New Ads System, No More Third Party Ads

I have created a new system for ads on Lospec, which might not sound very exciting or cool, but I promise it will improve your expirience! 

Before this we had programatic ads from various ad networks, and there's a few problems with that: they track you, they're completely irrelevant and often scams, they force annoying cookie confirmation popups, they cause weird page loading bugs, they don't fit the layout of the site well, they are distracting. And ads just suck, they are so annoying. I didn't want them either, but unfortunately websites cost money to run.

At first it was worth it because they were making a decent amount of money which helped offset server costs, but over this year the amount they earned was steadily declining. It was getting harder and harder to justify how annoying they were.

So now they have been removed and replaced with a new system! A much less annoying system!

The New Ad System

The new Lospec ad system is built into the site, and powered by our existing patreon subscriptions. Patrons can upload a 256x256 image ad with a link to their website that will get shown in various places across the site. To keep the ads relevant, we are restricting them to things that use low-spec art, or are related to art or games. 

Site wide ads are for now restricted to the top patreon tier (dragon), but users of any tier can upload an ad to be displayed on their own profile and content they submitted. A small percentage is also reserved for Lospec-related self ads. 

Ads views are divided up evenly between all dragon-level patrons, and then between all of their active ads. There is a new ads page where you can manage your ads and see how many impressions and clicks they each got.

If you are interested, check out the sponsor page. If you want to ensure your ad is suitable before joining, you can submit it through that page and wait for it to be approved, or you can contact me through email or discord for more information.

Thanks for reading this article! Let us know what you thought in the comments below.