I wonder if they shouldn't go with actual blog posts or articles about the site instead of actual ads.
Personally, most new sites I've gone to in the past month were found while reading articles on various blogs or following links on site like pinterest based on various subject I was checking.
I think I even click more on actual text links which are more or less "ads" in a specific article than ads with pictures on the side -- especially since it's what I was actually looking for.
That said, about the stats... do they include people which gently tell their system to prevent tracking and cookies and all that? If not, they might not be totally accurate.
I think a lot of people don't know how much work needs to go into making an advertisement effective. It's not just putting up ads and waiting for clicks to come through. Making ineffective advertising decisions can cost a company a lot of money for very little, to no gain. Regardless of it being a skyscraper ad on a website or banner ad below a game, advertising is a pretty complicated matter and the best use of it requires a great marketing person, or team, to really ensure you're advertising on the right platform, hitting the right demographic, keeping your cost per user acquisition low.
Additionally, advertising means nothing if the new user flow is poor and that's one of Gaia's biggest issues for new users. If you come to Gaia completely new, having no idea what it is, what to do, etc then the experience is confusing. It's difficult to imagine as experience users, but try to put your mind into it as a new user.
(I can't seem to get registration to work at the moment
And that's just the front page, imagine going to any other pages and just what that experience is like. Gaia has never really been new-user friendly.
Regarding time spent on the website, not that I necessarily trust Alexa but 20 minutes on a website is actually pretty good compared to the average. According to a 2017 Brafton benchmarking report the average session duration on a website was 2 minutes, 17 seconds. Business-to-consumer websites had a 42.3% longer average session than business-to-business websites. So we'll round that up to 3 minutes.
Not granted, that is across all websites. It doesn't explicitly call community websites (like Gaia) where that number might be vastly different.
That being said, using Alexa's own system I decided to look up the couple of competitor websites listed there:
toyhou.se: 9.28 minutes
recolor.me: 11.14 minutes
narutoforums.org (the ********??? Hah): 13.25 minutes
flightrising.com: 24.56 minutes
reddit.com 10.44 minutes
neopets.com 18.01 minutes
Gaia's got it made pretty well when it comes to average session time.
Honestly I think the thing that hurts Gaia the worst isn't the lack of advertising, it isn't the cash shop, it isn't GCash, it isn't anything that users (especially GCD) like to call out on. I think what has hurt Gaia the most is that it's an ancient product that never really evolved to meet what was happening in the tech world.
- Social media: I remember when Gaians hated any kind of social media. Seriously if you uttered "Facebook" you were lambasted for it. Social media was the scourge of Gaians. Now it's common place.
- Real time messaging: We saw this starting to become a pain for Gaia when Skype dominated and made real-time messaging between groups of people easy. Now with Discord being huge there's essentially no reason to get onto Gaia to message your friends. Discord is easy to use on the go and people often said they like Gaia because they keep in contact with people. Now that can do that much more conveniently.
- Broken/outdated/lack of deprecating features: People shudder at the idea of shutting down various games, flash spaces, etc on Gaia. But it's time. There's too much on Gaia that isn't support and just creates a confusing experience. Not only that, but it creates separation between users and now that there is little to no community in those features, those that were using it left. This is one of the reasons why I agree with the SF thread about consolidating forums.
- Mobile train way too late: Great that there is a mobile app now. If it had come out three, four, five years ago and been a strong product it would have been even better. Logging on and using Gaia is a chore. Being constricted to a desktop, or lack luster mobile site, is just frustrating.
- Aging userbase (which ties into mobile): Most of the Gaians now are Gaians that grew up with the site. Now these Gaians have gotten jobs, families, and responsibilities that limit their free time. Hell I don't play League anywhere near as much anymore because I don't really have 45+ minutes to dedicate to a game. This is why mobile is so important. It creates fast paced engagements and doesn't require a lot of effort. No mobile product means Gaia became a longer time sink, which meant it had to be sacrificed for other more important things.
- Dying/dead niche product: Avatar community based websites are just not popular anymore. There were huge back in the day. They were the thing that attracted audiences to it. You know what was also big?
