Anyone Else Feel that Our Pages Look Spammy? I'm Very Discouraged!

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   SoSimplyStephanieposted 7 months ago

   Okay, so it's be a few years since I've published on HP. Life happened and things went by the wayside. I still get a random $50-100 per month in payouts and log in randomly to keep my account active. I've started my blog back up and considered starting writing more on HP... until I took a look at the layout. I get HP has to make money so we can make money, but I am very discouraged by what HP has come in terms of layout and looking like QUALITY not quantity posts. My own posts look HORRIBLE with all the ads. 30+ adds on a SINGLE post is insane. It yells 'spammy' to me. It yells low quality just trying to throw in ads. My Recipes don't make sense, my gardening posts look horrible... all the tutorials and recipes are so broken up with what... ads? It's not a pretty look, and it's not a good content feel. I just checked the web archive and just 5 years ago it was a nice, well laid out, informative site. Today, it looks like a click-bank of ads.
   
   
   Am I the only one that feels that way? I'm considering moving all 160 articles to my blog, but I don't want to hurt the ones that are seasonal and ranking well, but at the same time, I don't my profile/photo/links back to my personal blog to be associated with all the freaking ads. Am I over thinking this? It just looks sooooo cheap.
   
   Here's an example right now vs. the older layout. An entire view of my desktop then and now. The now version has only TWO SENTENCES of content, and FIVE ADS. This is so frustrating. Yes, I could turn ads off, but it would be pointless to leave my content here. I'd rather have a few ads, than look like this. It's soooo mess, unreadable, and just not appealing. I personally leave sites like this rather quickly and don't fight with ads when I am looking for something. I can't imagine what the bounce rate is like now.
   
   Is it just me or does anyone else dislike this over-spammy ad display?
   
   
   
   
   
   

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      lovetherainposted 7 months agoin reply to this

      Yes it's spammy and annoying

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      Jan Stepanposted 7 months agoin reply to this

      Have you seen some other sites and their ad placement? HubPages are still more than decent in that sense.
      
      This is a modern-looking, free-to-read site. The ads are a must for us to earn money, and I am sure the ad team has relevant reasons as to why the layout looks as it looks.
      
      As I said, look at other free-to-read, magazine-type sites, and you'll quickly see what I mean.

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         Thomas Swanposted 7 months agoin reply to this

         The ads might be suitable for some network sites but not others. From what I understand, TAG treats them all the same. The least suitable might be Owlcation, which is supposed to be about education. Bombarding people with 30+ ads per article can't be the best strategy for that site.

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            Glenis Rixposted 7 months agoin reply to this

            I agree.

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            Jan Stepanposted 7 months agoin reply to this

            Of course, having a specific strategy for each site would be ideal, but I don't think that's realistic. It's not how things are done anymore.

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   theraggededgeposted 7 months ago

   It's not just you

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   eugbugposted 7 months ago

   Whatever about the number of ads, I wish attention was paid to layout of them. They're all misaligned, including the video at the top of articles. At least they could make them look nice. Maybe they've no control over the code to do that, but we never get any answers when we query it.

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      SoSimplyStephanieposted 7 months agoin reply to this

      Yes, I agree. The amount of ads isn't so much the problem as the placement of them. I literally had ads on top of ads in that post; three actually, if you count the one at the bottom that is anchored and scrolls with the page. It really isn't a good look for professional writing. I feel like all of our hard work went from a legit place to write to content farming (still not bad), to this ad-mill. It's almost like we are simply creating an ad-platform. The content is just a plate to serve it on. I don't like it, at all. Seriously, considering pulling all my work, which is going to suck considering my blog is new, and I'll lose all the Pins, backlinks, an top ranking, but at this point it seems futile to leave them here if it's only going to get worse. I personally wouldn't stay on a page more than about 2 seconds if it looked like this.

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4. 92

   FatFreddysCatposted 7 months ago

   I rarely look at my articles outside of the "author view" format in my profile.  The haphazard shoe-horning of adverts in the "real" view version (especially when it's the same ad repeated over and over again!) irritates the crap out of me, so I can only imagine how aggravating it must be for readers!

