I appreciate that we may only be able to exclude donors who are logged in readers from banner ads. But it is better in my view to say "Yes we can do that, but you would have to tell us your username and be logged in to avoid ads" than to tell them "Sorry we can't switch off those ads".
WereSpielChequers
Message: 8 Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2011 14:12:07 +0000 From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Raising funds without being quite so annoying to readers
On 5 March 2011 14:05, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
Picking up on the comment by Tobias about less intrusive fundraising, I would make sure we are pursuing the following:
1 Build up a past donors database, communicate with them effectively and then as long as they donate annually make sure they aren't irritated by ads for people who haven't donated at all. (I gather something is now being done here, but I know it wasn't in the past).
The first part is certainly being done. The second part is impossible. How are we supposed to know if a reader has previously donated? All we have is their IP address, which could very easily have changed since they donated.
On 5 March 2011 16:12, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
I appreciate that we may only be able to exclude donors who are logged in readers from banner ads. But it is better in my view to say "Yes we can do that, but you would have to tell us your username and be logged in to avoid ads" than to tell them "Sorry we can't switch off those ads".
Logged in users make up an incredibly small portion of donors. This year, we stopped displaying banners to logged in users entirely after a while (it seems that logged in users either donate early or not at all). I wouldn't be surprised if that is done sooner in future. If that's the case, then there isn't much point using user names to avoid showing banners to people that have already donated.
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