Wowhead and Thottbot on ad strike
by Eliah Hecht 
May 6th 2008 at 3:00PM
Thottbot and Wowhead, two of the most popular WoW database sites, have been having a few problems with ads lately. There was that brief issue with the trojan in a banner last month, and also apparently some rather irritating ads with flashing and sound have been showing up lately (and I think we can all agree that ads with sound are evil). But, like much of the Internet, these sites are kept free for us because they are ad-supported, so what can they do? Well, they've gone on advertising strike.Both sites have temporarily pulled all their advertising in protest of these types of ads. And when the ads do come back, they'll be using direct ad sales only for a time, bypassing the big ad networks that were causing the problems in the first place, until the networks sort out their problems. There are two ways sites get advertising: another site emails them and asks to buy ad space (direct sales), and then they fill the rest of their space with ads from a network like Google AdSense (these are called remnant ads, since they fill the remaining space).
Wowhead and Thottbot were already telling the ad networks "don't show us these sorts of annoying ads," but the ad networks were doing their best to get around those restrictions. Cutting the networks out of the loop temporarily prevents them from making any money off Wowhead or Thottbot until they get their issues sorted out. It also prevents Wowhead and Thottbot from making any money from the ad networks, and as direct ad sales only account for a small part of the sites' revenue, this is not going to be sustainable in the long run.
Basically, they're taking a hit for the users here. Wowhead spokesperson Malgayne puts it as follows: "If our users have to see ads, I want them to at least be high quality ads." Ideally, the networks will get the message to stop putting up banners that flash, jiggle, beep, or pretend to be dialogue boxes, and everyone will get along happily again soon.
Filed under: News items, Making money
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
will May 6th 2008 3:05PM
As an near hourly user of WoWHead, I endorse this message.
Harmun May 6th 2008 3:23PM
I make a point of unblocking ads for useful, tech-heavy sites like these- I want to ensure they can stay afloat.
If they don't mind advertising gold sellers' sites or paid guides, they could probably stick with a direct relationship. There's only a few big ones out there and I hear they pay top dollar for ad space.
I know people will complain about the content of these ads, but the way I see it, the gold selling business will never go away, so I might as well take advantage of these peoples' greed and laziness for my benefit and have them pay for the bandwidth of one of my favorite sites.
Angelus May 6th 2008 4:32PM
@ Harmun
I've noticed you reply to the first poster consistantly even though your posts have nothing to to with the first poster.
Your posts are 'leach' posts. Meant only to cut in line and be on page 1.
They should be deleted. Which would also be a shame, because you have good posts, I like them atleast. If you get in line like everyone else, I sware I'll read what you have to say.
peaglemancer May 6th 2008 3:07PM
Good for them, I admire their desire to protect their own content from the lower-end of banner ad quality. That said thanks to Firefox/Adblock I've never seen any ads on their sites anyway :)
onetrueping May 6th 2008 3:07PM
Makes me wonder if they'd considered going with Project Wonderful?
JMS May 6th 2008 3:15PM
Wowhead has ads? I guess I owe AdBlock some props -- again.
PeeWee May 6th 2008 6:04PM
Indeed, I had no idea they had them.
Krick May 6th 2008 7:21PM
I use Proxomitron for my filtering and I don't see the ads either. Though, strangely, when I turn off my add filter, WoWHead pages won't load the content at all. I just get the ads with a big empty hole in the middle of the page.
...
Krick
http://www.tankadin.com
Silverrealm May 6th 2008 3:18PM
/vote hurrah for Wowhead and Thottbot!
I can't say how many times I have had my headset on and some REALLY LOUD voice goes 'Hey!' in my ear.
makishima May 6th 2008 4:01PM
or "Congratulations! You've just won a free *insert current tech gadget....usually an Ipod or Iphone*"
Algorithm May 6th 2008 3:19PM
I'd rather have ads than not have these sites at all. I'd rather have ads than pay for this site.
Annoying ads are a lot less annoying than no WoWHead or subscription WoWHead, dontchathink?
I freaking hate annoying ads, too, but if they are the way they are, because they're effective. It beeps, you look, they win.
emoser May 6th 2008 6:32PM
Actually, no--if they beep I just hit 'refresh' until the page loads again without beeping ;)
Which is a shame too, of course, since this results in more impressions that aren't deserved, but if someone wants to pay wowhead for the ability to deliver me an ad I'm not going to really look at, good for wowhead!
GrumblyStuff May 7th 2008 5:08AM
If it's annoying and causes me to block all their adds, the advertiser and the site owners lose.
BillDoor May 6th 2008 3:19PM
Fantastic! I was really getting annoyed by the noisy adds last night. Took me forever to figure it out was coming from wowhead, i thought someone was fooling around on Vent.
Charlie Taylor May 6th 2008 3:25PM
I HATE the loud "YOU HAVE WON AN IPOD" adds. Hell they were even showing up on facebook for a while. The worst part about them was that they would sound off EVERY time your cursor rolled over the add.
Paragos May 6th 2008 3:27PM
I believe the word you meant to use was boycott, not strike. Strike would mean that Wowhead and Thottbot are employees of the advertising companies.
Snailking May 6th 2008 3:27PM
I'd love to care but both of those sites are now owned by GOLD-FARMING companies. Even if you don't buy gold, you're still contributing to their profits by visiting their sites.
Frank May 6th 2008 7:18PM
EXACTLY. support these sites, and you support in-game gold farmer advertising suckage, but also real-world crime like hacked accounts. use wowwiki, people!
Malgayne May 6th 2008 8:38PM
I feel like I must say this a million times.
Hi, I'm Mal. My real name is Casey. I live in San Diego, and I work on Wowhead. I am not a goldfarmer, nor am I in the employ of goldfarmers. Wowhead has never been associated with goldfarmers.
The company that owns the ZAM Network, which Wowhead is a part of, owned IGE at one point in the past. IGE was sold before Wowhead came on board. It's as simple as that.
themann1086 May 6th 2008 3:29PM
Mad props to the owners here. Is there anyway to send them some monetary love?