It's ridiculous how much popup ads pay. With the current ads, I make an average of probably around $0.60 per 1000 impressions (which doesn't include certain types of views). With popup ads, I can make more than $10 per 1000 impressions. We all know that they're incredibly annoying though which is why I'm not currently considering them for users but I was going to test them out for guests for the next few days to see what kind of potential it has. The popup ad will appear 33% of the time up to 3 times per an hour.

EDIT: I also put up what my ad company is calling a "shadow box". This is one of those full page ads that you can click out of. This will also be exclusive to guests for the next few days.

I experienced one when I came on to log in today and it caught me off guard.

While I do get that Vizzed is in a bad state financially, I think we should keep them to a minimum (not gone, but in low numbers) for a few reasons. First of all, people get turned off (or at least I do) by pop-ups, and sort of want to turn their back on the website, especially if the pop-up looks "fishy". Second, pop-ups are primarily why people download ad-block. Sure, we can block the RGR for them and make them disable it, but then, for the guests, they don't have an account to commit to so they, again, turn their back because of pop-ups and look for other emulators, putting overall ad views (and therefore revenue) down.

Not that I'm saying this is a bad idea, since the payout seems pretty good. However, I'd say to try and keep them not as frequent. Maybe once every 3 site views?

I think that might make some guests not want to use vizzed or turn their adblock on. Thats what I do sometimes if I'm on a website with so many ads that I can't even do what I need to. This could work out though.
Maybe you could let users opt in to having more annoying ads? Maybe you could even give them extra Viz for doing this. I'd deal with the annoying ads if I could still do what I want to without closing a ton of pages.

goodboy : I do agree that pop ups make a site look bad. That's why I'm experimenting with them and not making them permanent for guests. I wanted to see how much they pay, if they hurt traffic and how they look.

Right now I'm trying to consider every possible option so I know what my realistic options are.


earthwarrior : That's definitely something I could consider.

And here I thought the pop-up was because I misclicked when I wanted to login...

I personally don't mind pop-up ads. After all, they're the best ads, simply because you can get rid of them with just a click instead of having them displayed through the whole page. Unless you make like 4-5 pop-ups every time we click something, I think it's something worth the try. I'd even prefer a pop-up every now and then rather than having all those ads all over the place.

Let's see if they don't hurt much the site's traffic, because those ads would be the perfect solution to the financial struggle of the site.

I also put up what my ad company is calling a "shadow box". This is one of those full page ads that you can click out of. This will also be exclusive to guests for the next few days.

EX Palen : That is true and the great thing with a popup is that you only have to deal with it like 1-3 times per an hour.

The pop ups didn't pay enough for me to justify keeping them up for guests so I've removed them completely.