Greetings everyone, Just a quick announcement. For a long time LV has been kept ad-free. Donations help us stay this way but for a while now, the Admin team has been covering the costs of LV out of pocket. While we love LV, we have wanted to explore other ways to keep up the payments LV requires and have decided to allow banner ads to appear on the site. This will start in the coming days and our goal is these ads aren't majorly intrusive. Still, we want to let you know so that it is less of a shock when they start showing up. One major reason for this change is that our donation model is severely antiquated. Most sites and communities use a subscription or recurring donation model instead of a one time donation like us and this has meant our donations have dried up over time forcing us to cover costs ourselves. As a team, we'll talk about potential changes to the donation system on LV in the upcoming weeks with the hope that future changes address these concerns. As always let us know in the Support Hub if you encounter any issues with these. I also want to stress that if you guys feel like the ads completely ruin your experience on the site, please let us know (either below or PMs). While we want to make LV sustainable, we also don't want to lose our members and need to hear from you regarding this. 15th of October, UPDATE! Turns out the ads just were not worth the bother really and started to take over the site in a way that we did not want. They have been turned off, it will take a bit of time for the site to update though.
Alright the ads are live! Let us know if you encounter issues or have any questions on these as well as your opinion on everything, let us know what's on your mind.
I'm going to reiterate this because it's very important to me. If you don't like the # of ads, the placement, the size...whatever. PLEASE let us know your thoughts. I'd much rather you guys stay on LV instead of leave cause some ads are bothering you. Ads can be shut down.
I was curious, are the cookies stuff also from here? They ask for Cookies on my laptopp and phone version
Yep, at least a part of them, I think. They are used for personalized ads, as far as I know. ...Also, on Discord, it was mentioned that the Donator Roles and Staff won't see ads. Is/Will there a way to toggle ads on/off for e.g. my VIP-Role. Wouldn't mind seeing a few ads if it helps you guys out.
Yeah the cookies prompt is to be compliant with the laws about ads and data like cookies. As for the donator roles, you are supporting us with the donations if you decided to participate in our new model we will be launching. So no need for toggling really.
Honestly, I'm glad this all happened. The ads aren't an issue at all and it's good to know that this site is at least secure monetarily. The one thing I really have to say is that it bothers me personally that the cookies thing is floating around in the bottom left of the page as opposed to being added as a new tab on the userbar on the top, but I'm sure that's a gripe only I would have.
It bugs me a bit too. At least it matches the Valcadia color scheme! I'm fairly limited in what I can do with it in terms of putting it in the nav. Unfortunately, it's a third-party cookie solution and their terms of service more than likely includes a big long "you can't use it this way" thing. I can probably use a CSS cheat to hide it on most pages beside one or two? It can also be re-positioned, but that just moves the problem instead of solves it. I'm open to any suggestions!
pops in Hello but im assuming its not suuuuper easy to mess with the placements of the ads? i have to log in every time i open the site bc incog mode and before i do sometimes i see an ad in a really funky place (like. right in between two subforums (ex. between gen pkmn and other pkmn games)) and of course when im logged in i dont need to deal with it but to non donors it just doesnt look right to have an ad for generic moba number 98567843 right smack dab in the middle of two forums i might be interested in also the ads are. way bigger than i thought lol its more like huge square ad instead of banner ad so if theres like. any way to move them to at least not pop up in random places right in the middle of a forum section thats my thoughts.... im always up for lv being supported and all but the placement of some of the ads is laughably bad imo and no beef if u cant move them its just Really Awkward rn
They're autoplaced by Google, but we're looking into other options for ad companies. They will still be autoplaced, just hopefully better.
I'm leaving this here to show you how poorly place the ads are, this is disruptive and a complete eyesore to look at. Just how much freedom did you give them when it comes to placing ads? I've never seen this bad ad placement before, is it possible to be made less obvious there's ads because this is kinda ridiculous? Spoiler
I personally haven't run into any overly obstructive/intrusive ads yet, though the one thing that's really bugging me is the big old banner ad at the bottom, as it constantly overlaps with the Catcher. I'd like to be able to see the Pokémon I encounter in full instead of being half-blocked by stuff like this. EDIT: Okay yeah, gotta go with Hrae on this one, the ads in their current state are all over the place and frankly make the site incredibly frustrating to navigate through. I really want to support LV and all, but I'm keeping AdBlocker on until something can be done with the layout.
I didnt notice it on my laptop..but here on my phone. I did notice two adds. One big one above a d the other one down. Guess need to be used of it Edit. Okay never mind abiut what I said earlier. Adds within posts. Adds above threads. Unable to see the first post again. I do not mind adds. But 5 a 6 adds per page. Everywhere. No im sorry lv. I fully support ya but this is to much
None of this is final and I wasn't aware they (the new ad company) pushed the changes live until this morning - waiting to hear back from our ad manager now on how we can get them gone for donators and relocate them. Unfortunately, the amount of ads does need to stay the same or the revenue won't be enough to cover the expenses. The positioning should be flexible with this company, though.
So far the ads haven't been a huge problem on my end. Ads are always a tad annoying in general, but I totally support why you guys have to do it! Although they are a bit all over, they haven't heavily impeded my enjoyment yet. It might be nice to only have ads at the top/bottom though? Ads in between posts on threads is a bit disruptive. But I don't know how ad placement actually works on your guys end so it may not be that simple. Thank you for being upfront with everything
Ohh, this is what the little blue cookie is for. I turned off the ad-blocker for this site. Since the ads are unobtrusive, I will be keeping it off. I like that you guys won't have to pay for the site yourself, now. Or you'll be paying less.
Thank you both very much! We're definitely looking into solutions for the thread view. I'm not seeing any ads in threads on the desktop, but the mobile placement for threads is definitely bad. It's a new tool so we're still trying to figure it out.
Ah, that explains it. The ads aren't terribly intrusive, just surprising at first. Maybe they'd be best at the bottom, so that they'll be even less intrusive?
It originally had ads at the bottom- they covered the Catcher and made seeing the Pokémon hard/had to be X'd out to even try catching the Pokémon. A ton of users voiced disliking this so it was just recently removed.
