[Foundation-l] No, even a couple of Google ads on each page would be a fatally bad idea

Sun Nov 7 16:40:08 UTC 2010

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 11:21 AM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> They won't be people that want ads, though. They'll be people that
>> want ad revenue for us. If they click, they'll be clicking to get us
>> revenue and not actually buying, which advertisers stopped falling for
>> years ago.
>
> 1) Why the huge assumption of bad faith?  I don't think you're correct
> that people would sign up for ads who don't want ads.

Let me amend that.  I don't think that the percentage of people who
want ads would be lower in an opt-in scenario.  Obviously *some*
people who don't want ads would sign up for ads.  But presumably
*most* people who do want ads would also sign up for ads.  So the
proportion of people who want ads would go up, in my estimation quite
dramatically.

Of course, this is somewhat dependent on how good the ads are,
including both how relevant they are and how well the scammers are
screened out.

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7 November 2010 16:21, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>> 1) Why the huge assumption of bad faith?  I don't think you're correct
>> that people would sign up for ads who don't want ads.  As you
>> correctly point out, there would actually be no long-term benefit to
>> anyone for doing so.
>> 2) If the payment isn't per click, why would people click through "to
>> get us revenue"?
>
> This has nothing to do with good or bad faith.

Claiming that people are going to scam the system by signing up for
(and clicking on) ads for the sole purpose of transferring money from
the advertisers to Wikipedia is a huge assumption of bad faith.

> If people are only
> opting in because they want ads, then there are going to be a very
> small number of people opting in.

I don't know about that.  It depends in large part on how good the ads
are (see above).

> Why have ads on Wikipedia pages when
> you can just google for things you want to buy?

It can save a step.  Also, maybe Wikipedia's ads could be better
screened than Google's ads.

> If payment *were* by
> click, then people would abuse it, which is why payment wouldn't be by
> click and we wouldn't get much money. That was the point I was trying
> to make.

Right, but your "we wouldn't get much money" "point" was just
speculation, and I was speculating differently.

> Can you give an example of a site with opt-in advertising that
> actually gets significant revenue from it (for the number of page
> views they get)?

I can't think of any site that has opt-in advertising, so no.

In any case, as I clarified a few emails above, I never meant to
suggest that Wikipedia should have opt-in advertising (*).  Clearly
more money would be made if the advertising were not opt-in.  And
clearly any advertising would cause a huge rift in the community.

(*) I was simply trying to say that I doubt Google would allow Google
ads on unscreened Wikipedia articles unless the advertiser
specifically asked for it