The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
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The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
New Comic. No more head apparel. Nov 19th
Posts
it's maddening
Man, for real. We have that here too and it's gotten so bad we now show up a good 15 to 25 minutes late to the movie we want to see. Usually we get in just as the damn trailers start/finish. It's fucking crazy.
last time i was in seattle i saw a film and it was like half an hour of television ads and commercials and bullshit
I like movie previews for the most part though, so that's okay.
they don't do it anymore, this makes me so sad
So it's only 2-3 extra minutes of commercials.
Usually there is about ten to fifteen minutes of commercials.
As I said, I voluntarily pay attention to and click on the ads, because I see that time as my way of paying for the comic. Which is, honestly, pretty accurate; it takes up a (really) small amount of my time doing something I wouldn't otherwise do, and generates a (really) small amount of money for them. To put that smallness in perspective, regardless of how much time and effort a comic takes to produce, it takes only a (really) short time, usually a few seconds, to consume, so basically both the payment and the product are very short-lived things. I feel the need to put another disclaimer stating that me saying that the comic is consumed quickly isn't a complaint. I don't get where the idea that I see the ads as "offensive" or "obnoxious" or whatever even came from; I singled out movie-theater ads, yeah, but I made a point to distinguish that from PA.
Heh, I remember we had a rule where you weren't allowed to make posts that were designed to fuck up the ads.
it just worked too well
google claimed that the amount of hits that the forum banner got were being falsely generated
no amount of trying to demonstrate how many thousands of bored dipshits we have sitting in here changed their mind
They were pretty crazy at times though.
I thought the problem was that we kept getting emulator related ads to show up and we couldn't filter them
They once said we were falsely generating them once on a day when the ads made around 40c.
Usually when I go to a party hosted at someone elses house, they will leave a jar on the kitchen counter or something that says 'DRINKS' Obviously, this is so people can put in a few bucks to cover the party expenses. The host never brings attention to the jar, or asks people to contribute, it just sits there. Some people throw in, some don't, but in the end either way the party is "free" because you paid money of your own volition when it was not required, or even requested that you do so. So if you indeed click the ads to "pay" for your comic, it is something of your own concoction, and not because any sort of reparation was required of you.
Break out your wallets folks, we gots to keep this website afloat.
Actually, i'm pretty sure google adsense pays by clickthrough, not impressions or sales
BUT I never really took an interest in economics, and the whole argument really is quite pointless. Ignore me.
Yeah, I mean, I don't doubt that it was all genuine. When I say "didn't work" I mean, like, in a business context. Like PA was not able to keep drawing ad revenue from it past the first, like, two weeks or however long that was.
That's a good thought, but compare to TV or radio ads. Nobody actually buys directly from the TV or radio. It's completely a one-way deal, unlike website ads. The point is that the advertiser gets the opportunity to address potential buyers, that's what they're paying for. Ultimately, yeah, they're hoping to get sales, but just the ability to say "buy my book! boy my book!" to people eventually, statistically, in aggregate, leads to sales. Hell, companies pay big money to have their products shown during feature films. The flying vehicle thingy that Mr. Fantastic built in Fantastic Four 2 had a fucking Dodge logo on the front. Despite, you know, that it was a unique vehicle that he made. Still said "Dodge" right on the fucking grill. (I couldn't help but hear "this is a Dodge" from the "Juggernaut, Bitch" X-Men edit.) Nobody's literally gonna get up halfway through the film and go to their local Dodge dealer and buy a fictional vehicle. What advertisers are buying is small, gradual, and repeated opportunities to influence you. It's nowhere near as literal as "pay $0.02 to see this comic" or "fuck you gimme a dollar then you can see the rest of the movie," but it is distinctly there and it is measurable and real.
I realize that PA is not so obnoxious as to require me to click an ad before showing me content. I've seen sites that do that; I don't visit them. The price is too high, as those sites tend not to have content that's good enough to justify that much annoyance.
