Advertising links on Dashboard?

[Arwen Serpente]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

I have about 3 different "Blocker" programs on my browser so I have (thankfully) yet to see these ads.  I *did* notice a few days ago that for the first time ever on the secondlife.com website I began getting "ad block" messages which I can choose to override or not.  I puzzled over why this was suddenly happening until I was reading a similar thread today on the General forums and the lightbulb went on - my program/s are blocking the ads.

I'm really glad I don't see them but am sad SL has resorted to gaudy ads on their website.

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Czari, I saw the suggestions for ad blockers from a number of the people responding to this thread and the threads in the other parts of the Forums. I added one and no longer see the ads. Many thanks to all those who posted the suggestions

[Ciaran Laval]

I've brought this up on another thread but,genuine question here, what do you find so objectionable about these adverts? I ask because some of the people posting in this thread have an advert in their signature, so some of you see the value of advertising.

I've used the events and land forums here to advertise events and land and I previously used the new products section on the old forum to advertise, I'm also a strong believer that there should be a new product forum, but it's all advertising.

Is the problem. as Dartagan touches upon, that they're not Second Life related adverts?

[Arwen Serpente]

Hi Ciaran, the reason I started the thread was to ask the question if others had also seen the ads. I was trying to figure out if my own system was misbehaving (had a virus/been hacked).  If you read my posts, I didn't rant, I didn't comment that the ads were "so objectionable". Having said that, no I don't care for them.

~ they appeared without any kind of announcement from LL leading some of us to wonder about the security of the site.

~ I've been a resident for 7 years without seeing ads, so they were a surprise

~ the ones that appeared on my screen were (in my opinion) low quality - they are not relevant to me, nor do they add value to the site (my opinion)

~ the dashboard is a members only area (whether paid account or free), sign-in, secure website - none of the other secure websites that I visit have any kind of banner advertising, so I would not expect them here.

~ like you, I wish there were a new product forum for SL Residents to post information - information that's relevant to the SL experience, not to take residents to other websites whether real life commodities/services or virtual worlds

 

In sum, if LL needs to use banner ads to generate additional revenue, it's their website to do with what they want. A blog announcement alerting us to the change would have been appreciated. If they want to further differentiate premium/paid accounts from free ones, then make ad-free dashboards part of the perks.

 

In any case, adding the Ad blocker solved the issue for me.

Hope that helps answer your question.

[Ciaran Laval]

Hi Arwen, sorry if I implied people were ranting, that wasn't my intent, it was a genuine question as to why this form of advertising was objectionable, people have raised objections in this thread.

I agree that they shouldn't appear on the dashboard, people want to feel that's a private space.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Personally I mostly thought it was just ironic, because of those ads being in direct opposition of their TOS to us linking to external products.

My immediate reaction is that it was a bit tacky, because LL is still eluding to millions in revenue and the most self respecting companies that are in profit mostly don't make use of the extra advertising.

Secondary thoughts were whether they just want click-throughs and not purchases and do they grasp the concept of a finite amount of money from their users and how purchases on that advertising may take spending dollars from SL? This doesn't seem to matter when they try to upsell Patterns and friends to SL users to them.

Perhaps it's just more revenue to pump into new day old bread masquerading as retro creative products.

I can live with them, and it certainly beats some new feature with new sinks or laying off a third of the company again (although of course they recently got rid of a third of their data centers and called a reallocation of resources and funds an "investment in hardware" with no further information on said hardware and dubbed it Project Shining).

I imagine them putting them on the existing user pages spares them from any negative image it might cause on more public facing pages.

For all I know it just scores sympathy points by making users think they need the money while Phil goes around saying SL is still a profit success. I've heard people say they'd click them to "support" SL, and that's fine.

I'll click on them when tier goes down, and when they clean up their act on some of the other money bits which should happen any day now.

Any ... day ... now ...

[Marcus Hancroft]

Howdy, Dart.

     I completely agree with everything you've said in this thread.  Since it has been against the Linden Lab TOS to link to external, non-SL websites and Linden Lab is now breaking that TOS, may we all now begin linking to non-SL sites as well?  

