Such a shame. A bad week for the web
The Deck ad network is shutting down
21–30 of 108 posts
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did people ever click on banners after like 2002? CTR on these things are abysmal. The whole ad business reeks of desperation. However, it does pay the bills, so I guess it actually works.
CTR isn't the only KPI by which ads are sold. These days, publishers understand that ads still influence even if normal users don't actually click. When a purchase is preceded by an impression from my ad network, in some cases I can get credit for a portion of it.
Agree that CTR isn't the main metric that matters from a business perspective, but it's the one to verify the statement "no one clicks on banners".
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#23Whenever I noticed that a site I'm visiting is "powered" by DECK, I was whitelisting it in the adblock. I hate ads, but I totally get that they keep things going in the Net, and so if there have to be ads they should be like the DECK: no tracking, no profiling, no being invasive. It's really a shame that an opposite of that triumphs today. In the long term it's gonna be painful for the users, for publishers, for the…
Me too. I liked Deck and Carbon ads.
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#24Whenever I noticed that a site I'm visiting is "powered" by DECK, I was whitelisting it in the adblock. I hate ads, but I totally get that they keep things going in the Net, and so if there have to be ads they should be like the DECK: no tracking, no profiling, no being invasive. It's really a shame that an opposite of that triumphs today. In the long term it's gonna be painful for the users, for publishers, for the…
Me too. I liked Deck and Carbon ads.
Carbon is still there… owned by BuySellAds who also bought Fusion and absorbed it into Carbon, or something. (Fusion's website redirects to Carbon.)
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#25It's worth noting because this was an ad network that tried to do the job the right way. The heyday of the indie blog was already over, this is just a reflection of that. It worked for a while, and the wold has moved on. It's not a matter of "grinding it out" or persistence, the market factors have simply changed. I wonder what Daring Fireball (AFAIK by far the site with largest readership on the Deck) will do. I'm s…
Not quite the same thing, but it is sort of heartening that Marco Arment -- of Tumblr, Instapaper, and now Overcast fame -- was able to build out his own non-scummy ad buying platform for his Overcast app. It seems to be doing quite well. https://overcast.fm/account/buy_ad
I know one person who ran a listing so far and they are very happy. It's about putting the right sort of "ad" in the right place. Advertising podcasts in an ad where people are listening to podcasts is a no-brainer and engagement should be high.
Advertising arbitrary services, even if they're good, on arbitrary blogs seems trickier to price and sell. But with the quality of the sites in the network, I'm sure they could all individually find the right, complementary type of advertising to continue to fund them.
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#26I guess being humane doesn't really work in the advertising industry.
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not quite the same thing, but it is sort of heartening that Marco Arment -- of Tumblr, Instapaper, and now Overcast fame -- was able to build out his own non-scummy ad buying platform for his Overcast app. It seems to be doing quite well. https://overcast.fm/account/buy_ad
I know one person who ran a listing so far and they are very happy. It's about putting the right sort of "ad" in the right place. Advertising podcasts in an ad where people are listening to podcasts is a no-brainer and engagement should be high. Advertising arbitrary services, even if they're good, on arbitrary blogs seems trickier to price and sell. But with the quality of the sites in the network, I'm sure they cou…
What makes podcast ads so much better? I'm not referring to overcast ads.
I think the only thing I've ever bought based on a podcast ad is BackBlaze, but I do find podcast ads for the podcasts I listen to much better, more relevant, etc., I've just never been in the market for most of what they are selling.
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me too. I liked Deck and Carbon ads.
Carbon is still there… owned by BuySellAds who also bought Fusion and absorbed it into Carbon, or something. (Fusion's website redirects to Carbon.)
We're very much alive! Thriving, even. And yes, we merged AdPacks, Yoggrt, Fusion, and Carbon into just Carbon. Been growing the network ~20-30% or so year over year. The simplicity of the model still works well.
Where we deviated from The Deck's model is that we made some changes a few years ago that are working quite well. On the advertiser side we started selling on a cost per thousand impression basis vs a fixed monthly price per "slot". And on the publisher side we started paying them a dynamic rate based on traffic and performance of the ads vs. a fixed monthly amount. Hope that doesn't come across the wrong way - just a fundamental difference that I believe is one of the reasons why an otherwise incredibly similar business can work well for one, but not for the other.
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#29This makes me sad. We based our Ethical Advertising concept that we're doing on Read the Docs ( http://docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ethical-advertising.htm... ) on their inspiration. We don't have nearly as much mobile traffic (only ~6%), so hopefully we will be able to make it work, but this doesn't fill me with confidence.
You should join us at Carbon :)
Re: The Deck ad network is shutting down
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know one person who ran a listing so far and they are very happy. It's about putting the right sort of "ad" in the right place. Advertising podcasts in an ad where people are listening to podcasts is a no-brainer and engagement should be high. Advertising arbitrary services, even if they're good, on arbitrary blogs seems trickier to price and sell. But with the quality of the sites in the network, I'm sure they cou…
What makes podcast ads so much better? I'm not referring to overcast ads. I think the only thing I've ever bought based on a podcast ad is BackBlaze, but I do find podcast ads for the podcasts I listen to much better, more relevant, etc., I've just never been in the market for most of what they are selling.
The way most of them are delivered makes them more like native advertising. As long as a percentage of listeners engage, it has value, and that percentage is higher than engagement via sidebar ads on the Web it seems.
There's also a certain remaining level of novelity in podcast advertising that helps it command a premium, although I suspect this is beginning to diminish.