Introducing advertising on KHub - Knowledge Hub Team

This week we will be introducing advertising across the Knowledge Hub.  Adverts will range from carefully selected commercial companies to providing opportunities for you to promote your groups to the wider Knowledge Hub community.

Advertising on KHub is provided by the Council Advertising Network (CAN) which helps local authorities generate income via their websites and intranet. For more information about this service, read our KHub Focus blog.

We have pulled together a set of FAQs to explain our approach in more detail but if you have any questions or concerns, please contact us Knowledgehub@capacitygrid.com

Plus, as ever, we welcome your feedback so let us know your thoughts in the KHub Connects group

Why is advertising being introduced to Knowledge Hub?

As many Knowledge Hub members know, over the last few months, we have been investigating new potential sources of revenue for the Knowledge Hub in order to become self-sustaining, keep costs down and ensure service continuity and improvement.

As part of this work, we will shortly be introducing advertising to KHub for the first time. Our aim is to identify where advertising can enhance your experience by offering useful information relevant to your interests and groups, and then see to what extent the advertising market can fund the site.

How will advertising affect a member's experience of the site?

User experience is of the utmost importance to us, so we have selected only two premium ad formats to ensure we achieve the maximum return for minimal page intrusion.

The average advert load time is around 2ms, so there should be no significant disruption to page load times.

What kind of companies will be advertising on Knowledge Hub?

As advertising is introduced, you will see adverts highlighting other KHub groups appearing across the site. These will be interspersed with adverts for business to business providers that supply the public sector such as Dell, IBM and Microsoft – similar to those you will see in public sector periodical publications, websites or at public sector events.

Working with our colleagues in the Council Advertising Network (CAN) team here at CapacityGrid, we will ensure that all Knowledge Hub advertisers are on the CAN approved advertiser list.

If you have any concerns over any of the advertisers at any time, please contact knowledgehub@capacitygrid.com

Likewise, if you would like your group featured in the advertising banners, please contact us.

To find out more contact advertisingteam@capacitygrid.com

How will advertising affect the security of the Knowledge Hub?

We have not taken the decision to place advertising across the Knowledge Hub lightly. Our advertising policy has been designed to safeguard the future of the Knowledge Hub as a secure resource for the public sector.

We have assessed and taken actions to mitigate all security risks associated with advertising being displayed within private/restricted groups. Privacy, content quality and user experience are of paramount importance to the community so we have ensured they continue to be protected.

In addition, there are three layers of technical security in place to ensure there are no problems with malware:

1. All adverts are scanned and the associated links checked before being added to the approved advertiser list.
2. The ad server continually checks adverts being served to ensure they and the associated domains do not change during the course of the campaign. If they do, the campaign will be paused until we can re-scan, re-check and re-approve it.
3. By dealing with appropriate, premium campaigns from bluechip advertisers and agencies, we remove the risk of lower end, less reputable advertisers.

Is there an option to remove advertising from a group?

We may be able to investigate removing the commercial advertising within your group, but this is likely to carry a charge.