The future of Community Promotion, Open Source, and Hot Network Questions Ads

Question

September update: The ads are now live! As a way to try to address some of the concerns about the voting period being too short, we're running the selected ads that score 6 or more, or any ads scoring 4 or more with no downvotes. You can see the full list of selected ads by running this query (thanks to Glorfindel and Slate for the help with it). From the 34 sites selected for the trial, 30 sites had at least one ad proposal, and 24 have at least one ad making it through the score threshold to be displayed; a total of 119 ads were selected, and Code Golf & Coding Challenges was the site with the most ads selected, with 19 selected proposals.

From now 'til the end of the year we'll monitor the ads' performance, as well as any reports we get about any of these. If you see something that looks broken or have questions please post those in separate questions using community-promotion-ads and we'll have a look. Otherwise, stay tuned for updates on next steps in Q1 2022!

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June update: The ad collection posts on all of the sites listed below for the trial period have been posted. Submissions and voting will be open through August 2nd. Thank you for all the feedback — I tried to address most of it, and hope to be able to address some of the outstanding concerns (particularly surrounding ad rotation, etc.) after the trial is over.

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It's now May, and if Community Promotion or Open Source Ads are something you care about, you may have noticed that there hasn't been a 2021 refresh yet. In case you missed this post, please check it out for some details about why the refresh was pushed back, and why a project around the rethinking of that initiative made its way into our roadmap for Q2 2021.

Here I'll focus mostly on the format for a new initiative that'll be broader so it can encompass the goals the Community Promotion and Open Source Ads initiatives tackled, along with a replacement for the Hot Network Questions Ads, and even some other types of ads that Nicolas has experimented with in the International SOs (like this, or ads that link to Meta posts like this). That means your communities can get three different types of ads for the price of one... which, by the way, is for free! ;)

The Goals

Some of the goals of this initiative you may already be familiar with, since we're iterating on the existing Community Promotion and Open Source Ads initiatives. To put it simply, Stack Overflow's variant of Community Promotion Ads focuses on highlighting open source projects, whereas the rest of the network allows for promotion of basically anything that each specific community might find interesting or important.

In addition to that slight variation, we're introducing a new additional goal that applies to all the sites. This is the bit that comes in to replace the now-retired Hot Network Questions Ads, and is broad enough to allow for promoting main site and meta content specific to each community.

With that being said, the revised guidance/goals for the initiative reads:

• Community Promotion Ads (all non-SO sites)
  The goal of this initiative is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.

• Open Source Ads (SO only)
  The goal of this initiative is to promote advertisements soliciting the participation and contribution of programmers writing actual source code. This is not intended as a general purpose ad for consumer products which just happen to be open source. It's for finding programmers who will help contribute code or other programmery things (documentation, code review, bug fixes, etc.).

• "Hot Network Questions"¹ Ads (all sites)
  This initiative has an added goal of providing your community with an opportunity to showcase exemplary questions from your main site, as well as frequently-linked-to guides from your Meta site. While the latter makes sense to be shown solely on this site, the former can be shown all across the network. These should avoid hot button topics, and instead focus more on evergreen questions that show what your community’s all about.

To clarify, and at the risk of repeating myself, all of these initiatives would be bundled into a single post, and the above guidance is a template split up only so it's easier to understand what bits replace the currently existing initiatives.

Further Guidelines

As is mentioned in the roadmap post, as well as my answer from a month ago, one of the reasons for reworking this initiative is the unmaintained old code that the current format relies on. Additionally, while having these ads be generated dynamically over the course of the year they run based on their fluctuating score is nice, it also produces overhead in terms of making sure the ads are compliant with our guidelines. The revised format will instead rely on an open collection period, at the end of which a "snapshot" of the ads that make the cut will be collected so they're run during the next year. We're proposing a single "submission season" at the beginning of the year, that runs for 1 month across all the sites where the initiative is run, after which all the posts with a minimum score of 6 will be selected and run for the coming year.

Obviously, all proposed ads need to abide by our Code of Conduct. Additionally, given we're trying to align this initiative with our Ad Team's regular ad campaigns' structure, our ad creative guidelines will also generally apply (note that the first 2 bullet points on the “Tracking” section do not apply, and a lot of the guidelines surrounding claims, comparisons, proof, etc., while still applicable, may not be particularly relevant for this initiative). Finally, ads can not be promoting products nor soliciting programmer time or resources for: knowledge sharing or collaboration tools for technologists, or for sites where ad buyers are primarily targeting technologists.

Formatting bits

When the collection posts go out, they'll provide a detailed list of requirements surrounding file formatting names, sizes, clickthrough URLs, etc. For now, the two new bits worth highlighting are:

• Whereas the current initiatives only allow for right sidebar ads (300x250), the new initiative will also allow users to submit banner ads (728x90). We recognize that not all sites currently have banner ads, so it's possible that if the inventory to be displayed on a given site is too low, we'd need to put measures in place to ensure users aren't getting exposed to the same ad(s) over and over again.
• Whereas ads submitted in the current initiatives will only be displayed on the site where they're submitted (so, the MSO post will collect ads to display on SO, for instance), the new initiative will allow users to specify whether the ad should be displayed on the same site (mimicking the Community Promotion and Open Source Ads format), on all other sites (mimicking the Hot Network Questions Ads format), or on a subset of other sites (say, on all the tech sites). This'll also mean the CM team and the communities will need to work closely when defining their target audiences, to ensure the ads are relevant and not disruptive to the communities where they're being displayed.

