It looks like the forum is on a constant decline. If more people lose interest in the forum, In a few years we might end up losing sig camps completely.
This is my thought too. There will come a time when signature campaigns are no longer a thing. I think the whole thing started with Theymos stopping that periodic adslot campaign where services would try to auction for the slots, Maybe there was something he saw that we hadn't yet seen. After the mixer ban, a few years later, you can tell that the only remaining popular advertisers here are the Bitcoin casinos. Most of them are starting to have their own forums and a number of the OG casinos of this space have already moved on
Yeah, in the long run such thing can happen. If activity on Bitcointalk will continue to decline, forum will struggle to attract new users, signature campaigns can simply disappear because there will be not much point to advertise here. After all, it's not that cheap way to advertise and probably not the most effective one.
Not sure that whole thing started when theymos stopped to auction ad slots here, but anyway, I see it as wrong decision which doesn't helps to forum. But that's just my opinion.
If I am not wrong theymos doesn't need anymore revenue via advertising for development of the forum he already has more than enough in the reserve so he just thought no more ad slots which actually should increased the campaign via signature and it happened too via mixers by increasing payout rate more than others now they are no longer allowed here for advertising the dynamics have changed.
Regarding casino advertising the sig campaign is not cheap but the real reason they are discounting is they moved to bigger picture like becoming sponsor for franchise that is who new level like in few million which is too much compared to how much they are spending now.
And I guess bitcointalk reached certain threshold and people are running out of interesting topics to get into discussions.