So while I recognize that I am not, like, honor-bound to do that, I also recognize that the more people who spend little bits of time doing that, the more money PA brings in. Yes, I'm not personally putting little Gabe through college, it's aggregate, I understand that.
Also, there's quite a difference between asking for donations (which PA did in the early days), and having a sponsor who's permitted to be present, albeit, in this case, rather unobtrusive.
Hey, google doesn't make money by letting every two-bit hack that can draw/write a comic about video games and dongs pull the wool over their eyes. That forty cents is almost half a soda at a vending machine. You don't get rich by writing a bunch of checks.
it's late
but jesus i don't think gabe and tycho are authoritarian enough to pull the forums over some guy saying the comic isn't so good
this is another of the many differences that makes them not tim buckley
Yes, but my point is that in your specific instance, unless you are buying the product being advertised, you can click whatever you like, but it won't make the advertisers a penny. That, then, makes you as useful to them as someone who completely ignores the ads.
are we talking about 40c per click?
because if I were paying 40c per click on a site that was generating false positives, I'd be fucking pissed. That shit adds up seriously damn fast, especially if the conversion rate of click to goal is less than two percent.
As an advertiser who uses internet ads, especially pay-per-click ads, I really don't give a crap about individual clicks. I care about clicks in aggregate, and the percentage of clicks that result in measurable sales goals, be it a request for more information, an actual sale or simply a quote. I monitor all sorts of factors when it comes to our website and traffic generation, and Google Ad-Sense and Analytics tools allow me a ridiculous amount of data on that - I can look at an individual keyword, what my average bid per impression is, my clickthrough rate versus total impressions, my total cost, how long each average viewer spends on the site, how many pages they visit, which pages they visit, their average funnel process, their bounce rate, their return rate, and most importantly, which pre-determined goals they reach on my site, along with LOTS more. I can then, using a lot of sales and marketing historical data, look at the average close rate of each of these particular goals, the average sale and thereby figure out exactly how much money each of those goal hits nets us in aggregate. From there, I can compare that information to how much money we spend per click, and what our profit is. And you damn well better believe that there is an industry in exactly this sort of data analysis, as well as changing the marketing scheme to better utilize these sorts of advertising.
So yeah, go ahead and look. I'm making a brand impression just by you seeing my product and looking at the site. Leave, if you want. You may not buy anything, but I know exactly what the odds are that you will, and exactly how much money you cost me by clicking my ad, and how much money I make on average every time you do.
Does PA even get money for readers clicking on ads, though? I can't imagine they would. They make money off of ads because the Penny Arcade front page gets a lot of traffic from the gaming community, which makes it valuable advertising space, but it's not like they get a cut of the profits if the product they're advertising sells well. You could compare it to the Super Bowl. Advertisers pay top dollar to have their product featured during the game, but I seriously doubt NBC gets a commission for every bottle of Bud Light that is sold.
I don't know exactly how this site handles their ads, but since they are banner ads and not, for example, Google Ad-Sense ads, I am sure that advertisers pay a flat rate for a time period. In that case, no, the site does not receive money per click.
However, the marketing departments at the companies paying for the ads know exactly what their rate of impressions is, how many clicks the ads generate and from there, how much money they make on average per click. Not only that, but I guarantee they track the same data across any number of sites they sponsor. If their return on their investment dropped into the negative, they would pull the ad immediately. If it failed to generate too low a conversion rate of impressions to clicks, they would pull the ad immediately. Which means PA doesn't get paid for the ad. Which means that yes, indirectly, if nobody clicks the ad, or if nobody that clicks the ad buys the product, then PA doesn't get paid.
We're talking 40c total revenue over 24 hours.
Thank you! Thank you!
(Thank God for you, the wind beneath myyyyy wiiiiiings)
That is exactly what I'm talking about. The opportunity to talk to a person about your product is definitely worth money, and it definitely takes up that person's time, which is also clearly worth money.
Those fucking thieves.