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5. 93

   Titiaposted 7 months ago

   I fully agree with you and I think most of the writers here will too.
   I hardly ever post one of my articles on FB because I'm really ashamed of the many adds my friends will encounter.

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6. 91

   Jodahposted 7 months ago

   No, you are certainly not alone. We all hate it but complaints fall on deaf ears.

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7. 87

   Kobby95posted 7 months ago

   I hope they seriously do something about it. HP should not only be about money. It should be a balance between COMMERCE and SERVICE. Yes, we are here to make money but to also serve the readers.

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   Brenda Arledgeposted 7 months ago

   The original one looks alot better without all the ads.

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      eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

      It does, nice and simple and doesn't make my computer almost shutdown due to overheating because of all the processing required.

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   Thomas Swanposted 7 months ago

   Yes! Having 30 ads in a 1500 word article is horrific.
   
   Could TAG just be milking our work to death? They fill it with ads, get money in the short term until google kills it off, then TAG fire the staff and dump it? Some niche sites appear close to death already.
   
   I'm ashamed to share my work too, and I'm also considering unpublishing some hubs in a particular niche and going with a personal website. I'll give it a couple of weeks and see if TAG announce something.

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10. 96

    eugbugposted 7 months ago

    I tell people to turn on their ad-blockers too if I share an article, or I share the Medium version instead. Visually, the networks sites are some of the worse I've come across on the Net.
    Why won't they fix the alignment problem?
    Who holds the keys to the code?

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    PaulGoodman67posted 7 months ago

    There is a certain irony in that writers can get articles rejected for spamminess for relatively trivial transgressions, for example, they might include three external links instead of two. Meanwhile, HP are plastering the page with ads.

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       OldRosesposted 7 months agoin reply to this

       ++++

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    jansharesposted 7 months ago

    Stephanie, you are not alone. It would be nice if Angel Jennings (HP forums moderator) and/or Matt Wells (HP Tech Guy) could once and for all address this issue by coming into this forum and talking to us. We are just needing justification as to why this on-going problem goes unresolved. What is the real issue? Speculation is getting old. Some of us need to make decisions as writers going forward.
    Thanks for the post, Stephanie.

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    1. STAFF

       Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

       We continuously evaluate ad placement performance for the best strategy to monetize HubPages. Ensuring authors earn as much money as possible is in our best interest. If you make money, we make money. We would never purposely do anything that would harm your earning potential. The ads may seem overwhelming, but based on our data, the Ad Team has concluded this is the best path and will make changes as needed.

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          jansharesposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          Thanks for your candid reply, Matt. Your last line answers the question. You (HP) see what we see, we are not crazy, but it is the best path forward at this time so that HP can stay afloat. Got it.

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             savvydatingposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             I figured there is a method behind the madness, so I don’t worry about it too much.

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             1. STAFF

                Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                That is the best move. We have a team of ad experts working on this. The best thing for authors to do is to create content.

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          Kenna McHughposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          Matt, if you say it works, then it works. I still think it is a turn-off for readers because I don't read web pages with tons of ads—too annoying.

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          eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          Can you edit code for the page and control their layout so that at least they look neat? The video when it reduces in size and moves to the right side bar doesn't line up with the ads. Also is there any way loading can be speeded up? Can images on articles at least be loaded before ads, so there's not loads of white space? If there's several consecutive images, the white space can totally blank the screen and cause confusion. Readers don't know whether to scroll up or down. Maybe hairline rectangles could be displayed containing the text "ad placement" and "image" until they load?

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          Glenn Stokposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          Matt, Is the Ad Team you refer to the same Ad Team I met in Canada at the Maven conference in 2018? Or are they all different people now?
          
          You said in you post if we make money, you make money. Of course that’s understandable. But then why are they dismissing the proven method that worked before Maven/TAG took over?
          
