Forum Moderators: martinibuster
These sites, like many newspapers and magazines, exist solely by the grace of ad revenue. However, in contrast to malafide MFA sites, they provide useful, unique content to the visitor. Additionally, they do not employ any trickery to force the unwilling visitor into clicking the ad. They might feature multiple ad blocks prominently above the fold, but the ads are clearly discernable as being ads; no images, no hiding of 'ads by google', no incentivizing. The entire purpose of an ad is to be seen an acted upon by an interested individual, so I see plenty justification in making them prominently visible. Have you ever seen a magazine which hides its ads away from the reader? Or a TV channel that doesn't use prime time to broadcast its highest paying commercials? You want to give your visitor a chance to see and think about the ad, even before reading the content. If your content (and thus traffic) are of sufficient quality, your site will only attract interested people that are highly valuable to any advertiser.
I am a firm believer in the idea of building sites to generate income from adsense. As long as the tactics employed are legitimate (no arbitrage etc.) and involve no trickery of any kind, I think both the advertiser and publisher can benefit greatly from such a site. Adsense, in my opinion, is all about sending quality traffic to the advertiser. If a site provides quality traffic to the advertiser, the bottom line is that everybody wins. Who in their right mind would be bothered by the fact that the site was built with adsense in mind? Do you seriously think adverts are an afterthought in a magazine?
they provide useful, unique content to the visitor.
Then I wouldn't call them an MFA site; I see no reason to change the accepted definion of MFA, which isn't 'a site that gets income from advertising', but 'a waste of bandwidth that exists purely to get income from advertising'.
Of course, if that good content is so wrapped in ads that the site is unusable, then 'mfa' may still apply; your choice. Experience suggests you'll do better with original content that is well displayed, however.
The site you describe clearly does't just exist to get money from advertising. It does more; it provides a service. So it is almost certainly not an MFA site.
So while MFA sites remain 100% cr*p, and deserve all the insults they get, you can go in peace* ;)
*But maybe study design and how to be successful without overdoing the ads.
To use an analogy, THE NEW YORK TIMES runs ads (and obviously wants to earn a profit), but the motivating force behind THE NEW YORK TIMES isn't simply to earn money. If it were, the newspaper's owners would have ditched journalism and gotten into the hedge-fund business long ago.
What I'm trying to debate here, is that the term MFA has a lot of negative connotation to it, whereas I do believe that sites can also be legitimately 'made for adsense'.
There's nothing wrong with sites existing by ad income - for most people - and never has been.
It's the quality of the site that matters, and overdoing ads can put off repeat visitors, and encourage the use of ad blockers.
No need to feel guilty about using ads.
[edited by: Quadrille at 3:32 pm (utc) on Jan. 5, 2009]
I seriously doubt that even the new york times doesn't exist out of revenue considerations. Sure, they want to provide news, but I'm pretty sure they'd be out of business soon if their advertisers started 'banning' them for featuring prominent ads on their paper.
Nobody is suggesting that THE NEW YORK TIMES isn't interested in revenue. What I said was (and I'll use italics this time to make my point even clearer):
To use an analogy, THE NEW YORK TIMES runs ads (and obviously wants to earn a profit), but the motivating force behind THE NEW YORK TIMES isn't simply to earn money.
To continue with the periodical analogy, a site with content of intrinsic value that carries ads is like THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, or CAR AND DRIVER, while an MFA site (which exists solely for the purpose of making money with ads) is like the free "weekly shopper" throwaway publication that shows up in your mailbox or on the doormat. If you're an AdSense publisher who's chosen to go the "weekly shopper" route, then you'll need to accept the fact that weekly shoppers tend to earn far less per impression than quality publications that reach desirable demographics and/or highly-targeted audiences do.
If you're an AdSense publisher who's chosen to go the "weekly shopper" route, then you'll need to accept the fact that weekly shoppers tend to earn far less per impression than quality publications that reach desirable demographics and/or highly-targeted audiences do.