- Web rings
- Geocities/Angelfire fan sites
- Sprite comics
- RP forums
- MySpace
Audiences and what they are attracted to evolve overtime, and if have a product you need to be thinking 9-12 months in the future to where you're going to need to be with an evolving market. You'll keep a core userbase, but you're going to fail to evolve and bring in more customers.
I don't doubt that some of the common issues that GCD likes to bring up helped push the existing community away, but in terms of what really hurt Gaia the most? I think it's a lot more complex than just pointing fingers at money making tactics.
All good points. Nice to see you are still hopping around, Zero!
However, I still disagree that Gaia doesn't appeal as a whole anymore. Yes, that may certainly be the case with the absolute mainstream.... HOWEVER- that isn't the case with the Art community; which is evidently the current majority of the userbase and target demographic of Gaia in the first place. The art community cares not for social media(like discord. facebook. ect); they care MORE about fandom culture, fanart and finding a place to post their work or discuss their interests(which is almost solely strictly limited to forums and places like tumblr). This is why sites such as fur affinity, Toyhou.se, tumblr, ect. Thrive. The art community is huge on all those platforms.
As an artist and as a denizen of the fandom side of the internet, I'm pretty confident that Gaia will thrive and do way better if they cater more to the art community/fandom culture/ roleplayers as a whole. A big problem is that Gaia's appeal is strictly limited to it's avatar creation system right now, which doesn't really fully jive with any currently existing demographic. If Gaia implemented things like image hosting and a gallery system; I have reason to believe a LOT of artists would likely jump ship or move off of other websites to move onto Gaia instead(as long as the implementation of a gallery feature is done well).
Gaia offers avatar creation(a physical presence on site) and by having personal artists galleries on Gaia(and also something like a live posting feed on our profiles) , it would give artists a unique opportunity to interact with their fans easily in real time, and discuss their interests in the same place. Which isn't really possible elsewhere. And that in itself would be a huge draw.
Thing is(Gaia's money problems and budget to do new features aside), few people these days even know Gaia exists. I have talked to many of my art friends, and they always say they don't know what it is. So, you can't really expect for there to be an audience for Gaia when the only people that remember it are from the pre-2009 era.
Another nail to the coffin is that Gaia's current forum rules prevent a lot of silly fandom discussion(since most topics are ejected into the topicless domain of the chatterbox) and Gaia currently lacks any kind of live feed that directs you to forum topics tagged as your interests(as in: If you are interested in My Hero Academia, it would be nice for the site to suggest user topics new/popular relating to it, ect.). Both of which makes finding groups of people you'd want to interact with far more difficult than it should be.
I think if Towns 3 was finished, if storyline events/the webcomic were written out better and if the site had image hosting and catered more towards artists.... I'm pretty confident that the userbase would get a lot bigger. Not all at once of course, but the numbers would go up.
All it would take- is for ONE artist with a big following to join Gaia... and you would see a plethora of new joiners. Many good artists have a following of thousands to millions of people, and a lot of people are looking for fandom websites that are alternatives to DeviantART, Tumblr or Twitter. Gaia trended on twitter the other day BECAUSE of the art community; there is some power in the Art communities influence.
I wonder if they shouldn't go with actual blog posts or articles about the site instead of actual ads.
Personally, most new sites I've gone to in the past month were found while reading articles on various blogs or following links on site like pinterest based on various subject I was checking.
I think I even click more on actual text links which are more or less "ads" in a specific article than ads with pictures on the side -- especially since it's what I was actually looking for.
That is an interesting idea, and I agree it could drive, not only traffic, but interested traffic toward Gaia. Hm, maybe once the app is fully up and also debugged and Towns 3 is out, we should work on getting Gaia featured on Polygon or Wired or The Verge or whatever cool people who would love Gaia are reading these days.
I wonder if they shouldn't go with actual blog posts or articles about the site instead of actual ads.
Personally, most new sites I've gone to in the past month were found while reading articles on various blogs or following links on site like pinterest based on various subject I was checking.
I think I even click more on actual text links which are more or less "ads" in a specific article than ads with pictures on the side -- especially since it's what I was actually looking for.
That is an interesting idea, and I agree it could drive, not only traffic, but interested traffic toward Gaia. Hm, maybe once the app is fully up and also debugged and Towns 3 is out, we should work on getting Gaia featured on Polygon or Wired or The Verge or whatever cool people who would love Gaia are reading these days.
