly @dfox is ok with it. how is it different from advertising? its really not. the point is subliminal messages aren't really avoidable always, and ads are just another kind of subliminal messaging. plus, I'd rather be a number in google/facebook's database than give my credit card number to a company.