Jump to content

Advertising - Lack Of


Recommended Posts

When the dripping roast, the income from advertising, reduces or dries up, I wonder just what the financial effects will be.

If we look at this site, funded in the main by adverts - sport, transport, right down to the hospitals, how will they make up the loss of revenue?

If we look at the SPL and our club in particular, the loss of income from corporate entertaining, hoardings and Setanta will all impact, to the extent that we could be a semi-pro outfit. We would not be on our own as this loss of revenue would impact on all the clubs and some, more in need of ongoing funding than ourselves, would be first hit.

We can see it already with Channel 4 having the budget cut and ITV following suit, with no apology, as it is evident that no buyers means why advertise!

Formula 1 could be in the firing line first, high costs low returns, do not add up! Teams could pack in, drivers incomes reduce and with the growing emphasis on saving the planet, how long before it attracts activists, causing the death nail - not the best advert for your product.

Horse racing, without sponsors money, big problem.

Golf, Tiger will be the last of the big earners for a while, maybe.

The Olympics could be another casualty, not totally but big cut backs to the planned event could result.

If recovery comes early maybe the impact will be minimal but if prolonged, the mind boggles!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When the dripping roast, the income from advertising, reduces or dries up, I wonder just what the financial effects will be.

If we look at this site, funded in the main by adverts - sport, transport, right down to the hospitals, how will they make up the loss of revenue?

If we look at the SPL and our club in particular, the loss of income from corporate entertaining, hoardings and Setanta will all impact, to the extent that we could be a semi-pro outfit. We would not be on our own as this loss of revenue would impact on all the clubs and some, more in need of ongoing funding than ourselves, would be first hit.

We can see it already with Channel 4 having the budget cut and ITV following suit, with no apology, as it is evident that no buyers means why advertise!

Formula 1 could be in the firing line first, high costs low returns, do not add up! Teams could pack in, drivers incomes reduce and with the growing emphasis on saving the planet, how long before it attracts activists, causing the death nail - not the best advert for your product.

Horse racing, without sponsors money, big problem.

Golf, Tiger will be the last of the big earners for a while, maybe.

The Olympics could be another casualty, not totally but big cut backs to the planned event could result.

If recovery comes early maybe the impact will be minimal but if prolonged, the mind boggles!

If you're worried about this site, click on the "donate button" at the bottom left of every page.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does it cost money to run this website of something???

Of course not Muir-Jaggie... the site runs itself.

We are very fortunate however in having a couple of serious financial backers at the helm - Scotty and CaleyD are second only to Bill Gates in rerms of remuneration they have taken from CTO...

These guys have pensions plans that would make Fred Goodwin jealous...

:rotflmao:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you're worried about this site, click on the "donate button" at the bottom left of every page.
Quite unobtrusive isnt it :018:

Does it cost money to run this website of something???
Ummm .... Yeah !!!

We are very fortunate however in having a couple of serious financial backers at the helm - Scotty and CaleyD are second only to Bill Gates in rerms of remuneration they have taken from CTO... These guys have pensions plans that would make Fred Goodwin jealous...

:rotflmao:

I wish !!! :thumb04:

To answer the questions

YES, it costs money to run this site.

If you discard the time we (and the mods) "donate" to keep the site ticking over, or the time myself and Don spend doing R&D on upgrades/redesigns (we tend to spend more than 6 months designing, tweaking and testing upgrades before you guys ever see them) and concentrate just on the financial things then we have several things we shell out for over a typical year.

Hosting - Our hosting company is where the site is located (our webspace) and we pay a sizeable fee to them each year for this privilege. for this fee we get our webspace, a good chunk of bandwidth, our email services etc etc etc

Domain Names - We have to pay to keep these registered. Apart from CaleyThistleOnline.com, we also own other related domains and each of these costs a small sum each year (or each 2 years depending on which domain name it is)

Software - Although the main site utilises a free product called Joomla, we did pay for the basic template design and then tweaked it to our needs. The SPL Prediction League software was a paid product (but only about $20) and when we outgrew the free forum software we made what was probably our biggest purchase which is the forum/blog/gallery license of the commercial product you are using now (IPB). IPB has been a lot more reliable, a lot quicker and a lot less stressful than our previous software but the cost of this was in the hundreds. We also have an ongoing cost each year to maintain our license of IPB so that we can have access to updates and new versions.

Both myself and CaleyD have always maintained that the core services of the website should always be free to our members and we will never change that. However, because of the expenses we have, we do have to try and recoup some of our costs somehow. We are never going to get rich off the back of CTO, but if it can get to the stage where it is self-financing then we will both be happy !

Advertising - unless you have subscribed to the "sponsor" package, you will see Google Ads on the site. these bring in a trickle of revenue that pays for some of our costs when users click on them. Hopefully that may increase soon as Google are changing it so that ads served to individual users are more closely based on their browsing habits rather than just their location. (more info on the google changes later as it involves a slight change to our privacy policy)

Advertising 2 - We also have our small ads on the main site front page. We offer these to "friends" of the website or local companies at very competitive rates.

