"Better adverts" Topic

Would it be possible to make adverts more relevant?

This might help incresse advertiser interest and thus revenues!

For example…

A higher proportion of ads from the same continent as me. I almost never buy from outside Europe!

A higher proportion of ads connected to boards that I have on my first page. If I don't read any of the scifi message boards then showing me scifi ads is probably not going to help the advertiser or be interesting for me!

Just a suggestion of course

Those are technical points only the Editor and his IT people can answer. In the abstract, sure, you can rig ads for location and area of interest, but the TMP software or advertising contracts might not be rigged for it.

I can suggest things the advertisers might do, though:
1. Stop relying on their own fame and consistently mention figure scale. If I have to do a search to determine whether Black Hat is 28mm and Black Tree 15mm or the other way around, I might not bother.
2. Be redundant on their web sites. I'm sure they all mention somewhere how many figures are in a package, and what Price Code "C" means in money, but it's usually not there next to the figures I'm looking at, and sometimes it's surprisingly tricky to find at all.
3. Don't make me learn a new login ID and create a new password. If I pay with PayPal, they'll tell you where to ship the stuff. I've had companies from which I was unable to buy figures because I couldn't find the old password and couldn't create a new one because they already had a password associated with my e-mail address.

I'm getting a little tired of having to tackle retailers and hold them down while I stuff money in their pockets. As we speak, I am busy not placing a hundred dollar order because my experience picking up merchandise at a convention and paying for it has been so unrelentingly grim and frustrating.

If people want my money, they should try to make it easy for me to give it to them.

A higher proportion of ads from the same continent as me. I almost never buy from outside Europe!

Two ways to do it, off the top of my head.

First, it could be based on a reader's declared location in their member settings. The possible problem is that someone could lie and say "South Africa" (for example) just to miss seeing certain advertisements.

Second, it could be based on IP address. I think this would mostly work, but some readers would see ads for the wrong areas just because of how IP addresses work.

A higher proportion of ads connected to boards that I have on my first page. If I don't read any of the scifi message boards then showing me scifi ads is probably not going to help the advertiser or be interesting for me!

We already do this, in the sense that if you are on (for instance) the WWII boards, you will see a higher proportion of WWII-oriented banner ads.

Three excellent point from Robert, there!

' The possible problem is that someone could lie and say "South Africa" (for example) just to miss seeing certain advertisements.'

More than offset by people not lying and seeing ads from their own area. The liers simply to see lots of adverts from a different area anyway – so what?

"it could be based on a reader's declared location in their member settings. The possible problem is that someone could lie and say "South Africa" (for example) just to miss seeing certain advertisements."

That's what I would prefer. I wasn't suggesting that I never get ads from outside my continent, just that where possible a higher proportion would come from within my continent.

"We already do this, in the sense that if you are on (for instance) the WWII boards, you will see a higher proportion of WWII-oriented banner ads."

I didn't know that! Great!

I am not a manufacturer or a vendor, just a consumer. However, you may want to check with or at least inform your paying advertisers before you limit their access to just certain parts of the international market that is TMP. I'd hate to see you take a hit in the wallet over advertisers being turned off by limited reach.