Wikipedia:Advertisements

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This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it.
Don't see the advert? Look closer...
Don't see the advert? Look closer...
Sick of seeing these? (...you probably live in Europe)
Sick of seeing these? (...you probably live in Europe)
This article deals with the issue of boosting Wikipedia revenues by mandatory ads, user-optional ads, search result ads, search tool contracts, or various other advertising and fundraising options. For the issue of unwanted advertisement in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Spam.

In a comment dated March 7, 2008 on his Wikipedia talk page Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has stated

While I continue to oppose the introduction of any advertising in Wikipedia, I also continue to agree that the discussion should evolve beyond a simple binary. I believe that if we looked at putting ads into the search results page (only), with the money earmarked for specific purposes (with strong community input into what those would be, either liberation of copyrights or support for the languages of the developing world or...). As the Foundation continues to evolve into a more professional organization capable of taking on and executing tasks (yay Sue and the growing staff!), it begins to be possible to imagine many uses of money that would benefit our core charitable goals. Lest I be misunderstood: I am not saying anything new, but saying exactly what I have said for many years.

The issue has been the topic of ongoing discussion. Revenue generated from advertisements could improve the website and help achieve its goals. On the other hand, advertising may be at odds with the mission of a neutral, non-profit website which aims to educate.

Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the web. [1] Tens of millions of dollars could be generated if even just a few users allowed ads. With that money, the Wikimedia Foundation could increase server capacity, hire a larger staff, and improve various other Wikimedia projects such as Wiktionary and Wikinews.

There is a long history to this issue. See: meta:Polls, meta:Advertising on Wikipedia, Enciclopedia Libre, Wikipedia talk:Tools/1-Click Answers, and Wikipedia:User categories for discussion/Archive/December 2007#Wikimedia and advertising. See also the archives linked to the right of the table of contents on the talk page: Wikipedia talk:Advertisements. The following image demonstrates the history of conversations of advertising on the Wikimedia Foundation's mailing list [2].


Contents


[edit] Arguments for optional adverts

Wikipedia would remain non-profit, but it would have user-optional ads. Here is how it might work: The default setting for all readers would be no ads. "Turn off advertising" and "Turn on advertising" buttons would allow anybody (even non-registered users) to decide for themselves whether they want to support Wikipedia by voluntarily viewing ads. WP:Neutral point of view would be maintained, and advertisers would have zero influence on Wikipedia.

If Wikipedia had more money many problems could be solved. Ads could generate that money. Disturbed by how much time Wikipedia spends crashed? This problem varies depending on how far away one lives from Wikipedia servers. The Wikimedia Foundation could get more hardware. It could hire more staff and more programmers. This may also help Wikimedia in more rapidly implementing some form of unified login and unified watchlist [3] [4]. This would increase the user base of the other Wikimedia projects by millions of registered users.

Additional money and registered users would help in more rapidly ramping up Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikijunior, Wikispecies, and additional projects.

There are various possible implementations. Readers could choose what kind of ads to allow. A system could be set up for controlling optional ads based on cookie settings.

Anybody could check off a "remember my choices" button. A cookie would remember to keep the ads on or off. Readers who choose not to allow any cookies will not be forced to view ads since the default setting for all readers is no ads.

There could a settings link that would allow the choice of top, bottom, and/or side placement of ads. Or concise or detailed ads. Or ads with or without Flash animation. A cookie would remember the choices.

Millions of Wikipedia readers would choose to allow advertising. Eventually, more money would be raised by ads than by donations. This is because Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the web.

As long as wikipedia is a non-profit, consensus-seeking, democratic, board-run organization, then there is no danger of advertisers having any say in how wikipedia is run. This is because there are millions of advertisers. Pressure from any single advertiser can be ignored.

Some ideas for nonprofit control of such commercial activity can be found in the Mozilla model. See Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation.

[edit] Arguments against adverts

Ads cheapen the encyclopedia. By their very nature, ads are biased content intended to influence people. They are thus diametrically opposed to the goals of a neutral encyclopedia intended to inform people. They would cheapen the encyclopedia in the eyes of many readers, as evidenced by the numerous anti-ad comments received during every donation drive.

Annoying. Readers come to us for encyclopedic information, not for ads. Ads have to be processed by the brain (if only subconciously) and therefore distract and annoy. "The free encyclopedia" also means: free from distractions and annoyances.