Reporting

One of the benefits of revising this initiative, as I'd explained here, would be that we'd be able to provide the communities with more detailed reporting of how your ads are performing. As I worked with our Ads team in this initiative, a few things came up as the bare minimum of what we can report back on:

• Metrics:
  • Impressions
  • Clicks
  • CTR
• Dimensions:
  • Date
  • Site
  • Line Item (Type of campaign, e.g.: "Hot Network Questions,"¹ Open Source, Community Promotion)
  • Creative

We'd like to hear from you on whether there are any other things you'd like to see reported, bearing in mind that we can't promise to publicly share any that could potentially be used to reveal trade secrets to competitors.

Trial

Since we're approaching the middle of the year, we thought running a trial through the end of 2021 might be appropriate. Last year there was a low level of engagement on many of the sites where I posted these, so given that we're running a trial on the 34 sites where at least one ad made it to the minimum score of 6 in 2020:

• Academia
• Android Enthusiasts
• Apple
• Ask Ubuntu
• Biology
• Bitcoin
• Blender
• Chemistry
• Christianity
• Code Golf & Coding Challenges
• Code Review
• Cross Validated
• Cryptography
• Data Science
• English Language and Usage
• Ethereum
• Gaming
• GIS
• Information Security
• Mathematica
• Mathematics
• Mi Yodeya
• Movies & TV
• Music: Practice & Theory
• Physics
• Role-playing Games
• Science Fiction & Fantasy
• Skeptics
• Stack Overflow
• TeX - LaTeX
• Unix and Linux
• WordPress
• Worldbuilding
• Writing

In June I'll post a collection question with the guidance defined above for these sites, where the communities will be able to post proposed ads that fall under the Community Promotion Ads (or Open Source Ads on SO) guidance, and also the guidance for the bit of the initiative that replaces of the now defunct "HNQ" ads — all under a single collection question.

The list of sites above constitutes a good mix of topics, sizes, and levels of engagement with the initiative in 2020, so we're hoping they'll be able to give us a decent overview of how the network as a whole would engage with the proposed new initiative.

Once that's over, we'd provide the aforementioned report on how the ads did, and will also be looking at general engagement with the initiative as a whole. Additionally, given the new proposed targeting possibilities, we'll also be looking at the amount of ads getting reported since there's a possibility that some of the "Hot Network Questions"¹ ads may actually turn out to be somewhat disruptive due to their off-topic-ness. Based on what we see, we'll determine next steps — though assuming all goes well, we can start doing these on an annual basis, and adjust if there's a call for a faster rotation of ads. Stack Overflow's may be refreshed twice a year, as has been customary. Depending on the level of engagement we see, we'll then decide on whether to expand these to more sites, and potentially revise the current policy of only doing this on non-beta sites.

Conclusion

If you have questions, comments, or concerns, please leave them as an answer below. Please see the section on reporting above, and leave feedback if there's stuff you'd like to see reporting on and is not listed there. I hope I can address most of it, but can't make any promises, as usual. Please leave any feedback by May 31st.

That's prolly plenty of words for now. I hope that you find value in this initiative, and am looking forward to (manually) posting all of these in the coming month!

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¹ I'm referring to these as Hot Network Questions throughout the post, but once we roll this out we may start calling them something else since... well, given the nature of the new initiative, we won't really be looking for "hot" posts. They're more like "popular" or "frequently asked" questions, really.

Answer 1

Finally, ads can not be promoting products or soliciting programmer time or resources for knowledge sharing projects that are competitive to Stack Overflow, broadly construed.

• So, this clause was created just to eliminate those two, right?

• The "broadly construed" phrase in itself is frightening, and probably useless. Otherwise, I could easily spot many of the candidates which are for "sharing knowledge".

• Not sure to understand this clause. If the projects concerned are open-source, then Stack Overflow, as anyone else, will be able to reap the produced result, right?

I have not been and don't want to be involved in the debates that have stormed meta months ago, and initiated those linked projects above.

I think Stack Overflow as a company can and should prove itself not afraid of the community and to be above those pesky clauses and fights.

SO and the programming community itself could seriously benefit of some fresh point of view. And frankly, the chance of these becoming actual competitors of Stack Overflow are minuscule.

The result is just more stirring of what should have been settled. I was not involved, now I'm disappointed; I thought this was over.

Rise above this and let them be present (provided they meet the usual same criteria as the others, of course).

TL/DR:

There is nothing dangerous for SO/SE here. By adding this clause, it's just stirring old disturbances that should have been buried. Both SO and the community would benefit from having diversity in the knowledge sharing ecosystem. You should remove this clause, and treat all candidates the same, regardless on how "broadly construed" they seem to compete with Stack Overflow.

Answer 2

Are banner ads worth the trouble?

