Agressive Elements Banner

@BenLeong Again, the banner is impossible to close!! There’s no X button, so we’re seeing it on all pages, really intrusive!!

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UPD: sales still on the dropped level.

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2019 thread, still no official reply on this.

It’s happening again, now you can’t even close the banner.

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I’m not sure what official reply is being requested here, but I can add some comments. There have been hundreds of iterations of Elements banners tested since this thread was created, and the implementation of these will continue changing in future.

If the question is “is this change permanent?” then no - the design and implementation of all our promotion will continually change.

If the question is “will the banner be completely removed, or revert to an older version?” the answer there is also likely to be no: older display ads are superseded when new versions are proven to outperform them.

Currently (Aug 31), my understanding is that the banners are not dismissible, and that they are shown on different page types for each marketplace. Several versions have been used over the past month - I think this is the current exclusion list:

  • ThemeForest and CodeCanyon /item pages do not include the banners.
  • /checkout and /cart pages across all marketplaces do not include the banners.
  • Profile and Portfolio (/user) pages across all marketplaces do not include the banners.

They are primarily shown on homepages, search and category pages, and item pages for the “creative stock” categories that are most likely to have comparable items available in both sites.

Obviously, not all customers will find Elements relevant to their purchase needs - and so those customers can and do continue purchasing individual items on Market.

However, for those that do find Elements is a better match for their needs, if there is a clear increase in the lifetime value of those customers on Elements (e.g. for customers who will spend more and for longer than they would on Market), we should be directing those customers to that site.

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In this case, why don’t you also put a banner in the Elements that leads to the Market?

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It’s definitely a suggestion that we’ve raised with the Elements team - when it first came up, the total Elements site traffic was so much smaller than the marketplaces that it wasn’t considered a priority. I’ll discuss with the Product team, as I suspect those assessments were done before Elements had the explosive growth we’ve seen over the last year. There would also be a difference in intent - e.g. if most Elements item pages are viewed by active subscribers, they’ve already made their purchase decision. Most Market items would be viewed by potential customers, before any purchase decision has been made - and we know a lot of them don’t go on to purchase on either platform. Ideally we want to identify which type of customer is viewing a page, and steer them towards the option that best matches their needs.

Both @KingDog and I advocate for the author community in projects all across Envato, and we can keep raising this one with the teams that are directing this work.

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Good idea, something like “looking for a single license? Click here” etc.

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Can I ask, you say that Elements has ‘exploded’, has this been at the expense of sales in the regular marketplace, or at the expense of competitor websites, or both?

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Again, no comment.

Hi @ScoreStudio!

I’m not across all of the details, but both are likely to be factors to different extents. Before anyone screenshots this as proof of some kind of grand conspiracy, it’s important to note that Elements is gaining subscribers significantly faster than any sales decline on our marketplaces - suggesting that the Elements product is fitting customer needs for many customers who are new to Envato.

I can’t say how much that growth comes at the expense of our external competitors, and how much comes from general growth in the number of customers wanting to use creative stock items - but both of those will be a factors. For example, the rise of social media video formats has resulted in a whole generation of marketers gaining the skills and tools to use video items, so there are far more customers available now.

Elements has really started to hit its stride, after several years spent building up that product: it is now the biggest “unlimited download” service for creative stock, and taking first place in any industry provides a huge competitive advantage.

For an Envato Market example, look at sales for Avada on ThemeForest, compared to all other items there - while there have been many other successful authors (around 160 of our 210+ Power Elite authors started their Envato Market careers on ThemeForest), no other item has come close to the 827,000 customers buying that theme.

In the case of Elements, it has a combination of industry position, high growth, and high growth potential. Which is why I hope that in years to come, when I look up data on author sales milestones, I’ll see a lot more than 210 Power Elite style, multi-million-dollar authors who got started via Elements.

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So will you accept new authors from the audio marketplace any time soon?

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Hi @MagicMood. I certainly hope so! I can’t really speak to timelines, but it’s less a question of “is this important?” and more “when does this become more important than the other competing priorities?” for the teams that are working on it.

I would expect to see more Music authors added before Sound Effects, as the Elements SFX library is already pretty big (both in absolute terms, and compared to other sites). Currently, all new onboarding for both of the Audio categories is done via outbound recruitment, instead of opening up for applications: the focus for Elements has shifted away from rapid library growth, and towards finding specific items and authors that meet known supply gaps.

We’ve added a small number of Music authors to Elements since public applications closed, aiming to bring in portfolios that line up with unmet demand from customers. As the number of subscribers grows, we’ll be able to bring in more authors for those categories.

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There is such a wise, life saying that works perfectly here: “sheep follow the herd blindly”. At the agency I work for, we’ve reworked most of the bestsellers on the list and unanimously agreed that avada is one of the inferior products. Builder completely unintuitive, slow and sluggish. Not so long ago, we voted for the best tf theme each employee used to build websites for clients and unanimously won betheme. This is not only our opinion, you can find various unflattering reviews about avada online, such as a review of one of the most popular YouTubers, Darrel Wilson, The Avada Wordpress Theme Review - Is It Worth It? - YouTube The truth is that most people will unfortunately not try really nice products because they blindly follow the herd. Sad but true.

Are you talking about those few bucks element authors get monthly? It is ridiculous that authors gives their hard work to elements “for free”. Anyone with a bit of brain knows well that the only winner in this case is envato. The authors only get some scraps and they are certainly not in danger of being multi-millionaires.

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@BenLeong When can we expect an answer on whether a banner to the Marketplaces will be added on Elements? Can you reach out the Elements team and ask about it?

I’ve referred over 1000 users on Envato, users that are now forcefully fed a banner to the Elements, something at the time of referring those users I did not know will happen.

I’d like to see the reverse happening on Elements. I have a strong feeling it will never happen, though.

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Excellent ! Now you can’t even close…

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I totally agree with @ckdudi analysis

I guess you didn’t had enough exposure through the non-dismissible banner, and decided to add yet another advertisement, even more intrusive, called Unlimited Downloads, with a gradient highlight, and a drop-down advertisement, straight into the primary menu.

Shows up on all the Item’s pages too. :+1:

The marketplaces became so plastered with Elements advertisements, to the point that it looks like one of those scam websites. Just set up a 301 Permanent Redirect and be done with it.

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It so disrespectful to all community!
They must stop to kill the marketplace!

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No surprise with this latest development. Let me just check if it is reciprocated on Elements promoting Audiojungle…hold on…wait…No.

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They have added a hilighted button now