Removing/reducing the size of sidebar ads

[MbtMarco]

Please confirm the following.

• I checked the existing issues for duplicate feature requests
• I have checked that this feature request is not on our roadmap

What parts of Modrinth is your feature request related too?

App

Is your suggested feature related to a problem? Please describe.

There's not much to say, I think it's the worst place to put ads, I'd rather see an ad when starting Minecraft.

[JstDuvy]

Theres a setting to hide the side bar, it will only appear when adding mods.

Plus the side bar having the ad is better than when starting Minecraft, theres a difference with unobtrusive ads and intrusive ads.

[MbtMarco]

Of course an announcement while Minecraft is running is intrusive, I'm just saying. At least the sidebar ad should be half.

[JstDuvy]

I think it would be nice if it blended in more and didnt round the bottom corners, but yeah a bit smaller would be nice. And when adding mods the “upgrade to” does not blend in well with the ad.

[Prospector]

We did our best to make sure the ad is as out of the way as possible by putting it at the end of the sidebar so it's the "last" thing visually from left to right and top to bottom (the ad used to be one of the first things in the top left in the old layout). Of course any ad is inherently a compromise on the user experience unfortunately, that's why I personally recommend Modrinth+ as an alternative way to support Modrinth.

I don't really see any other alternative that would not come at a worse compromise. Some sort of pop up when the game is launched would deliver far fewer impressions and actively intrudes on what the user's doing. Halving the size of the ad is not strictly an option as ad networks only provide certain sized ads, and the much smaller ones would deliver so much less revenue that it would hardly be worth having there at all.

We've really considered about all of the options and have tried to settle on the one that impacts the user experience the least while still being an effective ad that is able to sustain our operations. Of course, we're still open to other ideas but it's unlikely to be something we haven't already considered