Misleading advertisments above the fold on Drupal core release notes

This issues is longstanding and obviously getting worse. The Assoc basically is unresponsive to our worries about this and/or completely desperate looking for financial relieve in (almost) any way possible.

I agree that this ad placement crosses boundaries. I have no problem with the ads in sidebars, etc., but placing an ad in the middle of important content goes too far.

(Disclaimer I work for Acquia)

I saw this on twitter and was a bit confused/concerned as well. However looking into it, it doesn't appear to be only for this release, but added around 8.2.3's release. See examples:

• https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/releases/8.2.3
• https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/releases/8.2.4
• https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/releases/8.2.5
• https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/releases/8.2.6

Also, I don't think this is 'hardcoded' to show Acquia, because there is a screenshot in comment #8 on one of the linked issues above where it showed a different sponsor.

I'd ask/suggest the description and title be changed to reflect its an issue with a large sponsor block.

Hard coded or not Acquia is the only company currently purchasing this ad space. All of the links in your post show an Acquia advertisement for me.

The ad also undermines the role of other financial contributes as well as everyone else who contributed. Should companies cut back on supporting contrib time for their paid employees so they can afford these kind of ads? What kind of qualifications does a company need to run an ad like this?

How about something like this? It's a crude mockup but it's something to discuss.

Not only should we slide them over into a sidebar, we should make a little area for new people to get the help they need. Take a look:

http://imgur.com/mQAVIPP

@ #8

+1

Like the spirit and the fact that the ad is moved to the side.

+1 for @Ben Finklea's concept in #8.

Me too! I like @BenFinklea's concept in #8.

One could make the case that the action item for this type of page is to download the new version and anything that potentially distracts from this goal is a negative influence. If advertisements must appear on these pages, I think Ben's approach of placing them in the sidebar is certainly an improvement.

Mr SEO [that's Ben] wins again!
+1 for moving ads to the sidebar.
Hans' [NonProfit] comment is also poignant. Why confuse the user with an additional CTA?
That's a second +1 for moving ads to the sidebar.
Consider my comment a +2! :-)

I agree to ben either. To move such things to the side bar.

As I saw this page yesterday, I need to say that I was confused either. Not because it's Acquia. That doesn't matter.
But by impression, an advertising here - which is not so fast to recognize as what it is - implies it's belonging (part) of the content. In this case, that Acquia has directly something to do with building this drupal version.
It's recognized in a wrong context.

That means: +1 for #8

FWIW, the release managers already complained about this before (when it was not an Acquia ad; it's been a different ad for months but apparently that's not enough for people other than the release managers to complain about it).

There's a duplicate of this somewhere. In the meanwhile, retitling to make it clear this isn't an Acquia conspiracy. The ad was previously totally different, for a different company, since at least November or December when it was on a security release and hid the security release notes.

Ah, here we go, we eventually got frustrated enough to say something and commented on:
#2507867: Drupal.org Advertising Policy

So I think we should close this issue as a duplicate of that one, or maybe update the summary of this one to reflect the actual history of the issue.

Hard coded or not Acquia is the only company currently purchasing this ad space. All of the links in your post show an Acquia advertisement for me.

This is simply not true. It was a different ad for months and the release managers, including this Acquian, already complained about it.

I can only say that I didn't complain because I didn't see it. I do most updating via composer or drush and usually go straight to the security advisory page when I find out about it.

I agree with xjm that this is a general issue and not Acquia specific. However, the ad being Acquia makes the issue even more delicate. The ad position just makes it appear as relevant content, so users not reading every detail quickly get the impression of a "release powered by Acquia". I know and highly appreciate how much Acquia does for Drupal, but this wrong impression many out-siders get from the Drupal/Acquia relationship is not something we should enforce with ads like this.

As catch noted over at https://www.drupal.org/node/2507867#comment-11948278, this is also problematic for the google listing.

So I think we should close this issue as a duplicate of that one, or maybe update the summary of this one to reflect the actual history of the issue.

As the other issue is about the ad policy in general, it makes sense to me to keep this one specific for the release page ad. I tried to add a quick issue summary, please correct if something is wrong/missing.

