I'm torn on ads. On the one hand I recognise the revenue it brings and the benefits it can bring my own business. On the other hand, I hate obtrusive ads, especially those that block my view of whatever it is I'm actually interested in.
Moving on to the feedback; I'm not happy with the footer ads, they really annoy me. I think the ad position I most like and respond best to is the way Brave browser does it, with a uniformly styled box at the bottom right of the screen. I'm a desktop user, so I don't know how that would be different on a mobile.
In terms of the opt-out, although it's more complex I'd love to see more nuance in the opt-out settings. A few ideas for this could include;
- An opt-out option that blocks all ads except those from Hiver users (perhaps defining a minimum reputation score as well, to weed out those who just create an account to get around this option). This would hopefully encourage businesses to both set up and actively use Hive accounts.
- Opt outs by category of advert (e.g. being able to block ads for financial products, crypto ads, etc)
- Being able to select ads by geographic location - for example, ads by US-based companies are rarely relevant to me.
- Being able to block specific advertisers, or set a throttle to limit over-repetitive views of the same advert (Forge of Empires, I'm looking at you....)