          We made six times more money back then. Which means you (HubPages) made six times more money then.

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             eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             The ad team are probably TAG people and Hubbages has no control over anything. That's why we can never get answers.

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             Solarasposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             "We made six times more money back then. Which means you (HubPages) made six times more money then."
             
             No, they are making 30+ times more money than we do today. We are getting revenue for 1 ad per pageview, and they get revenue on the other 29 ads, plus video, and clicks to sponsored articles - taking them away from HP.

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                Kenna McHughposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                Solaras, This is interesting. Where can we get this information? It doesn't seem fair.

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                1. STAFF

                   Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                   This isn't true. Please ignore.

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                      Kenna McHughposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                      Okay, Matt, thank you.

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                      Solarasposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                      No? What is the breakdown?
                      
                      https://hubpages.com/faq/#hep-requirements
                      
                      "What are impressions?
                      
                      As it relates to online advertising revenue (and the Ad Program), an impression typically means an "ad impression", and occurs whenever an ad appears on an article and is presumably seen by a visitor.
                      
                      With regards to your Ad Program reports, you are paid based on "page impressions," which are article views. Each page impression can include several individual ad impressions, depending on: whether ads are turned on, the length of the article, and whether a given location has "time" to show an ad in case the viewer navigates away from the article. The CPM for an individual is determined based on the value of individual impressions based on traffic characteristics."
                      
                      This phrase defines it clearly: "you are paid based on "page impressions," which are article views."
                      
                      That cannot be any clearer.
                      
                      Edit: If there is a different formula, the FAQ should be updated.

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                      1. STAFF

                         Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                         The FAQ is correct.

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                         Glenn Stokposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                         Barbara,
                         
                         The FAQ you quoted is correct, as Matt had confirmed. But you are interpreting it as you assume rather than factual. Sorry if this sounds critical. I’m just trying to clarify things, as I’m sure you would agree is crucial.
                         
                         Your previous post saying HubPages is “making 30+ times more money than we do” is unfounded and not based on anything factual. 
                         
                         The fact is that we get paid 60% of the residuals from individual impressions based on traffic characteristics, and HubPages gets the other 40%. That has never changed.

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                            Solarasposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                            Please show me the link and the quote where the 60/40% split is written. Even Matt Wells has not stated that.

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                               eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                               Impressions are 60% of views from my analysis of stats over the last 10 years, using Excel. So Presumably Hubpages get the other 40% of impressions. CPM possibly increases if there are a lot of ads on an article, and the figure quoted in our earnings is the average value for the previous day  (maybe).

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                                  Glenn Stokposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                                  Eugene, That's how it used to work ten years ago. But since then, sometime about five years ago (maybe longer), they changed it to no longer split impression codes 60/40. (our affiliate code vs. HP's code). Instead, they now use the same impression codes all the time and then split the residuals 60/40.   
                                  
                                  So, the end result is similar. I actually favor that change because in the past, if I had a huge sale on Amazon (such as a large screen TV) when the impression had HPs affiliate code, they got the benefit of that sale. Now, all sales are treated equally.   
                                  
                                  EDIT: I noticed Matt's post after I posted this. I do see that I get 60% of the split on my Amazon sales. That is obvious when you do the arithmatic on the stats. Anyway, I agree with Matt—we should just concentrate on writing quality content to increase earnings. HubPages has suggested many ideas to help with that effort, such as landscape images to get more content above the fold, to name one.

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                                     eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                                     But why would the impressions still be 60% of views? Those stats I checked give an approximate 60% figure up to maybe 6 months ago when I checked them.

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                            2. STAFF

                               Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                               We do not specifically state a 60/40 split anywhere. We used to have that in the FAQ. Periodically, we receive inquiries from the author community regarding the specifics of our HubPages revenue share formulas. While the company does make public filings with certain summary partner revenue data across all of its lines of business in aggregate, the company does not publish specific data for HubPages. We cannot share any more details than are supplied in the Terms of Use and the FAQ.
                               