Everything about Acquia in the summary is misleading and misrepresentative IMO. It's pretty meh to imply that it's more okay for any company but Acquia to pay for an ad that gets placed in that badly placed slot. (Like, at least Acquia's ad does not say on the release notes of a security release that you don't need to worry about downloading anything. :P Edit: This last sentence is facetious. I don't think it's okay for any ad to be placed in a spot that obscures the release notes and seems to be part of the release note content, for my employer or for yours.)

The problem isn't necessarily the organization that bought the ad, it's that the placement of the ad is inappropriate. The summary of this issue doesn't need to mention Acquia.

In reading the advertising policy, I agree with quicksketch that the ad shouldn't be showing at all to logged in users. I think this page could definitely be considered a project page that should be without ads. If the consensus is that it isn't a project page, then the ad needs to be moved to the sidebar so that it doesn't separate the download buttons from the release notes.

Thanks to everyone for your input, I work on the Drupal Association's revenue team, and wanted to touch on some of these concerns.

As you may know, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to host Drupal.org and have a team in place to create and maintain the developer tools that the community uses. Funding this work is quite challenging and we worked with the community to find appropriate ways to generate income, including advertising on Drupal.org that is relevant to the community.

This form of advertising is not new, and has not been limited to Acquia. We started advertising on the Drupal.org download page in 2015. Fastly sponsored the page in November 2015, and A2 Hosting just sponsored the page earlier this year. It's been a successful way to generate income to support Drupal.org and seemed to be acceptable to the community.

The sponsorship is clearly labeled according to our policies:

"The difference between content and advertising messages should be clear to the average user. How the distinction is made may vary based on the product type, placement and where the user is directed after the click (for example to a Partner’s website or a different page on Drupal.org). Methods of distinction can include:

-The ad has a visible outline, with significant distance between the ad and any other clickable content on the site
-The ad includes language that conveys partner participation
-The ad is labeled with terms such as “Advertising”, “Advertisement”, “Partner Offer”, “Supporting Partner” or “Sponsorship” to distinguish it from content"

We don’t think it’s likely to confuse visitors, however, our advertising policy is due for an update. We will roll out potential changes soon and ask for feedback as we go. Advertising is an important part of our fundraising model, and as we continue to look for ways to support Drupal.org with advertising, it’s important that we get your input to make sure our programs are aligned with the values of the community.

We can’t change the placement of the download sponsorship in the middle of a contract (it runs through April), but we are evaluating the new position recommended above before we sell it again. In the meantime, we would consider changing the language of the sponsored frame, perhaps to something like: "Drupal is developed by an open-source community of thousands of volunteers and many organizations. Drupal.org is supported in part by generous sponsors like:"

Please let us know your thoughts.

Thanks for coming to help clarify Carrie. I still have a few questions.

Are there any examples of any other open source projects selling advertisements on release announcement pages for fully open source code?

How were these advertising changes to Drupal.org originally communicated to the community? Were the core release note pages explicitly mentioned in that rollout? Have these policies changed over time? Quite a few people still seem surprised to see this despite it apparently running for more than a year already.

Wasn't the Fastly ad provided gratis to them for providing caching services to Drupal.org?

What drove the decision to sell this placement to a single advertiser instead of a rolling group of advertisers? I personally would be less concerned if there were 5 or 10 companies with their ads showing on an intermittent basis preventing a single company from dominating these pages with their message.

Why don't these ads all backlink to an explanation of Drupal.orgs advertising policies?

Who has the authority to enter an agreement with a company that guarantees these ads will display uninterrupted for the advertising period? Is drupal.org still a community-managed asset or have we completed the transition to this being a fully-controlled property of the Drupal association?

Until May 1, maybe we can make the ad look a little more like an ad.

Make the entire ad background one color (like google) (they don't much anymore now that I look into it.).
Use a different font.
Make the width a different size than the body content and off slightly from the main call to action.
Add a thin border to set this off as "not content".

Again, it's a bit rough but take a look at this:

http://imgur.com/a/7VBRR

Hopefully, Acquia can provide a transparent gif file that would fit a bit better.
As a bonus, I cleaned up the language of the ad and the call to action. (We shouldn't call it D7 and D8 on a page that new users are likely to visit.)