Thats true! I never thought about that. Kotaku would also be a good one, or Siliconera. But I don't know if they'd cover something like Gaia.
But even though it's a good idea, it sounds like getting a news site/blog to write about Gaia may be really expensive as well. sweatdrop
I've been suggesting they pay some moderately popular YouTubers do so some plugs for a whiiiiile. That's one of the best ways to advertise a business like Gaia.
If Gaia'd spent half the money they spent on failed start-ups on intelligently placed advertisements this site would be a lot more popular, I guarantee it.
Advertising in general is still the main thing that could save this site. I get designing marketing campaigns and adverts is process in of itself, but it's easily worth the effort. Gaia is sort of an odd site to design ads for, but just get someone who understand how viewer metrics works to take a wack at it and you could probably come up with something as good or better than those weird cheesy adds I remember seeing years and years (and YEARS) ago.
I wonder if they shouldn't go with actual blog posts or articles about the site instead of actual ads.
Personally, most new sites I've gone to in the past month were found while reading articles on various blogs or following links on site like pinterest based on various subject I was checking.
I think I even click more on actual text links which are more or less "ads" in a specific article than ads with pictures on the side -- especially since it's what I was actually looking for.
That is an interesting idea, and I agree it could drive, not only traffic, but interested traffic toward Gaia. Hm, maybe once the app is fully up and also debugged and Towns 3 is out, we should work on getting Gaia featured on Polygon or Wired or The Verge or whatever cool people who would love Gaia are reading these days.
Thats true! I never thought about that. Kotaku would also be a good one, or Siliconera. But I don't know if they'd cover something like Gaia.
But even though it's a good idea, it sounds like getting a news site/blog to write about Gaia may be really expensive as well. sweatdrop
I don't know about these sites, but there's something called "sponsored posts" which exists which might work for these smile
I've been suggesting they pay some moderately popular YouTubers do so some plugs for a whiiiiile. That's one of the best ways to advertise a business like Gaia.
__//★★Thiiiiiis so much. YT is the biggest platform for literally anything right now as people love to watch videos everywhere. At home or on the go.
They could really start a proper channel providing users with information on what's going on etc.
I've been suggesting they pay some moderately popular YouTubers do so some plugs for a whiiiiile. That's one of the best ways to advertise a business like Gaia.
__//★★Thiiiiiis so much. YT is the biggest platform for literally anything right now as people love to watch videos everywhere. At home or on the go.
They could really start a proper channel providing users with information on what's going on etc.
I am actually working on a YouTube series devoted to helping people out around Gaia! I keep pushing the idea to the back burner though, maybe I should actually get on the ball about it..
YouTube has HUGE crossover in Gaia's potential fanbase too, since it's mostly "fandom" people, from animes, TV shows, movies, etc. At least, the area of YouTube I frequent is! The adverts in the videos by the video creator (plugs as they are often called) are really good for relating to people. Gaia is a very "personal" feeling of a business, they'ed get a lot more traction advertising it as such.
These "plugs" stay there as long as the video stays up too, meaning they have a really long tail. Instead of going away as soon as you stop siphoning money in, like most advertisements!
I've been suggesting they pay some moderately popular YouTubers do so some plugs for a whiiiiile. That's one of the best ways to advertise a business like Gaia.
If Gaia'd spent half the money they spent on failed start-ups on intelligently placed advertisements this site would be a lot more popular, I guarantee it.
Advertising in general is still the main thing that could save this site. I get designing marketing campaigns and adverts is process in of itself, but it's easily worth the effort. Gaia is sort of an odd site to design ads for, but just get someone who understand how viewer metrics works to take a wack at it and you could probably come up with something as good or better than those weird cheesy adds I remember seeing years and years (and YEARS) ago.
All of the team I worked with understood numbers and metrics. Most of us have a marketing background of some degree. There's too many factors that go into giving a clear cut answer as to why we didn't just throw everything in to advertising (trust me it is something we were and I'm going to assume those remaining are also still very aware of). I'm confident the remaining team is continuing to work as best as they can with the resources they have. It's a complex situation.
With a team as small as it is and everyone wearing multiple hats if there is something else that needs to be a priority, well, then it's a fine line to balance stability.
