[WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Google ads

[phil hunt]

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 07:17:30 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>Just a couple of important notes...
>
>phil hunt wrote:
>> Has anyone contacted Google to see what they think of opt-in 
>> adverts?
>
>I would like to discourage people from contacting Google directly on
>our behalf. 

Sure -- I wasn't implying random people should. If anyone sohuld 
approach Google it'd have to be someone "official", such as you.

> I have an existing and substantial (to me!) business
>relationship with Google and good contacts within their ad syndication
>group.  It will baffle them if random people call them up asking
>questions about us.

I expect so.

>> However, Wikipedia is quite a high-traffic website, which would 
>> probably give it a reasonable level of clout in any negotiations 
>> with Google.
>
>Sure.  Even with Bomis, we don't just sign up for their general public
>program, we have a (long and detailed) contract.  There's no reason to
>assume that their general AdSense terms of service would have much to
>do with us.
>
>At the same time, I think it is important to recognize that "opt-in"
>is likely to be frowned upon for exactly the reason that you mentioned
>-- the audience of people opting in would be too likely to click just
>to generate revenue, as opposed to clicking out of genuine interest.
>That's useless for the advertisers.

Indeed so. However, I could imagine some adverts being useful and
relevant to me. After all, I'm likely to be visiting Wikipedia pages
I'm interested in, and Google adverts are likely to be well-targeted
(the ones on my personal website seem to be), so it's very likely I 
would see some adverts that were of interest to me.

>I also am not really comfortable with opt-in.  Compared to opt-out, I
>think it would generate very close to zero revenue.  Probably less
>than 5% of the revenue potential of opt-out.  The reason is that the
>vast majority of our pageviews are from people who just happen in.
>These people are not opposed to advertising, but at the same time,
>they will not care enough to bother to read a link about how to enable
>ads.
>
>So with opt-in, we get almost all of the "negative press" issues as we
>get with opt-out, but we also don't get the kind of money that would
>enable us to do really astounding things consistent with our
>charitable mission.

If there is opt-out, then people who don't like to see adverts 
can't really complain about them. Especially if opting out is easy: 
if it was cookie based rather than forcing people to log in to stop 
seeing adverts, then people would be able to set preferences for the 
site once, and never see another ad. (On a tangent, it'd be nice if 
style sheets were cookie-based, since I prefer the traditional style 
of WP to the more modern one.)

>Let me state again that I am currently opposed to any advertising on
>Wikipedia.  I have only been talking about this because I think it is
>important for us to continue to make the "no advertising" decision
>while being fully cognizant of what it is that we are turning down.

What about the argument the other way round, where people think
Wikipedia is a worthwhile project, and they would donate money to
it, but they see WP turning down substancial amonuts of revenue from
advertising, and they ask themselves "if WP won't help themselves,
why should I help them?"

I've no idea if this represents a significant number of people, but 
it might do.

>It's much easier for us to say no when we imagine that the revenue
>would be $1,000 a month.  It would obviously be much easier for the
>community to say no, if the revenue was to go to a for-profit company.
>(Hooray!  The make-Jimbo-rich fund!  Not.)

I think most people here trust your honest intentions.

>But I think that the issue really only gets interesting when we start
>talking about really vast sums of money that would be spent with
>extreme efficiency to further our charitable aims.

Yes, it does.

-- 
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than 
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)