Why does Nexus Mods use Advertising?

Nexus Mods is an extremely large and popular resource on the internet. Not only are we the largest video game modding website in the world, but we are currently ranked in the top 600 most visited websites globally, and in some countries (like the UK and Germany) we're in the top 500. Yes, that's right - of all the billions of websites on the internet, Nexus Mods is in the top 600 most visited sites out there.

On top of all this traffic, we're heavily focused on file sharing (the downloading of mods) and database intensive operations (highly customisable searches for said mods). Both of these site attributes are particularly expensive compared to a website that simply offers static content, with no heavy database operations or file download bandwidth to worry about. That is to say, if Nexus Mods was a Wiki that simply served text and images with no file database with the same amount of traffic, our expenses would be 10-20 times less than what they are now. So a site like Nexus Mods is orders of magnitudes more expensive than more static websites out there.

So not only are we popular, but we're dealing with an extremely high volume of traffic on an extremely resource intensive style of site.

But why advertising? Simply put, advertising still remains the number one way of generating income on the internet without users having to pay money directly. It's also consistent. In that, typically, the more popular the site, the more page views you get, the more advertising money you receive. As a result, the hope is that the expenses relating to the site will scale with the advertising income you're generating from the site.

Case-in-point; when major game launches happen, we'll receive 25%-40% more traffic to the site over the period of a couple of months. This likely means we'll push more bandwidth, which means we'll have higher costs. However, this should be offset by the fact we've been receiving more traffic, and as a result we should be generating more income as a result. Sometimes it doesn't work out that way, for example, the advertising payout per user may be lower that month for some reason resulting in not making as much as you might have done in previous months, but typically, it should follow that more traffic results in more expenses but also equals more ad revenue.

People will rightly note that we also have a Premium Membership system. This is absolutely correct, we do, and this service is extremely important, financially, to Nexus Mods. However, Premium Membership alone would not cover the running costs of Nexus Mods and it relies a lot more on the generosity of an unfortunately small percentage of our users. Not only would it be unfair to rely on so few users for all the running costs of the site, but advertising also ensures that anyone and everyone, regardless of their financial situation, can contribute to the running and maintenance of our site.

It's our responsibility to ensure those adverts are relevant and secure while trying not to distract from the actual content of the site. If you are seeing ads that are disruptive to your use of the site, or that are clearly malicious, please see this article for information on how to report such ads to us. As much as we need advertising to keep the site running, we absolutely do not want these ads to be detrimental to the experience of our users beyond what is reasonable, and if you let us know about this then we can take steps to ensure this.