                               https://thearenagroup.net/terms-of-use/
                               https://hubpages.com/faq/#royalties

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                                  Solarasposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                                  Thank you for that response, Matt.

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                            Solarasposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                            Those of us with articles of 1500 words and more are displaying on average 30 ads, videos, and links to sponsored articles etc..
                            
                            The terms of the FAQ are  "you are paid based on "page impressions," which are article views."
                            
                            Page impressions, not ad impressions.
                            
                            HP is paid on Ad Impressions not Page Impressions. 
                            
                            They go on to explain how they are being paid, but never anything about how the split is made.
                            
                            I have asked numerous times for the factual basis for our split, but all I ever get is a link to what I quoted above, which is deficient. It does not in anyway explain my earnings.

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                               Glenn Stokposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                               I know it's confusing, but the "Advertising Terms & Glossary" ends with the statement "based on traffic characteristics." That's the crucial key point.
                               
                               That means the further a reader scrolls through the article, the more ad impressions appear. And if they scroll too fast without actually reading, then those ads may not load. Hence: As it also mentions, "has 'time' to show an ad."

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                                  Solarasposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                                  That is for determining the value of CPM. So some ads are of greater value than others. If only low value ads load, then low cpm. If mesothelioma ads load, then high CPM.
                                  
                                  The formula for the split between hp and authors is a trade secret. The only thing we can know for sure is that TAG reserves the right to change the terms of the agreement at anytime at their discretion.
                                  
                                  In the world of possibilities the formula may vary from niche site to site, or author to author, based on certain parameters.
                                  
                                  The point being those that know wont tell, and thems that will tell, dont know. So we have to go off the limited data we have, and what some have posted as their experience with reporting is different from mine. So i wonder about all of this, then return to grooming my dogs

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                      chef-de-jourposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                      Thanks for the replies Matt, the most you've ever written in response to our concerns about the ads problem.
                      
                      Truth is hard to find in this ongoing saga.I'm confused. For example, if the ads team are aware of past performance, and the current ads regime is acknowledged as the crappiest ever then why aren't changes made to reverse the trend?
                      Please just tell us the facts - are they able to change the current ads regime? Yay or nay? Do they have plans/projects to alter ads design and improve readability?
                      A simple answer would at least establish a base for our own future plans as writers. I haven't mentioned loyalty at this stage but it's probably obvious to you if you do measure HPs popularity and sustainability that many veteran writers are either leaving the fold or not contributing as many articles as before. Consequences? Any reaction?
                      
                      We're reduced to speculation and endless guesswork whilst watching traffic and earnings plummet. Any incentives in the pipeline to remedy this?

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                      1. STAFF

                         Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                         Please see the previous reply.

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          3. STAFF

             Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             It's a different ad team than the people you met. They are aware of past performance. There are many factors that go into making money besides ad placement. Search engine algorithm updates and competition from other articles are a few.

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                Kenna McHughposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                Matt, I appreciate your replies. I am curious if the Ad Team has considered any of the advice from our forums. For example, Eugene has some excellent suggestions for the placement of the ads.

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                1. STAFF

                   Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                   Our ad team is always working on the best way for authors to earn. They take everything into consideration.

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                      Kenna McHughposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                      Matt, That's good to know. Thank you.

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    Rupert Taylorposted 7 months ago

    The reality is that it doesn't matter a jot or tittle what writers think, the owners (is it TAG? I lose track) will do whatever it sees as its economic interest.
    
    I follow the sage advice of my father in this sort of situation - "Save your breath to cool your porridge."

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    Venkatachari Mposted 7 months ago

    We all experience this awkwardness of Hubpages and its management. So many of us have raised voices but no single comment by the staff till now. They simply don't care.

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    pstraubie48posted 7 months ago

    Yes....too many ads...it makes it difficult to read the work of others. I have sent (emailed) some articles to others and they complained about the number of interruptions due to ads. I get the reason for ads but it is annoying when so many appear.

