New perk for paid memberships

A while back some coding was done to try to make this site a bit more mobile friendly, as a result of prodding from various quarters. At the same time, some changes were made in order to try out an optional dynamic method that Google Adsense uses to allocate space and sizing of the ads they display on the site pages. I was told by my programmer that this can make a noticeable change in revenue from Google, and was well worth implementing.

However, some people complained that the combination often produced less than satisfactory results, with the Adsense ads often feeling, well, burdensome and overpowering to the viewed pages. Personally I don't use a mobile device for my internet work myself, so I was rather oblivious to this issue. So, "out of sight, out of mind" sort of thing was at work here concerning my perspective of things.

After fielding some complaints, I asked my programmer what could be done about it, and we came up with the idea of disabling the Adsense ads for paying members and sponsors. This seemed like a reasonable compromise between ignoring the complaints completely, or disabling the new dynamic ads completely. So a week or so ago I asked him to implement this, and have been monitoring the Google Adsense stats to see what sort of impact that might have with the income resulting from those ads. There is a small impact, it seems, but I guess I am curious to see if the ability to avoid those more intrusive ads might incentivize members into becoming paying members. And if so, perhaps the increased paid memberships perhaps might offset any revenue loss caused by the above mentioned change.

So we shall see. For the time being, those Google Adsense ads are disabled for all paying members and sponsors, and unless there appears to be some drastic drop in revenue, we will run with that to see how it flies with the membership. This could flop badly with just a drop in Adsense revenue, and NO ONE thinking that a paid membership is worth getting this perk. Yes, I understand, no one really likes ANY ads, but the reality of it here is that they are necessary to keep this site afloat financially. But I can try to do the best I can to try to make them as painless as possible, whenever it seems feasible.

Oh, this does not affect the banner ads and such that I have running from my FaunaAds.com advertising front end. I felt that they have been running here for quite a long time, as is, and haven't really been much of a burden to anyone. Those will continue being displayed for all members and guests, without change. As will the classified ads placed within the classified forums, of course.