Pinion Adverts Garry's Mod LUA Script

[Arthur.PinionGG]

Pinion is all about helping communities help themselves. We provide community owners advertising revenue. This revenue can be used to improve infrastructure through the hiring of better servers, the addition of new ones together or anything at all, it’s your money! Through the automated signup process, Pinion places it’s advertising mechanics within your Message of the Day or MOTD. Each time the MOTD is seen by a player, no matter what time of day, it is treated as an impression. You are then paid a flat rate of $2.20 USD per thousand impressions (CPM). At the end of the month you are advised how many impressions your servers delivered and how much income was generated. You are then paid directly into your paypal account within 60 days.

For more information visit http://www.pinion.gg

What we pay you for


-We purchase all impressions from guaranteed regions that complete
-We purchase all impressions from guaranteed regions that don't fill due to lack of content
-We purchase all impressions from non guaranteed regions that fill and complete

Current Guaranteed Regions
- USA
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Germany
- France
- Switzerland
- Netherlands
- Australia
- New Zealand

Requirements
Garry's Mod 13 Server

Let's Get Started
- Register your community here http://www.pinion.gg/signup.html
- Download the Garry's Mod Pinion LUA Script from http://cp.pinion.gg
- Download your community specific pinion.cfg file from the My Account tab
- Upload the /lua/ folder to your gameservers /garrysmod/ directory
- Upload pinion.cfg to the /cfg/ folder located within your /garrysmod/ directory
- Restart the server

Our Github repo can be found here. https://github.com/PinionTech/pinion-adverts-gmod

Need Help? Contact support@pinion.gg

[JamminR]

I'm so against this.
If I joined a server using it, I'd leave immediately.
The only reason I'm not deleting this release post is because it's a choice for hosts to use it, just as much as it's the users choice to not support the server by staying.
I understand want/need of support. Little in life is free.
I just dislike blatant advertising and tracking of net use.

[MrPresident]

I've never once used advertisements to support my community. Yet (through donations) I've managed to keep my $130/month server online since December 2012 on nothing by donations and could continue to do so without another penny donated for another 10 or so months.

It's all about quality. Provide a server that players enjoy playing on and they will help fund it.

[Epsilon]

I think the last thing we need is for GMod to be infested with Pinion servers. It's already bad enough on TF2.

[Decicus]

Agreed. Only thing I would accept would be banner ads, but Pinion (if it's like TF2) ads are just really, really annoying, preventing you from playing until a certain amount of viewtime has been reached.

[LuaTenshi]

I would do some thing that lets the user choose if they want to look at an advert to support the server, you know some thing like giving a direct link and an adfly link.

[Derpy337]

Not this crap :L
Like president said
"It's all about quality. Provide a server that players enjoy playing on and they will help fund it."

Forcing someone to look at an advert video thats 30 seconds long, is annoying and stupid. On tf2 skial servers force you to view the motd, so I disable it and spam enter so it will go away, because their plugin forces you to reopen the motd box if you close it.

[bender180]

I'm guilty of dropping an add or two on the motd page for a little help with the bill but that's ridiculous, talk about the fastest way to clear out a servers community.

[rainbow Dash]

You got banned from Facepunch for advertising this. So you come here?

People are now going to have such an anti-boner they will develop clientside lua JUST to override this.

And besides, I use pinion on my TF2 server. Guess how much money i get from that? Zilch. You get nothing from these guys, its not worth the effort.

[Wully616]

Admittedly, I've just finished trialling this on my server for a month to see what kinda revenue I could expect, I just under 600 views a month. It's not worth the players inconvenience for the revenue generated, sorry Arthur.

[JamminR]

I just noticed the original poster hasn't been here since his release post was made.
I'm not wasting the time to set a calendar reminder on my pc or phone, but if I mentally remember to check in another two or three months and he's not visited to at least acknowledge, if not constructively rebuff, our protests, I'll delete this entire release thread.

As I stated in my first reply, to spam is a choice.
For the original release author to spam and never come back, meh, not worthy of having his release as a choice.