I almost didn't post this because I'm not really sure about this, but my initial impression is that banner ads add far more complications than they might be worth. You increase the amount of effort and knowledge necessary to post ads as people now need to be able to provide different ad formats and you also require them to understand the consequences of the ad format choices on whatever algorithm you have that selects to display ads. If this isn't done carefully, it also has the potential to annoy people because banner ads are more intrusive than sidebar ads. And most established users are above the reputation threshold where banner ads are shown, so the most active users won't ever see these banner ads.

Including banner ads feels like an unnecessary complication to me at this point. I think it would be safer to start this with sidebar ads only, and only go for banner ads if you're really sure there is a significant benefit there.

Answer 3

The revised format will instead rely on an open collection period, at the end of which a "snapshot" of the ads that make the cut will be collected so they're run during the next year. We're proposing a single "submission season" at the beginning of the year, that runs for 1 month across all the sites where the initiative is run, after which all the posts with a minimum score of 6 will be selected and run for the coming year.

That sounds extremely draconian and pretty close to a no-go for me. Community Ads evolve slowly, true, but making them be completely frozen in time for a year at a time does not allow for any flexibility at all as the conversation around them evolves, and it makes it unavailable to new users, who must wait for an average of six months before being able to propose one. (If you're looking for internal KPIs, this fails the "being friendly and welcoming to newcomers" checkbox, in a bad way.)

With this in mind:

having these ads be generated dynamically over the course of the year they run based on their fluctuating score is nice

I think "nice" is an understatement here. I would describe it more as a key feature of the mechanism.

it also produces overhead in terms of making sure the ads are compliant with our guidelines

That's fair. But what kind of overhead is this? Are they vetted by humans? Is it an automated process?

If continuous approval is not feasible, I would suggest changing the single "submission season" to a quarterly (ideally monthly?) sign-up process: set up a single thread per year, and then at the end of each quarter, any ads that have broken past the 6-vote threshold (and any that have been edited) go through any required vetting and then get added to the roster. This allows further ads to be vetted as required, without needing to re-vet any already-approved ones.

(And if the time requirements for this vetting are too much, I would submit that this implies that you do not actually have the resources to vet the ads that the communities require.)

Answer 4

• "Hot Network Questions"¹ Ads (all sites)

This initiative has an added goal of providing your community with an opportunity to showcase exemplary questions from your main site

This reminds me of the Tour which features one example question (which one can be selected by ♦ moderators). Would it make sense to integrate those features? Will ♦ moderators be able to showcase/unshowcase specific questions?

Answer 5

• Community Promotion Ads (all non-SO sites)
  The goal of this initiative is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.

The revised format will instead rely on an open collection period, at the end of which a "snapshot" of the ads that make the cut will be collected so they're run during the next year. We're proposing a single "submission season" at the beginning of the year, that runs for 1 month across all the sites where the initiative is run, after which all the posts with a minimum score of 6 will be selected and run for the coming year.

I regularly use community ads for time-bound events, launching the new ad when the event is announced or begins, and deleting the ad when the event ends. The ads have been well-received by the community. For example, one such ad currently has the second-highest number of clicks per day for the community in question.

Examples of such time-bound uses (dear reader: feel free to add to this list!):

• APL Problem Solving Competition 2021 (Code Golf)
• Dyalog APL Seeds 2021 (Code Golf)
• Stay home, save lives (Mi Yodeya)
• TUG 19 (TEX, see edit history)
• Biology moderator election 2019, 2017 (Biology)
• WHO COVID-19 (Biology)

This new system seems to prevent this usage. Please confirm that you want to get rid of my usage.

Answer 6

Request for clarification about the ad sizes:

"Whereas the current initiatives only allow for right sidebar ads (300x250), the new initiative will also allow users to submit banner ads (728x90)"

The "current" rule that was listed in your (JNat's) post on all of the non-beta sites for the 2020 community ads says:

"The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI."

which means that (600 x 500) is okay too. On Chem.SE 100% of the 10 ads used the (600 x 500) size, and 7 out of 8 ads on Phys.SE did.

I suppose that the ads that actually get shown on the right-side of the screen, end up only being (300 x 250) anyway, but it's useful to be able to show them as (600 x 500) when running these ads for election in Meta. Is it correct that the (600 x 500) option was only for running the ads for election in Meta (not for the actual ads as they appear anywhere) and that we would still have the option to post them in (600 x 500) format when running them for election?

Answer 7

I am super excited about my community coming out of beta -- predominantly because of the community ads.

I need to reach out to organizers, groups, and businesses and tell them what is happening so that they can begin designing their ads.

Trouble is, I don't know what specific dimensions to tell them to prepare and I don't necessarily know if our "submission season" will be the month of January.

Can you clarify what media is needed for submission and what timeline is for newly matured sites?

This was my last faux-attempt, but it looks like things have changed slightly since then.

Answer 8

and even some other types of ads that Nicolas has experimented with in the International SOs (like this, or ads that link to Meta posts like this).

I find the examples very interesting, but I do have 1 significant problem: I don't speak Russian. For folks who don't speak Portuguese nor Russian they're left without a significant example of the "other types of ads".