     I use Ad-Block Plus, so I don't see the banner ads, but, I turned it off earlier for a few minutes just to have a look at them to see what exactly they looked like.  I didn't like the way they made the site look, so I turned ABP back on and it will stay on from herein forward.  I would never give them a click-through unless, like you said, tiers went down and when (as you said) "...they clean up their act on some of the other money bits which should happen any day now."

[Porky Gorky]

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Marcus Hancroft wrote:

Howdy, Dart.

     I completely agree with everything you've said in this thread.  Since it has been against the Linden Lab TOS to link to external, non-SL websites and Linden Lab is now breaking that TOS, may we all now begin linking to non-SL sites as well?  

 

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How on earth are LL breaking their own TOS? They are the service provider. They do not need to abide by the TOS, they only need to enforce it upon the customers they provide a service to.

Selling banner ad space is one of the smartest things LL have done in the past year. It will generate allot of revenue that will help make up the deficit in lost revenue from all the abandoned private sims last year, which is a direct result of the growing dominance of the MP over inworld commerce.

As merchants, I would have thought everyone of you would be in support of this move. More revenue for LL means more security and stability for the platform which means you get to go on making money. How is that a bad thing?

Don't like the ads, then get an ad blocker. If you approve of the ads then click them, everyday, and help make them work for the lab.

 

[Madeliefste Oh]

As merchants we are interested to  sell our products. Why are we not approached with the possibility to buy banner ads to advertise in the dashboards and the forums?

Or does LL maybe think we cannot produces such ugly banners as their current ones?

 

[Lera Keng]

I posted on another thread about this same thing but I am glad several ppl have put screenshots to demonstrate. As result I have added ADblock to my browser (thanks to those who suggested it in both threads) but prior to that I did notice that the ads do not always show up!! The site does however have the placeholder spaces at the top and right side no matter what and that is a nuisance as well.  My main concern (as mentioned by others as well), is that it is only advertising within the dashboard (logged in area) of the SL website and not the public areas.  Just raised an alarm to me and I thought it might be hacked too or that it was my account or computer with trouble until I confirmed it through friends and forums posts (I checked the code too and saw it was legit later but it still looks crummy and hastily done).

 

[MaliCure Munro]

It certainly made me feel like I was off premium, lol.

I never felt the need to use an ad blocker, but for some reason having ads here feels weird, like having them in your google account settings screen.

Having a third party controlling parts of a screen with security related info and settings is not done, not even when those parts are on the edges.

I hope LL makes showing them optional for premium accounts

[Sayrah Parx]

This is the latest example of how the company is run by people who normally wouldn't be considered professionals if it wasn't for the fact that they're getting paid.

I just try to remember that upper management deserves all the blame, rather than the people they get to do the work.

[Deja Letov]

 I don't have a problem with ads usually, if they are related to what I'm in here for. But I would much rather see ads that are related to Second Life or at least somewhat in a round about way related to at least gaming. I also don't see a huge increase in revenue from these. I doubt very much that the click thru rate will be all that high simply because people are here for a virtual world experience, and probably won't care about those ads I have been seeing. What would have been more ideal...getting paid banner ads in those places from merchants. Maybe LL doesn't think we can afford it, who knows. Overall they don't bother me, I will just block them and be done with it, but I'd keep them if they were related to what I'm doing here in SL. I'd be much more inclined to support the community than random banner ads.

[Shannon Bramlington]

I wasn't opposed to the click ads, until I saw the ads for other virtual worlds. This takes away the SL user. If they are asked to join a "roman Orgy" on the Epix realm. If they are going to take people AWAY from SL, why would we be happy about this??

 

Clarification, make money in click ads, fine, but ask US as vendors and business owners if WE WANT ads first, 2nd, don't make ads to other places other than Second life, that is BEGGING people to leave SL and we've all noticed how many less users there are lately in SL over all in the past 2 years. When I contacted Live Support, they blew me off saying they'll pass the displeasure on to the supervisor. Awesome. Highly upset with this. We work really hard to get people in, and they're rushing them all out because they get a click ad BUT don't forget their branding says they don't want to be on a website with other virtual worlds advertised. *sighs*