[Arthur.PinionGG]

Believe it or not, we do understand forcing ads on join for forced duration isn't ideal however the video industry is constantly changing and they are the parameters we have to operate in.

Pinion started approx 3 years ago, it was a handful of servers in TF2 and initially the feedback was much as within this thread, however in that time we've had communities grow and nearly 6 years later there isn't a shortage of servers or communities with new ones constantly springing up.

How the ads are used is up to each community, the plugin can be integrated with immunity to ensure VIPs don't get ads. We provide communities with the tools to support themselves. If you had to choose between running your server and not this provides another option of funding. At the end of the day, it is just 30 seconds. Why not open more servers and grow your community? Now everyone can.

Edit
Communities are able to control how the adverts work, via the control panel it can be set to disable the initial 'on join' ad, and only serve an advertisement if / when the map changes. The page can also be configured to serve adverts on a reduced fill capacity for example 30% of the time with remaining traffic going to a predefined community MOTD.

[JamminR]

<clip> it can be set to disable the initial 'on join' ad, and only serve an advertisement if / when the map changes.

Great. Thanks for the details.
So translated to those non-sales-people-speak who might consider using this to support your community, option 1 = bait and switch.
You join server, see no adv, perhaps you like it enough to play an entire round of whatever, you get excited for the next map, wait, whats this? You have to watch an adv to continue.

At the end of the day, it is just 30 seconds. Why not

Oh, sure, just like back in the late 60s, an advertiser might have said "at the end of the hour, it's just 10 minutes".
Today, it's 20.

Personally, I find in my face forced advertisements a thing of the past, both on TV and on PC.
TV, I have Tivo OTA with Fast forward, and Roku netbox with subscription to Netflix+Amazon.
PC, I have hosts file to block most ad sites, plus Netflix/Amazon and any other vid site that doesn't force crappy vid ads on me.

And as an advertising company, don't even get me started on "but if you don't watch ads, the content won't be as good"
13 Emmy's for Netflix's House of Cards will prove you wrong.
I'm sure I can find other meaningful statistics, that's just the one off top of my head.

You're release just angers me as part of what is wrong with corporate baloney.
"We're here to help you keep your community server alive...honest!" while pocketing the majority of profits.
For now, stepping off soap box.

[Arthur.PinionGG]

Great. Thanks for the details.
So translated to those non-sales-people-speak who might consider using this to support your community, option 1 = bait and switch.
You join server, see no adv, perhaps you like it enough to play an entire round of whatever, you get excited for the next map, wait, whats this? You have to watch an adv to continue.
Oh, sure, just like back in the late 60s, an advertiser might have said "at the end of the hour, it's just 10 minutes".
Today, it's 20.

Personally, I find in my face forced advertisements a thing of the past, both on TV and on PC.
TV, I have Tivo OTA with Fast forward, and Roku netbox with subscription to Netflix+Amazon.
PC, I have hosts file to block most ad sites, plus Netflix/Amazon and any other vid site that doesn't force crappy vid ads on me.

And as an advertising company, don't even get me started on "but if you don't watch ads, the content won't be as good"
13 Emmy's for Netflix's House of Cards will prove you wrong.
I'm sure I can find other meaningful statistics, that's just the one off top of my head.

You're release just angers me as part of what is wrong with corporate baloney.
"We're here to help you keep your community server alive...honest!" while pocketing the majority of profits.
For now, stepping off soap box.

You're absolutely entitled and welcome to your opinion, we provide a service to the community owners who want to fund / grow their community beyond relying on donations month in month out.

The community has complete control on how they wish to run adverts on their server, be it only on join, on 2nd join, 20%, 50% or 100% of the time.  Please note, not all the ads are 30 seconds, we have 15 second content in the rotation. Likewise if you connect to a server see an advert, decide you don't like that server, the 2nd server you join you're immune from the ad until next time.

[krackalackin]

I don't mind this release, it's sort of like a flag for don't play here. Easy filtering of crap servers