Advertising will go nowhere if it isn't streamlined for unfamiliar users to answer the question "what is Gaia?" to retain people.
I've been suggesting they pay some moderately popular YouTubers do so some plugs for a whiiiiile. That's one of the best ways to advertise a business like Gaia.
If Gaia'd spent half the money they spent on failed start-ups on intelligently placed advertisements this site would be a lot more popular, I guarantee it.
Advertising in general is still the main thing that could save this site. I get designing marketing campaigns and adverts is process in of itself, but it's easily worth the effort. Gaia is sort of an odd site to design ads for, but just get someone who understand how viewer metrics works to take a wack at it and you could probably come up with something as good or better than those weird cheesy adds I remember seeing years and years (and YEARS) ago.
All of the team I worked with understood numbers and metrics. Most of us have a marketing background of some degree. There's too many factors that go into giving a clear cut answer as to why we didn't just throw everything in to advertising (trust me it is something we were and I'm going to assume those remaining are also still very aware of). I'm confident the remaining team is continuing to work as best as they can with the resources they have. It's a complex situation.
With a team as small as it is and everyone wearing multiple hats if there is something else that needs to be a priority, well, then it's a fine line to balance stability.
Advertising will go nowhere if it isn't streamlined for unfamiliar users to answer the question "what is Gaia?" to retain people.
Hi! First I want to say, I mean no disrespect by anything I said. I respect the work you, and everyone else has done for Gaia. cat_3nodding I admit, it's a very tricky issue! And perhaps my first post was more focused on brevity and punchiness than conveying how I actually feel about the issue. I feel like you deserve a more detailed explanation.
I guess my point was more, the choices the upper staff seem to make in directing these sorts of decisions don't make much sense to me. Advertisement is one of the core pillars of any business, and Gaia is one of the only businesses I've seen to almost completely disregard it. Imagine running a bakery, without even a sign out front. From the outside, Gaia might as well be actively encouraging other people to forget it exists. In a world where everything is fighting tooth and nail for the tiniest bit of people's attention, it's very hard for me to believe they could be saving money by not advertising.
Gaia works very similar to how a mobile game works. It's main source of revenue is basically the exact same thing as microtransactions. Most mobile games use a very basic, focused advertisement system designed to draw people in with every tiny addition. Feeling as if they are "missing out" on something by not engaging. Things such as the addition of flairs and the flaired up ticket could have been a boon for Gaia in this regard, but even though they put a lot of work into making it happen, they didn't advertise for it off site, meaning it's basically just appealing to the same group of people as before. No one outside the site knows they are missing out on these fun new additions. Now, clearly it'd be hard to start an ad campaign based solely on that, but if it was a piece of an ongoing campaign, then it'd work well.
I think "what is Gaia?" is by far the wrong question to be proposing in advertisements. Gaia is a complicated thing, you can't get that across in advertisements! Think of advertisements for video games, especially mobile games. Many of them focus more on conveying the atmosphere and feeling of engaging with the game compared to what the game is actually like. They pick out the single thing their game does better than anyone else, and really draw attention to it. Gaia is basically a never ending anime convention in your phone. I think something as simple as that idea is enough to run with an advertisement campaign. People don't have to see an ad and know what the site is, they just have to be convinced to visit it! After all, it's better for people to get confused about what Gaia is after visiting it, instead of in the middle of an advert. I know that's sort of a weird way to put it, but it's done in the games industry all the time with "hard to market" games. See basically anything by devolver digital to see how weird and nonsensical ads can be compared to their hard to market products and still end up being highly successful ad campaigns.
I feel like a lot of this issue comes from this "multiple hats" thing you mentioned, as most companies have entire teams focused solely to advertisement to achieve these sorts of things. Even one individual on the team who is specialized in advertising, who's specific job it is to create and coordinate advertisement campaigns would help a ton. I'm by no means saying that people just have no idea what they are doing in this regard, but that the mindset of an advertisement campaign director or a producer is very different from the mindset of an artists or a code designer. The fact that Gaia has gone so long without any major ad campaign in-of-itself kind of proves this.
