Forums → News and Feedback → Gathering ideas: How to make AG Ad-System more user friendly

The last few days with two overlapping problems, one of them connected to Ads and that users try to avoid them have shown that Armorgames has &quototential to improve their Ad-System" and maybe get more users supporting the website by not avoiding Ads.
I will add a lot of personal thoughts and explanations, mostly for AG to comprehend the reasons for this thread. If you are not interested in that, just scroll down to the ideas and thus hopefully the start of a useful discussion.
Personally, i am playing games on 3 major flashgame plattforms and AG is the only one i don't want to use while it's showing Ads because often enough I can't decide anymore whether the page is still showing a game or is just there for Ads. I still come here because of some parts of the community and because AG had a good sense of sponsoring the right game developers in the past. I just mention that because it shows my personal sight and because it's something AG maybe could work with.

Now it is clear that you can't just compare every website according to which or which kind of Ads are shown, since the offers you get depend on your average hits.
But you can compare the implementation of Ads. I'll get to that later, first I want to enlist the obvious ways how AG earns the money to pay the servers, bandwidth and the wages of the people that work on improving and sustaining the site. If i missed something, please add that to include it into the discussion about the topic.

• Adding Ads to the site. Obviously, as everyone can see.
• Having players pay for Ad-free gaming.
• Percentage of money spent in games featured on Armorgames.

Well, i'll start with the criticism of the current system.

Ads: Surely those are and will be the most important source of income as they affect all users that do not actively avoid them. But they are also the most annoying part of AG as it currently is.
Ads on all sides of a game? So you surely will click one if you accidentaly move your mouse 1mm too far on fast games? Yes, surely a good idea to generate revenue in a short term. But annoying as hell, since you often get problems in the game because the freshly opened ad-tab (sometimes even more than just one) overlaps the game.
I guess i'm not alone when i say: I play games for fun. Always having to take care to not lose game progress by accidentaly clicking Ads is no fun at all. Hence i do everything necessary to avoid those accidents, even if that includes to play those games somewhere else.

Ad-free gaming: Well, it is a nice idea and in my opinion not even overpriced IF it could compare to similar systems. On AG it is already hard to see which advantages you would get for buying that. Ok, obviously no Ads. Special Forums. Fullscreen gaming. Not sure if there is something else. Surely there are people that like this offer, but i don't.
As i wrote before, the two main reasons why i still come to AG are community and good games.
Now, community was always a critical topic here. I played games on AG since 2008, but only in 2011 i found it necessary to register here - probably because of online saves. Why didn't i register earlier? Main reason: No chat, no direct communication with community. And unfortunately that only partially improved. Personally i don't like the chat system and it still has it's problems working together with discuss sometimes.
AGs probably biggest competitor always had the advantage there with a chat next to every game. That built up a community, even if it often couldn't compare if you were looking for new top games. But it was a reason to always come back and also stay.
By now this competitor has nearly the same offers but with some huge advantages in community. That is why in the end i took the better offer there and also paid for ad-free gaming. And that is why i don't see any reason to do that a second time on AG for a much worse offer.

Now for the Ideas, especially if you scrolled down because you were not interested in my personal thoughts:

• Make Ads more player-friendly. Don't put them right next to the games where they spoil any fun in playing. This alone would probably already increase the amount of people that are willing to accept Ads on the games.
• If possible, provide a way to close Ads that are known to slow down the page. A lot of players chose to play flash games because they don't have a computer system capable of running high end games, so they are also affected by overflowing ressource use of Ads.
• It's not an original idea, but already widely used on other platforms and mobile versions of the same games that are also hosted here: Offer game developers a way to show Ads for special ingame rewards to compensate the income from removing some general Ads. Like: Watch this Ad and get 10min bonus on income.As i said, that feature is already used by a lot of the games you host too, just on other platforms.

• Expand your offers for Ad-Free gaming and advertise it better. Features that made me pay for a similar offer are: Possibility to create a personal chatroom and early access to games in beta-status or close to going public.
• Offer a reward system that awards points, coins, or whatever for certain amounts of money spent on featured games. With a certain amount of those everyone can get Ad-Free gaming. Since MMOs became a huge money sink for some players in the last years, that would especially reward players that spend a lot of money without giving them the feeling that they have to pay twice.
• Rather a personal advice, but still I think it's important for platforms that offer flash games nowadays: Improve your chat system and thus the community features. I know this will not be easy and also require more Users that moderate chat rooms, but in the end it is the main key to bind a community to your page.

Now that was a long text for only six real ideas, but i hope others can contribute more to get back AG to be the top flash game adress.

Edit: Apparently you can only list 3 points at once, so i had to change formatting.