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    Solarasposted 7 months ago

    gaslighting

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    psycheskinnerposted 7 months ago

    The ad load is excessive.
    
    And if it is "working" why am I getting paid less per page and per view now than I did ten years ago?

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    psycheskinnerposted 7 months ago

    The "method" earns me half as much as what I earned at peak profit 6 years ago, about 20% down on when I joined.  (Controlling for annual trend and amount of content posted)
    
    I get it that the environment for content sites is more hostile but having watched multiple other sites closed because they chose to over-advertise (Today.com anyone?) I am not assuming anything. Especially given the change in management since the best earning times.
    
    Over-advertising is a vicious cycle because it gooses earnings in the short term but tanks traffic and site sustainability.  So long as we don't see popup-overs. animations or sound I am hanging in there.  But it's a valid concern. Hubpages is an outlying in lasting this long partly because they avoided this trap... until now.

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    eugbugposted 7 months ago

    Is there any way we can control the quantity of ads? We can turn them off completely, so presumably that sets a global switch in the HTML (I haven't compared the source code for articles with and without ads, so I'll do that to see exactly how it works). Are there add placeholders as such or does the code just tell the ad mechanism to insert an ad at a new paragraph, every so many lines?

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    1. STAFF

       Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

       The best thing to do is stop worrying about ads and create content. Our Ad Team's job is to worry about ads.

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          psycheskinnerposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          I disagree mainly because continuing to give content to Hubpages is not our only option.  The best thing *for me* to do is keep track of which opportunities are best meeting my needs, and distribute my efforts according.  I post less here because I have found other options that are more profitable and reach more people.  I still post here a little because it's not a complete waste of time, a little more fun, and variety is the spice of life.
          
          I would recommend everyone to back up their hubs, just in case.

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          1. STAFF

             Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             To be clear, I meant that if people choose to publish on HubPages, don't worry about the ads, just worry about creating content. HubPages is here to stay for the long term.

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                eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                Other than using shift enter, is there any way of stopping ads breaking up passages of text? I often have long derivations in math articles with lots of lines. An ad stuck in the middle is really frustrating. Is the insertion point definitely limited to a hard return? I've been replacing most of my hard returns after paragraphs with shift enters to keep the text together, but apparently this can confuse Google because it appears as a long passage with no paragraphs (Glenn, I think you mentioned this previously).

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          Glenis Rixposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          I disagree. There is reputational damage for authors when readers are presented with articles that are liberally sprinkled with ads that interrupt the flow of the article. Which  is why I have started to use the option to remove ads before promoting my articles on social media.

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             Solarasposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             If you remove ads, do the Amazon links stay active?  And you can pick and choose on which articles to deactivate ads?

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                Glenis Rixposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                Yes,m you can choose which articles - at the bottom right of the editing page - options- turns ads on /off.

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       Glenn Stokposted 7 months agoin reply to this

       I use Google's "auto ads" on my author site, and I believe the code is similar. It selectively places ads between hard returns. I discovered soft returns help avoid pacing ads between paragraphs. That's the only control we have. But some editors may not approve of that. Maybe we can get clarification on that from the staff.

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       1. STAFF

          Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          You cannot make your own changes to the ad layout.

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             Glenn Stokposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             Thanks for that clarification, Matt. That's what I was hoping for. I only use that method on my site anyway.

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          eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          If there was control over which character ads were inserted at, we could then add a delimeter or dummy HTML tag using the HTML editor we have access to in text modules. Then instead of inserting at a hard return, the ad server would insert at that delimiter. I wonder is that technically possible? It seems daft that an ad can only be inserted at a hard return.
          
          These seem to be the only auto ad settings if that's what are being used.
          
          https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9305577?hl=en

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             Glenn Stokposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             Eugene, Matt made a comment above in reference that, where he said "You cannot make your own changes to the ad layout."
             
             So let's focus on writing content instead of beating this horse to death.
             