Subscriptions - We have a "sponsor" subscription package available through your profile. For 12 pounds a year you can remove the Google Ads from your forum browsing (but not main site) and also get higher quotas for things like messages, attachments and such like.

Donate - As mentioned above, there is a donate button discreetly located at the bottom left of the forum footer. This gives users an opportunity to donate if they wish. We dont go looking for donations, but always receive them with thanks ;)

So thats about it ..... we are never going to be dotcom millionaires unless we come up with the next big thing (like Facebook, Twitter etc) and sell it to Google/Microsoft for squillions of dollars, but we tick over and just about break even on our financial costs each year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When the dripping roast, the income from advertising, reduces or dries up, I wonder just what the financial effects will be.

If we look at this site, funded in the main by adverts - sport, transport, right down to the hospitals, how will they make up the loss of revenue?

If we look at the SPL and our club in particular, the loss of income from corporate entertaining, hoardings and Setanta will all impact, to the extent that we could be a semi-pro outfit. We would not be on our own as this loss of revenue would impact on all the clubs and some, more in need of ongoing funding than ourselves, would be first hit.

We can see it already with Channel 4 having the budget cut and ITV following suit, with no apology, as it is evident that no buyers means why advertise!

Formula 1 could be in the firing line first, high costs low returns, do not add up! Teams could pack in, drivers incomes reduce and with the growing emphasis on saving the planet, how long before it attracts activists, causing the death nail - not the best advert for your product.

Horse racing, without sponsors money, big problem.

Golf, Tiger will be the last of the big earners for a while, maybe.

The Olympics could be another casualty, not totally but big cut backs to the planned event could result.

If recovery comes early maybe the impact will be minimal but if prolonged, the mind boggles!

If you're worried about this site, click on the "donate button" at the bottom left of every page.

Unlike you I was not looking at this site in isolation!

I was raising the point regarding the possible lack of advertising revenue into, primarily, sport, embracing, of course, ICT.

.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its a great point AF .... Its being felt over this side of the pond quite a lot too. You hear plenty of stories of plunging advertising revenues and the resultant cutbacks.

When i first moved over here, I worked for a national newspaper in their online department and just recently a significant number of staff in both online and print areas of the company were laid off. Traditional newspapers are dying, and advertisers that may once have been taken for granted are very carefully considering where their advertising dollars are going. Many of my former colleagues no longer work there, in fact every single one of our group of 6 who went for beers together is now working somewhere else.

TV companies are also feeling the pinch especially as more and more viewers now have PVRs which can pause/rewind live telly and record programs like a normal video recorder. I know my viewing habits have certainly changed ... I almost never watch a program 'live' any more ... I record it on the PVR and might start watching it 20 or 30 minutes in so that I can fast forward through all the ads and eventually catch up with the live part of the program near the end.

I am not sure how sports have been affected as all the Toronto teams are pretty well supported and seem to have plenty advertisers but I am sure players and the teams themselves probably have less or lower priced endorsements than before.

It is definitely something to be worried about in terms of the SPL as a huge amount of the revenue stream is generated from media companies like the BBC, Setanta etc so if they feel the pinch then deals suddenly need renegotiated and this has a knock-on effect. However, looking on the bright side .... as a perpetual mid to lower half team, our income from this source via the SPL, whilst not insignificant, will not be felt nearly as badly as it will by the likes of the OF who benefit from the top heavy % payout structure based on final position.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've started seeing "advertise here" adverts appearing during commercial breaks on some SKY channels, a sure sign that companies (big and small) are making cutbacks in this area. In the past companies would have simply viewed advertising costs as par for the course, but when things get tight they then start looking at what kind of ROI they are getting and many will realise that it's probably not worth the 10's or 100's of thousands they spend.

Even those who are still advertising are using fewer "famous faces" and some companies are regurgitating and revamping old adverts. Big companies used to compete to get their names on large sporting events, or to sponsor the big teams....now they're cutting deals short and clubs, competitions etc are having to go cap in hand for that kind of financial support.

The saving grace for many will be the fact that these deals are normally done for 3 to 5 years at a time (sometimes more), so although we might not see the annual extensions we see now where a company may renew a good bit in advance, I think by the time we get 3 or 4 years down the line then economy will have recovered and/or readjusted to prevent a major fall out for most of the "larger" sports.

Football is probably better placed to ride the tide now than it has ever been. Yeah, we might see a few clubs who haven't heeded past warnings getting into trouble, but most will/should be able to trim their cloth sufficiently to see them through it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure how commercial TV is going to deal with hard drive recorders like Sky+ and freesat +,I very rarely watch programs live now but record and watch even a few minutes after "live" start, allowing me to fast forward through ads. Advertisers obviously realise this a growing habit but how will they encourage viewers to watch their ads?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. : Terms of Use : Guidelines : Privacy Policy