This is a general Advertising FAQ page. Also refer to our FAQ about sponsored posts. We may made additions to this page as we go. If you want to ask a question that is not answered here, please use the ask a question button on the FAQ page.
Advertising FAQ Table of Contents
Where can I purchase advertising?
If you are interested in advertising on our site, you can purchase ad space on our advertising page.
Where will my ads be shown?
Please note that we do use contextual advertising, but are adding some of our own ad placements in various areas and are offering per-click or per-impression ads in those slots. Prices will be shown on the individual ad product.
Ad placement slots.
You can choose from various placement slots:
- In Content Ads Automatic Placement shows after the sixth paragraph on most page types that have sufficient content. This placement is for banner ads and wider-width ads.
- Member Area Content Ads show in the member area between some activity. This is a VERY limited placement and may not show in the main member profile, just on activity pages.
- Forums Page Before Loop placement shows on the forum page before the list of forums. This is best for horizontal type ads like leaderboard ads.
- Forums Page Before Single Forum shows at the top of the page before the single forum. Again, this is best for horizontal type ads like leaderboard ads.
- Rotation Sidebar shows in the main sidebar on most pages. It is best for vertical or box-type ads.
- In Content Ads Manual Placement shows in manual placements on a select number of pages — we are working on putting this placement into some of our hub pages, for instance, but it may not be shown everywhere.
- Member Area Sidebar Ads show in the sidebar in the member area. These display best on pages like “groups” and are a bit delayed in displaying in the member profile.
- Page Hero ads show on pages, posts, etc that have the main area under the featured image with the excerpt. They are centered ads that show before content. These are best for horizontal type ads like leaderboards.
Reserved ad space
Your ads will be scheduled to be shown in rotation with other ads set for that rotation. However, if the ads currently scheduled in that space are our ads, your ads, along with other ads from our own advertisers, will be given priority for display. We do not share rotation space between contextual ads and our own ad placements.
Currently, we do not have a flat rate per month set up nor do we have an ad space per advertiser set up. We cannot guarantee a specific level of traffic, so we prefer to charge based on the visibility of, or response to the ad. However, if you would like to place an ad on a monthly basis and have your ad in that slot 100% of the time we can discuss it.
Per-page or geolocated placements
We can tailor your ad to appear on specific pages or in certain geographic locations. However, those options are not available on the ad setup page. If you would like your ad to only appear on certain categories, or certain pages, please let us know via a note when you place your order and we can take care of that when we approve your ad.
Refunds
We do not give refunds for unused advertising funds EXCEPT in the event that we either discontinue or transfer this website. In that case, we’ll either refund unused funds or ask you if you’d like to continue with the new site owners.
We recommend you start small and try it out before making a large advertising purchase. Depending on your placement and ad, it may take a while to use those funds.
Tracking and fraud protection
We have protection in place that limits ads after a certain number of clicks by the same user to avoid click fraud.
We have ads turned off for admin so that we can work on our website without generating impressions. However, it is sometimes necessary for us to look at ads to see how they are displaying. We will try to note which ads we see and adjust tracking for impressions we generated in that case.
Once your ad is approved we can share front-end tracking link with you so you can see how your ad is doing.
Again if this Advertising FAQ didn’t answer all your questions, visit the FAQ page to ask one or contact us.