             I have many drafts I've been working on simultaneously and trying to get some finished anyway. So I'm going to take Matt's good advice to concentrate on writing. There's not anything we can do about the ads since it's an automatic algorithm.

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                eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                We can't make our own changes, but that's presumably because it's not technically possible because of the limitations of the editor. What I want to know is whether they have control over ads and can they pass some of that control to us? That webpage for auto ads suggests the only control is over the number of ads and what region of a webpage should not display ads. I've lost inspiration for writing because nothing I've written about in the last few years has been successful and I've run out of ideas. Nothing is ranking either so I find it futile.

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                1. STAFF

                   Matt Wellsposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                   Again, you cannot make changes to the ad layout, ever. Editors cannot change it either.

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                      eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                      And that's because of the ad system you're using, it's either all or nothing and Hubpages have no control over ad serving? I presume you can control the number of ads, but just not placement?

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                PaulGoodman67posted 7 months agoin reply to this

                Yeah, the ads are outside of our control.
                
                For what it's worth, my opinion is that there are two things going on nowadays:
                
                1. The ads are ugly.
                
                2. The views and earnings are bad.
                
                However, I don't believe that it's correct to assume that #1 causes #2.
                
                I think it's relatively easy for a company to figure out how to maximize earnings from ads and I can't see any good reason why HP would deliberately undermine their revenue.
                
                The ads are certainly ugly but I think other factors are causing the views and earnings problems.

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                   eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                   My experiment from a few months ago also showed that turning off ads on an article didn't increase the time on page. In fact it stayed the same on average.

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                   Solarasposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                   No one deliberately undermines their revenue, but publicly traded companies can get in a trap of having to increase revenues month over month. You can do that by increasing views, subscribers or ads or all of the above. However at some point you reach a tipping point of no return. Too many ads and users get frustrated and leave ealier in viewing the article. Google sees that and lowers your article in serps, more ads and quick, thin content to cover the losses,  more thin content affects the sites ranking. Rinse repeat.

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                Kenna McHughposted 7 months agoin reply to this

                I agree. Let's concentrate on creating great content.

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    Solarasposted 7 months ago

    Btw I would like to thank Matt Wells for engaging in this conversation.  It's the most fully engaged staff has been that I can recall since Paul and Robin moved on. It's appreciated. We all want HP to succeed and everybody get rich,  with little effort.

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    psycheskinnerposted 7 months ago

    In terms of other magazines aren't Fadeaway and Spun also owned by the Arena Group? They have a lot fewer ads than us from what I can see.  Not even close.
    
    Honestly, the idea that Hubpages are not noticeably ad-heavy makes me even more worried that the leadership is out of touch with the user experience.  I can see an argument that somehow it is sustainably more profitable, but that it's not ad-heavy at all for the category?  That's just not true,

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    Kain 360posted 7 months ago

    This is a fairly big concern of mine. I think the appearance and placement of some of the ads may turn many readers off. Back in 2011, I had an article go viral and get 5000 views per day, as it reached #1 spot on Google. Articles were easier to read and more organized back then IMO. My articles have not ranked nearly as high in SERPs in years. Honestly, I have been demoralized at times over the years, especially when I get nostalgic over my past success. I wrote on another account before.
    
    I'm going to continue to write content and diversify, but I'm not feeling entirely optimistic. Things have changed a lot since I joined in 2009. I know the earning program, unequivocally, helped me way more than Adsense did.

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       eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

       All of mine, several of which had thousands of views per day have plummeted in the ranks so that they only have maybe a dozen views per day. So Google doesn't like the network sites for some reason. I guess it's because of either the bad user experience or lack of authority. Maybe the new "Ask an Expert" feature is an attempt to establish authority. Hopefully Google will see it that way.

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    CYong74posted 7 months ago

    I think many of us have shared our misgivings about the current ad system. What's next is whether the ads team is willing to acknowledge all of us are readers before writers. We are the exact audience the Network targets.
    
    I could be old fashioned about this but I think no serious writer want to see his/her work smothered with ads that way. Especially when the ads repeat 30 times every 2 paragraphs and leave thick white spaces before and after.

