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Vendrus
No need to ping me either, if you respond to this :)
While you make a valid point, I would also like to mention a few other things that relate to ad revenue.
First is that it is quite possible that these companies are paying FR for the advertising. This is not so likely since, as Zhav mentioned, the ads do tend to refresh. So it's more likely that they use an ad service and just toss up some random code that will refresh/load random ads.
Second is that it is unlikely that the ads generate revenue for FR per view. It is more likely that the ads only make FR any income when people click them.
BUT! Let's pretend that they are per view. There tends to be at least 1500 people on at any given time. I've seen upwards of near 4000 before. Right now, we have a new gene release, so people are refreshing the marketplace like crazy. Let's assume that 1000 views makes $1. There are, let's say, 50 people stalking the MP at any given time. Each person refreshes 10 times every five minutes. That's 500 "ad views" every five minutes. In ten minutes, FR would make $1. I'm sure I'm greatly undermining the amount of MP refreshing lol. And that would be just on the MP! No forum hopping, no checking Baldwin, no AH surfing/listing... just MP.
Here's some more numbers! Let's assume 40,000 people load FR daily, and have 20 familiars to bond with. (These numbers are completely random obviously). That's 800,000 page views. Most people don't bond with their familiars anyway. It's long and arduous and no one enjoys it. There have even been extensions to speed the process up
don't do it kids. If all 40,000 people bonded with their 20 familiars daily, because this new process sped it up, FR would make $800 a day, minimum. But let's also assume that currently, only 10% of the FR population bonds with their familiars daily atm because of how time consuming it is. So as of right now, FR is only making $80. Or $160 rather, since they have two page views per familiar atm.
While initially it looks as though FR would lose money, bonding would take a ton less time and more people would be inclined to bond with more familiars. I know I bond with my 21 familiars every other week lol. Or if I'm extremely bored. I have terrible internet and it takes me ten minutes to do 20 dragonsLast night, someone I was talking with bonded with half of all their familiars, even ones not attached to dragons. It took them at least an hour. And they missed out on our conversation about how to improve bonding (that conversation isthe one that brought this suggestion to life) They hadn't bonded with that many in ages and vowed not to do it for a long time.
Of course, these numbers are all speculation, but it would definitely be within FR's possible benefit to do the math with the numbers they actually have and use. We don't know how FR's ad revenue works. Per view, per click? We don't know how much they make per view/click either. And we don't know what actual percentage of the userbase takes their time to bond with their familiars. But it's definitely something to look into :)
