Remove third-party advertising & implement community ads

[gerg]

Title
Remove third-party advertising & implement community ads

Short, concise description of the idea
Remove third-party advertising networks from ads run on the site, and in their place implement advertising bought by LiveJournal members.

Full description of the ideaThere was recently quite a bit of brouhaha over LiveJournal serving ads that may

Comments

[androshd]

I think this is a good idea, but I am moderately concerned about the workload this would involve. Who would approve the ads (staff, APT, SH/admin, etc.) and what would be the basis for doing so?

[mlady_rebecca]

It seems like the ads would be friendlier than the current ones, but would we have enough users who would want to advertise their community or journal? I maintain three communities, and I don't think advertising any of them would be appropriate. It's too much of a niche fandom.

[foxfirefey]

Unfortunately, this idea would not make anywhere near enough revenue to make up for the revenue lost from third party ads. The reason LiveJournal's been using crappier and crappier third party advertising, from the point of view of the user, with these interstitial take overs and referral hijacking, is because it wants to make more money from advertising, not less. Switching to this system would make less money, and thus is not feasible.

Don't get me wrong, I like the general idea, and I think it's great that it works for other sites. But there's no way LJ could take it up to the exclusion of third party advertising.

However, it's certainly possible that LiveJournal could implement this alongside third party advertising. They don't have enough good ad stock to completely fill out their inventory sometimes, so it wouldn't cut much from that, and it would build community, which is to their advantage.

[lassarina]

Seconding this.

[mordyn4]

My thoughts, exactly.

[matgb]

This. I don't like that LJ has ads, but that's a lost battle, and now it's got them it needs the revenue.

But a different way to let people support the site/pay for stuff, and even ways for 'semi-pro' blogger style users to put stuff into the network, would be a really good plan.

[matgb]

To be fair (and that's difficult), that was a problem with Avast, not at LJs end, they were false flagging something, but yes.