I would like to say sorry for the downtime this morning. I had some time off and did some site updates while I had the chance. I also updated all of our add ons, so everything should be current. Once again, sorry for no heads up on the downtime. Tapatalk. There have been and are going to be some major changes rolling out for all tapatalk users. Here is their email to me. Dear Forum Owners, We are excited to announce that Tapatalk is going to begin testing a free version of Tapatalk and in-app ads as a way to help you make money from mobile traffic. Moving from a paid app to a free app We recently started to offer the Tapatalk app for free for iOS devices. Since we began to test the free version, we are very happy to report a significant increase in downloads. Testing ad formats In the next few days, we will begin to test ad formats on Tapatalk. The ad formats will be integrated within topics, and there will be three formats; banner ads, app installs, and “Promoted Topics” (similar to Facebook’s Sponsored Stories). During this initial phase, we will be testing technical integrations. The frequency of ads will be very low, and many of your users may never see an ad. You can view screen shots of the ad formats in the Tapatalk Engagement and Monetization support forums. After the test We expect the test phase to run 30-90 days. At the end of test, we will have a good understanding of the performance of the various ad formats. We will also determine the revenue model, and we will retroactively share the ad revenue from the test period with you. We are excited about helping you earn money from users accessing your forum through Tapatalk. Over the next few weeks, we will provide you updates on the test and will monitor and respond to feedback on the Tapatalk Engagement and Monetization support forum. Ultimately, Tapatalk is going to place ads in your face. Lots and lots of ads. Some of the other XF owners have already had members complain about the ads getting place in the thread list, forum list, and in the threads themselves. They have even asked if they can opt-out and so far the answer is no. Currently, I have no control over the ads that are placed on tapatalk. I don't even get paid from these ads that you are seeing. Just from my testing, I have seen a few adds placed within posts and according to tapatalk we are running next to nothing for impressions and we have yet to generate any income from ads and clicks. So pending the ad rollout that they plan on doing, there is going to be some questions that need to be answered and some decisions that need to be made. If the ad rollout is going to be very in your face, and MNS does not make money from from this, I may just axe tapatalk all together. I have a very tough time serving ads in the first place, but that is what is keeping the forum online. Now to serve ads to tapatalk users just to make money for someone else is where I will draw the line. Next steps. The latest version of Xenforo actually has a pretty decent responsive design. I am currently wrecking it with our ads, but that is something that I am going to fix over the next week. I am going to try my best to get our responsive design all fixed up today. I do encourage everyone to try it out. Basically just us MNSubaru.com from your browser. Currently there are just a few issues with the oversized banner ads (setup for desktop). Once I dial in the ad space for mobile, everything should be back to a more normal browsing experience. I also encourage you to let me know if you are seeing ads in tapatalk. Things like frequency, size, placement, etc. I would like to know what MNS is serving to you to see if it is remotely close to what Tapatalk says they are serving. As I find out more about ad placement within Tapatalk, I will relay this information to you> Thanks Russ