Contributors may leave. Many contributors vigorously oppose ads (see e.g. here). Since about 2002, Jimbo Wales has repeatedly stated that he opposes all advertising on Wikipedia as well. Based on these statements, some editors have probably contributed with the understanding that their content would not be diluted with ads. Changing the long-standing no-ads policy now could reasonably be perceived as a bait and switch tactic. Numerous contributors are likely to leave as a result and new ones are less likely to start. Contributor goodwill is Wikipedia's main asset and should not be gambled with.

Privacy violation. If an ad consolidator such as Google AdSense is used, the privacy of our readers is compromised. The consolidator will invariably learn which Wikipedia articles a given IP number reads or searches for; they can then correlate that information with other data they may have about that IP number (e.g. GMail account).

Changing customers. Right now, our customers are the readers and our product is an encyclopedia; we have to keep our customers happy in order to keep donations flowing. This is fundamentally healthy. Once we switch to an ad-based funding model, the situation changes dramatically: our customers now are the advertisers, our product is the readers' eyeballs, and it is this product that we sell to the customers. That is fundamentally unhealthy.

Unnecessary. For several years now, the foundation has worked fine as a lean and mean donation based operation, running a top-ten website. Don't fix what ain't broken.

[edit] Arguments for adverts

adverts = money = reliability + speed + expansion ...basically.

Would it really be *so* bad to have a few discreet adverts, if it means we could get more servers, programmers, bandwidth, staff...? There's a patch of whitespace on the left side of many Wikipedia pages that could be used for ads.

If text-based and small, ads would put no strain on the servers. The extra money generated by ads would allow the purchase of more servers.

Ads don't necessarily have to be distracting. Wikipedia could remain non-profit. The number of ads could be limited to current budgetary needs, or more ads could be used for setting aside money for future projects.

A trial with short contracts would make it easy to just "revert" back to the previous ad-less version. It has been estimated [5] [6] that such endeavors could potentially raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Wikimedia could even become a charitable organization providing money for all kinds of seed projects, philanthropic causes, etc..

The work of selecting the ads could be handled by an ad serving consolidator such as Google Adsense.

Another possibility is that all adverts would be screened. If this sounds like too much work for volunteers, extra staff could be hired, using the extra revenue from ads.

Adverts could use the Monobook colours, font and style in order to distract little from Wikipedia. Or they could have a separate background color so that readers would more clearly know that they are ads, and not click them by accident. One option could be that no images, animations, sounds, or anything too distracting would be allowed. Or readers could choose what they would allow.

Adverts could be placed unobtrusively at the bottom of the left side, just above the "A Wikimedia Project" image. Or the reader could choose to have ads placed anywhere they want.

Adverts could all have the same width, and be grouped by height, with greater heights costing more (up to a limit).

Adverts would only be shown on pages with enough whitespace to accommodate the largest category of advert. Or readers could choose to place ads on the side, top, or bottom of the page.

[edit] Income from search tools on wikipedia pages

See also: Wikipedia:Searching

Concerning the search box (for Special:Search) on nearly all wikipedia pages, it has been estimated that millions of dollars a year could be raised solely from ads on search result pages. See: [7]. There would be no ads on wikipedia pages themselves.

Another option is to add more search tools to the existing searchbar. We can continue to use the existing open-source search tool, and also charge Google, Yahoo, etc. to place their search tools in the same searchbar as a dropdown menu choice.

The nonprofit Firefox browser has a such a searchbar. Firefox received 61.5 million dollars in search royalties in 2006, and Wikimedia received no search royalties. See Mozilla Foundation#Financing

The searchbar would make even more money if it were moved to the top left of Wikipedia pages (above the wikipedia logo). Then the searchbar would be visible even to newbies to Wikipedia pages. Many people would use the searchbar frequently.

Many people would much prefer to do Google-Yahoo-Amazon-Ebay-Flickr-etc searches via a Wikipedia searchbar than a Firefox searchbar. This is because people would want search royalties to go to the Wikimedia Foundation, too. Just as Firefox does, we can charge Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon.com, etc. for searches sent their way.

In the Firefox browser one can add even more dropdown menu options. For example; options to use the search tools at Technorati, IMDb, Live Search, del.icio.us, Merriam-Webster dictionary, Yahoo Answers, Creative Commons, Answers.com, etc.. Any or all of the search engines can be removed by the user. It is all done via "Manage Search Engines" in the dropdown menu. People love good searchbars.

