Open Source Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people organizing, marketing or licensing open source development projects. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
When I am downloading a file with SourceForge, and also from many other sites, I'm getting a count down and I am wondering what is the reason?
I'm not talking about storage sites like rapidgator, etc that are trying to promote their premium services, but free sites like SourceForge.
Advertising, to pay for the free service.
To the right of the Downloading in.... message you will also find Mirror Provided by: and Scanned by:, while I doubt these are paid ads, it would be in return for providing the mirror/scan service, underneath you will find paid ads under the You may like:. Then under that, you have other top projects in the same category so that you may keep looking and download something else, to get more ads.
By making you keep the page open for a few seconds, they have time to display ads that might get your attention and increase the chance of revenue from you clicking an ad.
