Finally Some News

[IcePack]

Screen shot of ad

Is that just an example ad or a real ad? If it's a real ad, it's not very well executed. You can't even tell what it's advertising.

Not CC's problem.

CC is advertising exactly what the advertiser is giving them, I would assume.

Actually, it is CC's problem. From a user standpoint, its a bad experience. Consider that many freemiums are brand-new to the site and are checking things out before deciding to pay premium. Not only do the ads give a poor first impression, but there is nothing indicating that a premium account would eliminate the advertisements.

Furthermore, because these ads are purposely created to cause confusion, it appears to new gamers as if the ads are referring to Conquer Club itself. CC is setting themselves up to lose customers who click on these ads and end up joining a completely different game site.

Imagine how this would appear to a new player to the site, sitting just above your game:


Its confusing and misguided and I guarantee its going to bite CC in the ass in the long run.

And as others have noted, re: "slippery slope" - its only a matter of time before the forums are littered with ads as well.

This +1. I signed up for this site and literally as fast as I could click around, see the options, no ads, and maps I pulled out my wallet and bought premium. Before my first game even completed! I signed up for 4 and went "I want much more than that!"

If this was in place back then, there likely would be 1 less premium player today.

[IcePack]

Thank God I have google AD block

Just a note to those free players out there: please consider disabling Ad Block for this domain. We make a pretty fun community and gaming experience available for free to many thousands of people, and allowing the (relatively unobtrusive) ads to be displayed allows you to give back to your community without paying your own money for it.

As someone who has purchased a number of premiums over the 2-3 years I've been around there is zero chance I would ever do that, even though I love the website! Having NO ads (not even text!) made this a very attractive place for me to game when I first signed up (and bought premium). Especially considering I left several OTHER sites that were running ads for that very reason.

[Metsfanmax]

Thank God I have google AD block

Just a note to those free players out there: please consider disabling Ad Block for this domain. We make a pretty fun community and gaming experience available for free to many thousands of people, and allowing the (relatively unobtrusive) ads to be displayed allows you to give back to your community without paying your own money for it.

I always run adblock, and if I were freemium, I definitely wouldn't change it. I'd probably get adblock just to not see the advertisement. I care more about my own computer than I care about this site, and so should everyone. I didn't know lojalty to this site meant exposing yourself to the risk of getting malware.

There is zero risk of getting exposed to malware from text or static image ads. That might only happen if the ads were, say, loading some Javascript. That is not what is happening here.

Of course the ad links to another site. That ad is not just text or images like you thought. What made you think that? What sort of company would place ads on a website without providing links to the website they want you to visit?

The ad is still just text or an image. It may link to another site, but if you don't click it, you'll never expose yourself to anything harmful (not that I expect there is meaningful risk in clicking them, but there is definitely no risk if you avoid clicking them). So if your reason for continuing to use ad blocking itself is that just loading the ad on your page can expose you to malware, then your fears are unfounded.

Thank God I have google AD block

Just a note to those free players out there: please consider disabling Ad Block for this domain. We make a pretty fun community and gaming experience available for free to many thousands of people, and allowing the (relatively unobtrusive) ads to be displayed allows you to give back to your community without paying your own money for it.

This isn't how Adsense works. To make money off Adsense, someone needs to actually click an add. Simply keeping them displayed does nothing to "give back to your community".

Not sure where you got that information. AdSense supports reimbursement per impression as well as per click. My assumption is that we are doing the former, but I can check back on that.

[Bones2484]

Not sure where you got that information. AdSense supports reimbursement per impression as well as per click. My assumption is that we are doing the former, but I can check back on that.

Fair enough. I had wrongly assumed paid per click.

[Gillipig]

Thank God I have google AD block

Just a note to those free players out there: please consider disabling Ad Block for this domain. We make a pretty fun community and gaming experience available for free to many thousands of people, and allowing the (relatively unobtrusive) ads to be displayed allows you to give back to your community without paying your own money for it.

I always run adblock, and if I were freemium, I definitely wouldn't change it. I'd probably get adblock just to not see the advertisement. I care more about my own computer than I care about this site, and so should everyone. I didn't know lojalty to this site meant exposing yourself to the risk of getting malware.

There is zero risk of getting exposed to malware from text or static image ads. That might only happen if the ads were, say, loading some Javascript. That is not what is happening here.

Of course the ad links to another site. That ad is not just text or images like you thought. What made you think that? What sort of company would place ads on a website without providing links to the website they want you to visit?