It's like asking the company bakers to fix the oven. I'm sure they are quite familiar with how the oven works. But it's a waste of their time to figure out the nuisances of oven repair on the job without burning the business down. When a repair specialist could do it safer, faster, and likely for not much more of a fee, leaving the bakers to spend more time on the clock baking. I know Gaia is tight on money, and it is a very complicated issue to allocate time and funds to anything, but it seems weird that Gaia approaches this issue like it's a tiny 3 person start-up, despite it being big enough to have shed those sorts of restrictions.
I've been suggesting they pay some moderately popular YouTubers do so some plugs for a whiiiiile. That's one of the best ways to advertise a business like Gaia.
If Gaia'd spent half the money they spent on failed start-ups on intelligently placed advertisements this site would be a lot more popular, I guarantee it.
Advertising in general is still the main thing that could save this site. I get designing marketing campaigns and adverts is process in of itself, but it's easily worth the effort. Gaia is sort of an odd site to design ads for, but just get someone who understand how viewer metrics works to take a wack at it and you could probably come up with something as good or better than those weird cheesy adds I remember seeing years and years (and YEARS) ago.
All of the team I worked with understood numbers and metrics. Most of us have a marketing background of some degree. There's too many factors that go into giving a clear cut answer as to why we didn't just throw everything in to advertising (trust me it is something we were and I'm going to assume those remaining are also still very aware of). I'm confident the remaining team is continuing to work as best as they can with the resources they have. It's a complex situation.
With a team as small as it is and everyone wearing multiple hats if there is something else that needs to be a priority, well, then it's a fine line to balance stability.
Advertising will go nowhere if it isn't streamlined for unfamiliar users to answer the question "what is Gaia?" to retain people.
Hi! First I want to say, I mean no disrespect by anything I said. I respect the work you, and everyone else has done for Gaia. cat_3nodding I admit, it's a very tricky issue! And perhaps my first post was more focused on brevity and punchiness than conveying how I actually feel about the issue. I feel like you deserve a more detailed explanation.
I guess my point was more, the choices the upper staff seem to make in directing these sorts of decisions don't make much sense to me. Advertisement is one of the core pillars of any business, and Gaia is one of the only businesses I've seen to almost completely disregard it. Imagine running a bakery, without even a sign out front. From the outside, Gaia might as well be actively encouraging other people to forget it exists. In a world where everything is fighting tooth and nail for the tiniest bit of people's attention, it's very hard for me to believe they could be saving money by not advertising.
Gaia works very similar to how a mobile game works. It's main source of revenue is basically the exact same thing as microtransactions. Most mobile games use a very basic, focused advertisement system designed to draw people in with every tiny addition. Feeling as if they are "missing out" on something by not engaging. Things such as the addition of flairs and the flaired up ticket could have been a boon for Gaia in this regard, but even though they put a lot of work into making it happen, they didn't advertise for it off site, meaning it's basically just appealing to the same group of people as before. No one outside the site knows they are missing out on these fun new additions. Now, clearly it'd be hard to start an ad campaign based solely on that, but if it was a piece of an ongoing campaign, then it'd work well.
I think "what is Gaia?" is by far the wrong question to be proposing in advertisements. Gaia is a complicated thing, you can't get that across in advertisements! Think of advertisements for video games, especially mobile games. Many of them focus more on conveying the atmosphere and feeling of engaging with the game compared to what the game is actually like. They pick out the single thing their game does better than anyone else, and really draw attention to it. Gaia is basically a never ending anime convention in your phone. I think something as simple as that idea is enough to run with an advertisement campaign. People don't have to see an ad and know what the site is, they just have to be convinced to visit it! After all, it's better for people to get confused about what Gaia is after visiting it, instead of in the middle of an advert. I know that's sort of a weird way to put it, but it's done in the games industry all the time with "hard to market" games. See basically anything by devolver digital to see how weird and nonsensical ads can be compared to their hard to market products and still end up being highly successful ad campaigns.
I feel like a lot of this issue comes from this "multiple hats" thing you mentioned, as most companies have entire teams focused solely to advertisement to achieve these sorts of things. Even one individual on the team who is specialized in advertising, who's specific job it is to create and coordinate advertisement campaigns would help a ton. I'm by no means saying that people just have no idea what they are doing in this regard, but that the mindset of an advertisement campaign director or a producer is very different from the mindset of an artists or a code designer. The fact that Gaia has gone so long without any major ad campaign in-of-itself kind of proves this.