An aside that may affect the post-May 1 ad: It may be confusing to people that are new to the community because the most noticeable logo on the page is the advertiser. Maybe we should prohibit the use of company logos on non-directory listing style ads.

Thanks @clacina. In this case, the ad is placement is actually likely to confuse contributors. It's disruptive because it can make it appear that there is no further content on the page. In actuality there is extremely important content on the page that everyone who sees the release should be reading. If they don't read it, it's to the detriment of the whole ecosystem (because it can result in criticals, unpatched security exploits, etc.). I want to point out again that the Drupal core release managers, who create these releases in the first place, have raised concerns with this particular placement. (See on #2507867: Drupal.org Advertising Policy.)

Thanks also @quicksketch for the summary update; that helps.

Yes Carrie please read my comments on #2507867: Drupal.org Advertising Policy from several weeks ago, including screenshots, linked from the issue summary here, which is not at all addressed by your post unfortunately.

The issue still remain is

A. Where is ad pricing policy?
B. Has community agreed to it?
C. Is this shared and offered to all?
D. How much is revenue by sponsor received by DA? Why is this info not public ?

First, I apologize for missing the latest comments on the Advertising Policy issue. I’m following it, but didn’t realize my email notifications weren’t set up properly.

After this campaign ends in April, we are going to re-evaluate the position and look of the ad before we sell it again. In the meantime, I’d like to provide more background on the Download Sponsorship, and try to address as many questions as possible.

About Our Work and Advertising Initiatives

The Drupal Association supports Drupal.org infrastructure and hosting, however, we don’t just keep the lights on. We create and support critical development tools like DrupalCI and Composer. When we launched our advertising program in 2014, it helped fund many Drupal.org initiatives and improvements including better account creation and login, organization and user profile improvements, a responsive redesign of Drupal.org, issue workflow and Git improvements, making Drupal.org search usable, and improving tools to find and select projects.

We received direction from the Drupal Association board to monetize Drupal.org with advertising, and spent time interviewing representatives of the Drupal Community, Working Groups, Supporting Partners, and Drupal Businesses, both large and small to help develop our advertising strategy and guidelines.

Many open source projects include advertising as part of their download experience (MariaDB, Joomla, CiviCRM). While others include hooks for an enterprise product (Postgres SQL), require an email address prior to the download (Puppet), or don’t need advertising because it is a for-profit open-source company.

Improving the Drupal Download Experience

Prior to the Drupal 8 release in November 2015, it made sense to improve the download experience. The much anticipated release would create a surge of traffic and downloads including many who are new to Drupal and just starting their journey towards adoption and contribution. It is our mission to unite the global open source community to build and promote Drupal, and we needed to ensure that downloading Drupal was a positive experience. This was the download experience prior to our work:

Selecting a version brought you to a release page dedicated to release notes, known issues, and major changes.

This experience was problematic for a few reasons:

• There was no clear call to action
• It focused on providing the file, but gave little context
• There was no opportunity to show users which version of Drupal is right for them
• Most users did not realize that the version number was a link to release notes

We knew it was important to improve the download experience, which also provided an opportunity to show how Drupal.org is funded in part by Sponsors. The new Download experience offered these improvements:

• Gives more weight to the call to action
• Tees up important next steps including: Learn how to install Drupal, Extend Drupal to do more, Get training and Check out what others built
• Provides context and shows users which version they need
• Makes it clear that release notes are available for the version you are downloading
• Increases the information density around the call to action related to downloads

In our original mock, we had the ad in the right-hand rail. We moved it under the CTA after user research told us that users were accustomed to finding tools and more information in the right-hand rail; we considered this placement less disruptive. Current feedback suggests that the opposite is true, so we're considering moving the placement, or making it shorter so it’s less intrusive.

How We Communicate

If we are launching a major new advertising program that’s high profile or not addressed in our initial ad policy, we notify the community with a blog post and/or an issue. We understand that it’s impossible to reach everyone with these communications, and will often get the most feedback immediately after launching a new ad placement. We kept a close eye on twitter, the blog post and our issue after the ad launched in November 2015, but did not receive any strong feedback or criticism during the D8 release.

Moving forward, we will also try to improve how we address new comments on old issues that might fly under our radar.