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       eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

       There is always the option of turning them off completely per article. That works. What I'd like to know is could the code be changed to allow the number of ads to be varied or is just all or nothing?

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24. 97

    theraggededgeposted 7 months ago

    I usually read hubs on my laptop via a browser with a built-in adblocker. Which just shows great big white spaces--annoying but not the end of the world. The other day I happened to click on one via the newsletter on my tablet. I couldn't believe the state of the hub. Beautifully written, lovely photos, but completely overwhelmed by repetitive ads. Utterly horrible. Had I been a casual reader I'd have been out of there immediately simply because any site with pages like that is likely to harbour viruses, trackers, and flip knows what else besides.
    
    This is definitely not a good strategy. No wonder traffic has hit the depths.

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       Kenna McHughposted 7 months agoin reply to this

       I need help coming to terms with the spammy/necessary ads. Writers complain, and overall traffic has plummeted, yet HP (Matt) says the Ad Team is aware of this situation, and they deem the case as status quo.

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          Solarasposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          You know Kenna, their idea of what is best, depends on whom it is intended to be best for.  Is it best for HP, the writers at HP or TAG as a whole.  Does TAG intend to bleed HP niche sites, in order to support TAG's most valuable and viable properties, such as Sports Illustrated, Parade and The Street. 
          
          They use far fewer ads on those websites - approximately half as many.  And they appear to take care as to interrupting paragraphs, which is not happening over here at all.  I won't say they never interrupt a paragraph with an ad, but the ads are topic related. One would think it might be part of the article's imagery.
          
          So, in the words of George Orwell, "Some animals are more equal than others."

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             Kenna McHughposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             I hear you, Solaras, but what can we do?

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             eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             Maybe the long term plan is to replace articles with these "Ask an expert" articles and have no ads.

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          Glenis Rixposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          I have now used the option to remove ads from several of my articles on network sites when I promote tge articles on social media.  The ads are a distraction from the content of the articles and frankly would be an embarrassment if the people whose opinions I care about read the articles.  I much preferred the old Hubpages format for ads- which were shown  on the right hand side of our articles and were unobtrusive.

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             Glenn Stokposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             Glenis, the problem is that most of our traffic is from mobile users and that does not have a right hand column. But I agree with you that the ads are an embarrassment. When I share my articles with friends, the common feedback received is that they couldn’t read it because those ads distracted their train of thought.
             
             That’s not conducive to a site meant for educational content, which is probably why we are earning only one tenth what we made with the original HubPages platform.

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             Glenis Rixposted 7 months agoin reply to this

             I also think that an excessive number of  large ads is generally a counterproductive policy. Because, like me, many people consequently activate an ad blocker. Which results in a lot of white space on pages- annoying but preferable to all those large ads.

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       eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

       My limited experiment on one hub showed that average time on page didn't change, even with ads turned off for two weeks. Maybe some readers just spent extra time reading ads and that compensated for those who backed out due to annoyance.

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          PaulGoodman67posted 7 months agoin reply to this

          Experience tells me that empirical data regarding how readers react is far more pertinent than anecdotal impressions.
          
          I understand that people find the ads aesthetically displeasing (as do I) but that doesn't mean that the SEO and revenue are suffering as a direct result.
          
          TAG's main focus will inevitably go on maximizing SEO and revenue with little attention paid to aesthetics.

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25. 96

    eugbugposted 7 months ago

    Why can't we be allowed to suggest that people make donations if an article helped them?
    What's Hubpages problem with that?
    I think I'll start trialling a donation link for PayPal. Also I'll try a poll asking readers would they be interested in donating.

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       PaulGoodman67posted 7 months agoin reply to this

       I think you've said something similar in the past and got shot down.

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          eugbugposted 7 months agoin reply to this

          I vaguely remember that, and Ithink I created a poll, but it was eventually removed by an editor. I can't remember whether I got an explanation for why we can't use PayPal links.

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