The ad is still just text or an image. It may link to another site, but if you don't click it, you'll never expose yourself to anything harmful (not that I expect there is meaningful risk in clicking them, but there is definitely no risk if you avoid clicking them). So if your reason for continuing to use ad blocking itself is that just loading the ad on your page can expose you to malware, then your fears are unfounded.

If it is clickable, some poor sods will click it, might even be a missclick. Blocking ads makes sure you don't do that. Btw the company doesn't care how many can see the ad, they care about how many click it. So if everyone sees the ad but no one click it they will not bother paying for the ad for very long.
If you have no plans to click on the ad, running adblock will just make sure you won't click it by misstake. Why would you be against players guarding themselves from missclicks?

This is the wrong way to influence players into buying preemium. It won't work, people won't buy preemium because of it and new players will think this is a cheap crappy site, and we all will feel we've sunk a little lower. If only the ad was honestly made, you know actually promoting a site, not trying to look like part of this site. Then I would be more okay with it. That's one evil ad! It makes no attempt to distinguish itself as an ad but tries to look like an integral part of the design.

[Metsfanmax]

If it is clickable, some poor sods will click it, might even be a missclick. Blocking ads makes sure you don't do that. Btw the company doesn't care how many can see the ad, they care about how many click it. So if everyone sees the ad but no one click it they will not bother paying for the ad for very long.
If you have no plans to click on the ad, running adblock will just make sure you won't click it by misstake. Why would you be against players guarding themselves from missclicks?

This is the wrong way to influence players into buying preemium. It won't work, people won't buy preemium because of it and new players will think this is a cheap crappy site, and we all will feel we've sunk a little lower. If only the ad was honestly made, you know actually promoting a site, not trying to look like part of this site. Then I would be more okay with it. That's one evil ad! It makes no attempt to distinguish itself as an ad but tries to look like an integral part of the design.

I agree that the particular ad shown in the posted screenshot was actually confusing, because it wasn't entirely clear what it was about, or that it even was an ad. We can look into ways to fix this, such as adding a message nearby that says it is a paid advertisement.

By the way, please don't think this is a way to bully people into buying premium! The fact is, it's not actually free to the site owners to support free accounts -- it costs money in terms of the bandwidth provided to those players. This is a way of (minimally) recouping the losses that are incurred by giving people access to the site for free.

[lostatlimbo]

I would be surprised if CC got much traction by offering only impression bidding (and it is not per impression, btw, its per 1K impressions). Its very expensive and doesn't make sense for most advertisers. I would bet good money that it was per click because the ads showing (all of which were as misleading as the one posted) were geared towards getting the most clicks.

It looks like more normal ads are showing now though. Perhaps they switched to show only text ads. Glad they wised up some.

[Ffraid]

... small Text Ads (NO graphic or flash)...

Btw, the earlier screen grab was one of 2 ads that I saw yesterday and was, as others have stated, confusing and, imo, graphical. The other ad was a graphic that had a "Play" button that flashed at you. Definitely more annoying, but also more clearly an ad. I can't get either of those to come up today. Here is a grab of the only ad I have seen today (along with a little of the surrounding page to give you an idea about placement):



Much more along the lines of the text ads that were promised.

[bedub1]

<Removed>

[Metsfanmax]

There is zero risk of getting exposed to malware from text or static image ads. That might only happen if the ads were, say, loading some Javascript. That is not what is happening here.

...

Lol. This information provided is incorrect. Please educate yourself.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/secu ... n/ms04-028
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ ... rough-ads/
http://blog.armorize.com/2010/12/hdd-pl ... rough.html

These instances happened with banner ads that were in SWF or other file formats. None of the major malvertising incidents have occurred by injecting malicious code into static image elements; nor could they have been. Also, unless you are viewing Conquer Club through Microsoft Word, I'm pretty sure your first link is not relevant

<div class="google-ads" style="float:right">
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "ca-pub-6216198132780907";
/* CC-Test */
google_ad_slot = "4721433919";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

I"m not a web developer, but that looks like javascript to me.

Yes, you insert the JS code that Google gives you, to tell the browser where to pull the ad from. The ad itself doesn't come with its own JS or any other active code, it's just a static image that is pulled from the Google server, and that has already been (automatically) screened on their end. There's honestly absolutely no reason to worry if you don't click the links, and very little reason to worry if you do (because Google does screen what they're displaying).

At any rate, you certainly do not have to disable ad blocking on this site. I'm just asking people to consider permitting ads to display; I tend to do this for all small-business type websites that I support, and I think it is a nice gesture. But it's up to you; I just want everyone to make an informed decision.