It's like asking the company bakers to fix the oven. I'm sure they are quite familiar with how the oven works. But it's a waste of their time to figure out the nuisances of oven repair on the job without burning the business down. When a repair specialist could do it safer, faster, and likely for not much more of a fee, leaving the bakers to spend more time on the clock baking. I know Gaia is tight on money, and it is a very complicated issue to allocate time and funds to anything, but it seems weird that Gaia approaches this issue like it's a tiny 3 person start-up, despite it being big enough to have shed those sorts of restrictions.
I agree with you there, Throttle Kitty. Someone else came onto another one of my threads awhile ago who's entire career is in Marketing. And she said that in her professional opinion; if she worked for Gaia, the FIRST THING she'd do would be to advise them to drastically increase their internet marketing budget. Because she knew even without looking at the numbers that Gaia didn't have enough invested into marketing.
As for the 'what is Gaia' question; I think Gaia should go back to something like 'An Artist, Anime and roleplaying community', similar to their old homepage that they had before. That's what Gaia was supposed to be in the first place- and removing Gaia's identity as an Anime/roleplaying community didn't really help things.
As for advertising, something lower cost the team could implement is sharing avatars for Twitter, tumblr, facebook, ect. That would post your avatar and link back to the site. People have been asking for that for a long time and I think it would be a fantastic idea.
mmm, well, then it's up to us as members to try to step up, even if a little, to help with advertising, right? i mean, in our own small way
i remember some users telling me that they joined gaia after seeing art i posted of it in dA, back when i was still active in art sites. they had been following before, and then joined gaia after they saw some fanart
it's not a lot, but i feel that if we did something it's better than nothing. sometimes the site has reasons they can't advertise for now.... it's a shame, really, because they may need more people to know about them, but it's not like it's completely hopeless on our side
every little bit helps! that's what i think redface
Several things come to mind when looking at those statistics:
- Art and writing contests
Gaia could hold an art contest on platforms with a lot of artist population like DA, instagram or tumblr.
It could also be something like a "draw this in your style" challenge, with gaia posting one of their NPC weekly and offering gift (free artist app, free small drawing tablet, etc etc.) for best or randomly chosen art. It'll advertise them both from the art and challenge tags, and also from the followers of whoever took up the challenge. Or make a prompt challenge for people to write short stories off, based on either the gaia universe or NPCs. Allow people to link their submission from their personal writer's accounts, so you can get exposure to their followers and their chosen writer's site.
- Webcomic or novel
Make a fandom for gaia! If a lot of gaia's population are artists and roleplayers, then advertise to artists and writers!
Make a webcomic for gaia characters and advertise it online, upload it to comic and manga sites, etc etc. It could be a little slice of life spin-off, it could be just a remake/edit of gaia's existing comic. Make the story well known. Make mock official instagram accounts for gaia's NPCs, with short doodle comics or day to day life. If there's no particular way the plot is going, then just make cute slice of life thing, or just some #relatable funny thing. There's quite a lot of ways to go with this, and since the bulk of gaia's staff are artist I think they'll know the ropes for this kind of thing.
^some of these can also be done by members too. Making a DTIYS or prompt challenge shouldn't be too hard to do.
Also (in spoilers cause not really relevant but I went oot and typed anyway e__e)
- Develop or contract an IM system
Might not be too relevant with the statistics, but since gaia is essentially a social site, an instant messaging system is necessary. It will give people an easier way to talk to the friends they've made on this site, and help them build better bond. Having a nifty avatar wouldn't do any good if you don't have friend to talk about it. Talking in PM could be stiffling and awkward for some people, and it also doesn't give you any +1 notifications so you either have to stay on gaia 24/7 or wait until your friend is online if you want to have any semblance of real time conversation.
- Talk to their audience!
Gaia staff, please don't just wait for people to ask at ATA! The staff should reach out for the population's opinion if any big change were to be made (like what happened with giftcards). Asking people about their opinion after getting a backlash wouldn't help much, since the populace would already be angry. Asking or at the very least prewarning people before you make decisions that impact them is just common courtesy.
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