[WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

[Anthere]

Fastfission wrote:
> Just a few thoughts on advertising:
> 
> * It wouldn't have to be banner ads in the obnoxious sense. Surely
> there could be some sort of quality control and discreteness about it.
> I'm sure we could find someone willing to shell out a lot of funding
> for a small ad on the lower left hand corner of each page. If every
> set of advertisements had to be approved by some small board of
> thoughtful people, it would probably keep out the "You may be a
> winner!" and "Mortgage your house online!" ads.

Agreed


> * What if ad content could be controlled through user CSS pages? Those
> who are 'in the know' could outright disable them without difficulty.
> People without accounts could never disable them. What's the ratio of
> logged-in to non-logged in page hits?
> 
> * I think that "targetted" schemes along the lines of Google Adsense
> are a bad idea. If we have ads, they should be as little connected to
> the content being viewed as possible, as a matter of integrity.
> Article content and article titles should have NO relation to
> advertising content. If it does, we are not only inviting some raised
> eyebrows about content validity, but we're inviting people to try and
> game the system by modifying articles in oh-so-clever and minor ways
> to get their specific advertisements listed first.

Good point.
However, current advertisement models show that the best revenues are 
gathered from targetted advertisement.


> * Perhaps there are other revenue models we should consider first
> before advertising. At the moment the only ones on the table seem to
> be 1. selling hard-copies, 2. begging, and 3. advertising. I have the
> business acumen of a pigeon but surely there must be alternatives to
> these three.

Agreed.
Well, current appeal could be called "begging". As Mav explained 
already, we are far from having enough right now to fulfill our first 
trimester needs. And we finished the year on our reserves. So, "begging" 
makes sense.

The problems associated with "selling hard copies" are
* making a partnership with a firm or organisation to "produce the hard 
copy" and then to "distribute" the content. Or should we set up another 
organisation to do that ourselves ?
* filtering content to put on the hard copy (removing copyvios... we 
need many editors to get involved here)
* assuming all legal possible consequences (copyvios again), which 
implies having financial reserves to assume this.


Other models may involve
* finding more sponsors (but, who will take care of this ?)
* writing grants (which is also a job in itself, with few people 
motivated and experienced to do it)

We might have employees to do these two tasks, but again, we need to 
"invest" to get these guys.

Ant


> FF
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