With my subscription having just run it's course, I have to say im shocked at the amount of ads I have to plough throu in order to make my moves now. I didnt realize just how dreadfully annoying the whole thing is and it really slows down my page and to be honest, it puts me off coming here. The worst thing is that often when I click on a game, a full page ad pops up which I have to get rid of before I can see my game. Dreadfull.

Well subscriptions don't cost that much and as with most things you get what you pay for. What would be the point in them having a large volume of traffic at the site if they couldn't afford to keep it running?

one day bread and diapers will fall from the sky and nobody will have to make money anymore...

sorry - i can't help but tease. it's a service. you either pay with cash, or a little inconvenience. that said, there shouldn't be anything popping up over your screen. you can click the REPORT AD link to help us find and eliminate those. 

hopefully no ads + other great features and content will encourage you to subscribe again!

I do plan on renewing my subscription, the only reason it wasnt done automatically was because I have a new credit card. Having said that, the amount of ads is disturbing and they do pop up all over my screen and half the time im not even sure what is being advertised. This I find upsetting and dont see why anyone who comes here should have to put up with. I understand that money has to be generated but how much is enough?

great question!

i'm going to get real honest here and disclose some things i normally keep private:

sites like the new york times, wall street journal, and many others are not even profitable on their ads - and their CPMs (the amount of money they make per 1,000 pageviews) is around $3-5. 

chess.com earns about $0.20 (yes, 20 CENTS) per 1,000 pageviews because we have a lot of non-US traffic, and we aren't large enough to attract brand advertisers like the NYtimes can, plus our users view a LOT of pages, so that drives down prices. that is a fraction of what other sites make. 

if we relied on ads, that wouldn't even cover 20% of our costs. seriously. that is how bad ad revenue is. we use ads to generate SOME revenue, but also as a way to encourage people to become paying members.

trust me - i HATE ads, and i HATE having ads on the site. but this isn't a charity project - it's my full time job. i didn't even make any money for the first 2 year this site was in existence - i was living off of personal savings, so i don't feel one bit bad trying to cover my costs and make a small living for my wife and 4 kids.  

i'm not trying to tell a sob story - i'm a super lucky guy to have this as my job, but it isn't easy making it on your own in any business. 

does that help put thing in perspective?

That was some great insight into the world of web-site business. I've always been curious.

If I may, how do CPM's work? Is it just your national government that pays you for having thousands of views? And why is that?

it isn't the government. it's google and other ad networks like valueclickmedia, etc. 

Oh, that's what you meant. I thought the things you were talking about were seperate; Money you are paid for hosting ads + "CPMs". Alright thanks. 

Fair enough man, i don't expect you to do it for nothing, it is a great site but man those ads are a killer!! I should also state here that I do have a particular hatred for marketing people or those in sales!

I don't mind having to deal with ads. Seems like a small price to pay for a fantastic site like this. The only real problem I'm noticing with them is on the Vote Chess pages, where the ad on the right pushes the "Moves/Details" box down so far that you can't see the entire board if you want to go through the game. Again, I don't mind the inconvenience of ads at all, but something like that seems more like a major hinderance to one's enjoyment of the site. Anybody know if there's some way around that? (Besides upgrading).

Hmmm....I dont know I kind of enjoy the ads, they offer me a sec to ease the pressure of my mind after particularly tough games.

Just my two cent

me

If you're using IE, try downloading hosts.zip at http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm  It should block all ads, except for the wholesale chess ad.

If you have IE7, you can also try IE7pro from http://www.ie7pro.com/ .  (In spite of appearances, it's not made by microsoft.)  It blocks ads as well, and it functions a lot like the add-ons for Firefox.

Ok, thanks.

Wow, such a candid answer -- not everyone will always understand even though the ads and the system are all very reasonable, and I think because there are always a certain % of customers that will be very disagreeable many owners give cookie cutter responses but this is quite frank and personable, very nice.

I see on the main page you have over 1,000,000 members, wow!  I don't know how late my congratulations is, but this site really is great!  I'm happy to see it's caught on in a big way.

I'm pretty sure there are several sites that demand subscription only for a weak try at the articles content chess.com offers freely here. When I first joined chess.com, I found it really hard to believe I could play as many online and live chess games as I want. I've also heard erik say (with my very own ears) playing regular chess will always be free on chess com, which is also a great commitment.

Besides, I find the ads tidy enough and I'm not getting any pop ups in chess com, I never had even one pop up. I'm just using regular firefox with no special customization, so it could be about the user's browser or malware. I've seen malware that can pop up advertisements on literally any site you're browsing. My only problem is an annoying ad script that keeps freezing firefox regularly like 3~4 seconds, but it turned out it was the ad server's fault and there's nothing to be done except turning off scripts.

I have been seriously considering subscribing, but the ads in the past month or so have become obnoxious. Even if I subscribe, I will be uncomfortable recommending more friends to join here because of these ads, at least the way they have been lately.

Normally I don't mind the ads, and I have even clicked through several of them, especially the rare chess-related ad. In recent weeks, however, I've been getting obnoxious ads. There was the girl and guy who ran onto the entire screen blabbing about a vacation. Yesterday there was a full screen ad for a duck game which broke the scrolling in Safari. Today I'm getting an ad that yells "congratulations" at me.

Does chess.com have criteria for acceptable ads? Are ads that play audio without warning OK? Are kids getting the Evony ads with the blinking boobs? I've reported a couple of these annoying ads, but for all I know, chess.com is fine with these type of ads, and I'm wasting my time.

soundso,

did you read Erik's post above ?

Hi RetGuvvie98, I did read his posts above, and popping-up ads were addressed, but not non-popping up ads with automatically-playing audio. I did get a PM that said those should also be reported. So that's great; I'm glad chess.com wants to keep the ads reasonable.

absolutely, report any ads you see that are offensive, along with the reason you find it offensive.

also, if you find a visual effect that is offensive - take a screenshot if you can, and save it (paste in a word doc, or gif or other format).

make the abuse report to help and support - and when you get a 'ticket number' back in email, send second report - using same ticket number and add the offending material - so they can see what you saw.

They sometimes have trouble opening some things, but pdf files are always easy to open.

regards,

((( satisfied with paid membership, wouldn't want to see the ads myself.  my wife got disgusted with it, and paid too.)))