Summing up

• Open source projects have a variety of different funding models, so everything is an experimentation. We want to iterate on these ideas as we continue to grow this revenue stream.
• Your feedback helps us figure out how to do these advertising initiatives in a responsible way, and we appreciate any ideas you have on ways to make it more effective and less intrusive.
• For the particular issue of download page ads, we'll let the current ad run to the end of its contract at the end of this month, and then re-evaluate the placement for next time.

Would it be simpler to sell something like this?

(I've moved .drupal8-sponsor above #page-heading and tweaked widths.)

Merits:

• Doesn't split Downloads and Release Notes
• Clearer separation between ad and content (ad appears above page title)
• Ad spot marginally shallower (extra 2-3 lines visible above fold in my browser)
• Ad stills feels roomy and is centrally positioned, not squashed in the corner
• If there *is* any reduction in clickthrough from moving it higher up the page (i.e. if people are likelier to subconsciously skip past it as they associate that position with ad placements) that may be mitigated by the increased width and how the text/colours of ad and border blend in with the rest of the theme.

Issues:

• Media queries would also need tweaking
• Careful coding needed to avoid ad copy appearing in search engine results

IMHO:

• Drupal's advertising is curated, highly relevant, subtly presented, doesn't include images or media likely to distract, disrupt or reduce performance and is overall a lot classier than, for example, the "sponsored content" used by many newspapers.
• Currently there's only one ad per page, which again is good. I'd prefer if a limit per page was added to the Advertising Policy.
• If we did add Next Step icons (#8), aim for subtle colouring to avoid further distraction/clutter, e.g. light grey.
• There's considerably less confusion between Acquia and the DA than, for example wordpress.com and wordpress.org (indeed on my initial visits to Drupal.org I assumed Acquia was just an unrelated hosting company, until I started noticing how many Drupal people worked there.)
• I think the current 8.3.0 page could do with the message about 8.3.1 being in bold, perhaps beginning with something even more explicit like: "This version is OUTDATED and contains a security vulnerability fixed in 8.3.1".

(Disclaimer: The DA and I have a long standing disagreement on who should be able to advertise on Drupal.org.)

My argument is the traditional Drupal user base should be able, in a ROI of 0+, to advertise on D.O.

See: https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/blog/drupal.org-2015-advertising-initia...
See also: The DA destruction of the jobs group and ignoring of the D.O forums.

# # #

> So according to current policy, we shouldn't be showing this ad to logged-in users.
> After this campaign ends in April, we are going to re-evaluate the position and look of the ad before we sell it again.

And yet, it is still shown to logged in users, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s now the end of May and no changes were made? So basically the DA is giving everyone not buying this type ad the middle finger?? Again?

> What kind of qualifications does a company need to run an ad like this?

Here’s the only hard facts I was ever able to get out of the DA, more than a year old:

For https://www.drupal.org/association/advertising/web :
- $3,500 for 80K impressions.
- The regular pages minus the homepage is around 350K+/month.

Basically, way beyond anything a company with less than several million in yearly sales has... I’m also guessing that the ROI of these adds is significantly below zero*, so again, anyone not sized near Acquia can’t ‘afford’ them in the first place.

* In general prices per M impressions run from 25 cents to $5. 80K would generally run you $20 to $400.

@clacina (Carrie Lacina)

So, when is ANY “affordable for small businesses” option ever going to appear? You promised one on 27 January 2015, we small business are waiting...

It’s not like any of the self-serve advertising platform type companies couldn't monetize the entire drupal.org for less yearly cost to the DA than the amount the DA is now paying to manually negotiate with the few large advertisers it does do business with.

# # #

There are hundreds of small business and organizations, all from the traditional Drupal user base, who would gladly make the same pledge to D.O I’ve made years ago:

“I personally would love to use Drupal.org for 100% of my advertising needs. I'd give Drupal 10s of thousands a year, if I can make even a half way decent ROI on the purchase. It sure would beat wasting the same ad dollar with Google.”

We’re waiting on you, the DA, to implement it…

I’ll even make it easier for the DA, give me an ROI of at least zero, and I’ll spend $1,000 per month for the next 10 years.

Best Regards,
Michael

Release pages don't show advertisements anymore.