forumuser838999 wrote:I can't see the readers ads at all. I'm used to seeing a link to them in the top level nav but it's not there, nor can I see it in the bottom nav. The old URL for readers ads now 404s.
Does this mean you've stopped doing readers ads??
The 404s might have been a glitch as servers propagated the domain switchover. It's certainly working for me.
The new site design has been heavily influenced by detailed analysis of which sectors of the site attract the most traffic, and readers' ads -- whilst popular and an essential service for many who the stats tell us come here, post their gear/wanted ads and go nowhere else, have no subscription, etc (but yes, they could be newsagent print mag buyers) -- it is not used by the majority of our 1.1 million unique monthly site visitors.
So design decisions were made to move it out of the main navigation options, to allow greater/easier emphasis on the sections of the site that were previously hidden under the 'Articles' menu. Again, the stats tell us that a huge amount of incoming traffic comes to these articles every month/week/day from the search engine article links that their bots/web crawlers index. Hence why you can now see the section menu links in bold black below the horizontal banner ad above.
And because those same stats revealed that very few of our US brethren, Europeans, Australians, Japanese etc ever read or posted an advert in Readers' Ads, we have Geo-IP targeted that section to the UK-only (it might get extended to include other regions later).
So we created 3 bright red buttons to make them stand out, and slotted them between the adverts on the righthand side of every SOS site page. And we set about improving the functionality and user management of your ads (via MY ADS, once you have submitted an advert) -- and there are plans for extras in the future, as the site develops.
You are UK-base, so should be able to see them. The screenshot should help you find them (click for a larger view).