If there were more search options in the Wikipedia searchbar then the open-source search tool would be improved by the competition. Especially if a "search wikipedia" option button were added next to the searchbar. Then for searches of Wikipedia the Google and Yahoo search tools would compete directly with the existing open-source tool.

Right now when many people search Wikipedia they prefer to click the "Search only on the current Web site" button on the secondary Google Toolbar installed on their browsers. Or they use this search bookmark below, and then add search terms:

In the Firefox browser a shortcut keyword such as "w" can be set up for the URL below. Then type "w <search terms>" in the address bar of Firefox to search Wikipedia for information.

In 2006 the Mozilla Foundation received US$66.8 million in revenues, of which 61.5 million is attributed to "search royalties".[1]

The Mozilla foundation has an ongoing deal with Google to make Google search the default in the Firefox browser searchbar. A Firefox-themed Google search site has also been made the default home page of Firefox. A footnote in Mozilla's 2006 financial report states "Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties. The contract originally expired in November 2006 but was renewed for two years and expires in November 2008. Approximately 85% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract." This equates to approximately US$56.8 million.[1]

[edit] Possible uses for additional income

The additional income could be used for countless things to grow the project and spread knowledge. Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the web. Tens of millions of dollars could be generated from search tool revenues, or from even a few users allowing ads. Hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of dollars yearly, could be raised if many users allowed ads.

With that money, the Wikimedia Foundation could increase site speed, lessen downtime, increase server capacity, hire a larger staff, and improve various other Wikimedia projects such as Wiktionary and Wikinews. Additional money and registered users would help in more rapidly ramping up additional projects.

  • Raise tens of millions of dollars a year for African schools.
  • Free or low-cost print copies of Wikipedia, Wikibooks, etc. for the developing world.
  • Print copies of Wikipedia in the bookstores and libraries of the developed world.
  • Wikipedia internet appliances and other products.
  • Advertising Wikipedia elsewhere (media, TV, magazines, newspapers, etc.) to ensure a constant influx of contributors.
  • Paying Wikipedia board members, employees, and developers for their time and effort.
  • Implement unified login and unified watchlists [11] [12] to vastly increase the userbase of other Wikimedia projects such as Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikijunior, Wikispecies, etc..

[edit] Status

There are currently no plans for advertising on Wikipedia. The current standpoint is that the Wikimedia Foundation should not carry advertisements. On the other hand, there is some interest in that Wikimedia itself will run advertisements, in order to increase traffic to Wikimedia Foundation fundraising and donations pages, under the assumption that increased traffic will lead to increased donations (see meta:Advertising proposal for more info).

A relevant comment from Jimmy Wales on his talk page is dated March 7, 2008, and here is the diff link to it. It needs to be read in context. The link to the relevant talk section is User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 35#Wikipedia:Advertisements

[edit] Userboxes

There are userboxes for those users who support/oppose the use of advertisements on Wikipedia:

Code Result
{{User:Disavian/Userboxes/No Ads}}
no
ads		 This user stands against advertisements on Wikipedia.
Transclusions
{{Template:User Noads-alt}}
no
ads		 This user is against advertisements on Wikipedia.
Transclusions
{{Template:User wikipedia non commercial}}
no ads This user is against commercials in Wikipedia.
Transclusions
{{User:Timeshifter/Userboxes/Search tools}}
This user supports search-tool income on a nonprofit Wikipedia. ads
Transclusions
{{User:Timeshifter/Userboxes/Search-related ads}}
This user supports search-related ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia. ads
Transclusions
{{User:Timeshifter/Userboxes/Optional ads 2}}
ads This user supports user-optional ads on a nonprofit Wikipedia.
Transclusions
{{User:Timeshifter/Userboxes/Optional Ads}}
ads This user supports user-optional ads on Wikipedia.
Transclusions
{{User:Xiaphias/Userboxes/ProAds}}
This user supports the use of ads on Wikipedia.
Transclusions

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Independent Auditor's Report and Consolidated Financial Statements. December 31, 2006 and 2005. Mozilla Foundation and Subsidiary.

[edit] See also

v • d • e
Topics related to charity
Main topics
Organization types
Additional topics

[edit] Wikipedia history

v • d • e
History of Wikipedia
Main articles
People
Events
Wikimedia projects
Related projects and forks

[edit] External links