Having you, our readers, coming back for your daily dose of technology and computing news on a regular basis is usually showing enough of your appreciation.

However, every couple of years we feel the need to ask you some relevant information about yourselves, so we can provide that to our partners who sell the advertising here at TechSpot. In fact, that's part of the beauty of it. Because we outsource all of our advertising sales, we can remain 100% independent and continue providing you with information you can trust and rely on.

Please fill out our user survey which will help us providing accurate information about our audience to potential advertisers. All the information we gather is not personally identifiable and will only be used in aggregate.

Did you know?
TechSpot just recently joined the leagues of CNET (which was recently acquired by a not too shabby $1.8 billion in cash) who will act as our exclusive ad rep.

IMO, the survey is heavily weighted in gaming and with all the purchase / dollar expenditure questions,
suggests to me that T.S. is headed into marketing the brand name and running more ads.

I sure hope not! I hope T.S. stays in the technical arena and keeps the popup/banner
ads to a minimum.

btw: I've already taken steps to disallow many ads by entering the domain names into
my host file -- sure speeds up the browsing

I filled up that survey a few days ago,
I hope to god that by "entering the leagues of Cnet" you don't mean
being "acquired" by cnet, and just running their ads.

Because after the Gamespot fiasco I stopped trusting cnet as well.

Let me address some of your concerns...

The idea of those questions is for building a profile of our audience and be able to tell potential advertisers how are visitors behave on those terms.

We won't run any more ads than we already do, which is like 3-4 a page in the standard formats. That's a lot less than many other sites both in the tech arena and non-tech. As far as content goes, the advertising will not affect in any way what we do, I think I covered that precisely on my first post/announcement.

You should know we do not condone that practice, advertising is the only way we can produce revenue to pay the bills and run the site. None of our ads are invasive, we do not do pops or anything close to page take overs. Perhaps the most annoying format is IntelliTXT which can be disabled at your will (click the ? icon in one of the ads and you will be shown the option).

Perhaps I should have been more explicit but that is correct. We have no intention to sell the site and our partnership with CNET is strictly based on the advertising part. That means, we can keep doing what we do, and they work to get some quality technology ads in here. Do not forget that CNET remains as the #1 online technology publisher and that's huge for us, gaining access to their ad sales force and potential deals with tier 1 advertisers.

ok, cool.
So overall i'm quite happy for TechSpot
Congrats!

Yes, I was also worried about being bought out by CNET. I don't dislike the site, but like Techspot being Techspot.

Also, the only reason I would block the ads is because I am stuck on dial up and have a hard time loading ANY page up.

Do you gain revenue from the ads simply being there or from people clicking on them?

Isn't it normally a pay per click (from different IPs)

Anyway who cares

I'm more worried about the ads being very colorful (well bigger in kb size) slowing down the forum.
By the way, why is this forum so slow, is it all the ads, or what?
I click on a page and wait a while sometimes (it even happens when I reply, or even edit a reply then submit it, I wait and wait and then hooray it loaded)

This doesn't happen all the time though, have others got this issue.
(trying to stay on topic about ads being shown)

Wow, I have the lowest form of DSL here and it loads immediately. With my Accelerator at home it blocks some huge ads, but still loads fast usually. Sometimes it does this, but not usually.

It might have been helpful to include the independent computer services and repair shops in your survey. There are a great number of us on this forum.
Congratulations on your managment of this site which allowed notice by the big boys. We hope part of your earnings continue to be cycled into improving this forum, without making too many hard and fast guides.
There is the risk that the forum will be changed by this connection to CNet. We worry. We have seen others slide down the slippery slope.

I truly hope not. That will be the worst thing possible.

I truly hope that the type of people that make up most of Gamespot, Gamefaqs, etc. do not come and act here like they do there.

Let me reinforce what I previously said. CNET will come as an advertising partner, nothing more than that. Over the years we have always relied on ad agencies to bring quality tech-targeted advertising while we take care of the content. That will not change at all.

We are confident that today CNET is the best partner we could have got for our needs and audience. But as always, the strategic calls and content direction will all go through me and the rest of our editorial staff.

Great idea for the survey Julio. Just filled everything out.

the last question on the survey asks where you would most likely purchase an electronics item - it doesn't include a department store or military exchange or other stores. So I really didn't have an option.

Good point; Nor a Computer Services & Repair Center, nor White Elephant stores or Salvation Army. bu I suppose advertisers don't want to know that anyway..

Guys,
I'm sure that they came up with as many questions and answer as they could. It's pretty hard to get EVERY possible answer for EVERY question.

nonethless, valid points.