[bedub1]

<Removed>

[betiko]

I would be surprised if CC got much traction by offering only impression bidding (and it is not per impression, btw, its per 1K impressions). Its very expensive and doesn't make sense for most advertisers. I would bet good money that it was per click because the ads showing (all of which were as misleading as the one posted) were geared towards getting the most clicks.

It looks like more normal ads are showing now though. Perhaps they switched to show only text ads. Glad they wised up some.

well it all depends on the CPM you get and the click rate. CPC isn't necesairly the best value for money for the advertiser. There are tons of other models anyway. CC isn't a huge site either. They're not gonna make much with their page impression volume and I guess they're just getting pennies bringing the revenue (whatever the model) to a CPM basis.

[hwhrhett]

Yes, you insert the JS code that Google gives you, to tell the browser where to pull the ad from. The ad itself doesn't come with its own JS or any other active code, it's just a static image that is pulled from the Google server, and that has already been (automatically) screened on their end. There's honestly absolutely no reason to worry if you don't click the links, and very little reason to worry if you do (because Google does screen what they're displaying).

Let's read the articles headline: Yahoo, Fox and Google Inadvertently Spread Malware through Ads

So sure Google does screen what they are displaying, and yet they missed stuff. Ads are 187 times more likely to infect your computer with malware then Porn website. This is a fact. Deal with it.
EDIT: The article about the images vulnerability was to show that simple static images can still causes problems.

FACTS, these ads will cause technical issues.....

[greenoaks]

Yes, you insert the JS code that Google gives you, to tell the browser where to pull the ad from. The ad itself doesn't come with its own JS or any other active code, it's just a static image that is pulled from the Google server, and that has already been (automatically) screened on their end. There's honestly absolutely no reason to worry if you don't click the links, and very little reason to worry if you do (because Google does screen what they're displaying).

Let's read the articles headline: Yahoo, Fox and Google Inadvertently Spread Malware through Ads

So sure Google does screen what they are displaying, and yet they missed stuff. Ads are 187 times more likely to infect your computer with malware then Porn website. This is a fact. Deal with it.
EDIT: The article about the images vulnerability was to show that simple static images can still causes problems.

FACTS, these ads will cause technical issues.....

who cares, they are only freemiums

[agentcom]

I am not a fan of the misleading ads. I generally hate those types of ads that look like you can download something (or whatever). Seems like with niche website like ours, there would be some quality ads that could get clickthroughs due to merit rather than confusion.

However, I will say that it was brilliant to do this alongside the free speed games update. Don't look now, but I think somebody is figuring out how to run a website

The new medals are cool. Can't wait to get a couple!

RDS, can I leak that you're testing having the cursor start in the username field when you're at the login page? Ooops, I think I just did. I believe that that is one of the minor fixes that's in the works

[codierose]

Thank you guys for the updates! Diamond or Platinum... i don't really care. just glad to see progress.

thought it was going to be called Onyx

personally hate the colour of the medals look terrible against the gold ones and when there all Onyx,Diamond or Platinum ? ? they are just a Grey teal blur on my screen.

[Leehar]

How has nobody said it yet.

It's the beginning of the end, Uwaaah!

[rdsrds2120]

Hey! I'll be catching up and replying to comments soon. I was very ill over the last couple days and didn't have a chance to form thoughts. Til then,

BMO

[MoB Deadly]

Thank you guys for the updates! Diamond or Platinum... i don't really care. just glad to see progress.

thought it was going to be called Onyx

personally hate the colour of the medals look terrible against the gold ones and when there all Onyx,Diamond or Platinum ? ? they are just a Grey teal blur on my screen.

I personally actually don't like the colors either

But I think they will grow on me. I am just happy they extended the medal caps for the long term players

[Swifte]

Hey! I'll be catching up and replying to comments soon. I was very ill over the last couple days and didn't have a chance to form thoughts. Til then,

BMO

do you suspect you were poisoned in any way by a freemium who is opposed to ads?

[DoomYoshi]

The Ads shouldn't be there for New Recruits, based on lostatlimbo's comments.

[DoomYoshi]

Hey! I'll be catching up and replying to comments soon. I was very ill over the last couple days and didn't have a chance to form thoughts. Til then,

BMO

Copycat

[Gillipig]

Hey! I'll be catching up and replying to comments soon. I was very ill over the last couple days and didn't have a chance to form thoughts. Til then,

BMO

do you suspect you were poisoned in any way by a freemium who is opposed to ads?

Poison isn't cheap, it was probably a premium user who poisoned him.
I have an alibi btw .

[sdh]

smart updates which will probably increase premium members. will the medal cap not be lifted for general achievement and general contribution medals? and the ads aren't annoying at all, just ignore them!

[betiko]

how is the fix going guys? hope you're finding the solution!