People looking for a stake should be allowed to have a thread looking for a stake (especially now that there is a staking thread!) That way they have enough space to put any relevant info, so that a potential staker can look at the information and make a decision before they have to contact the person. The ticker is just a way to keep spam out of chat. By not allowing someone looking for a stake to even have a thread, you are seriously hurting the system by reducing information available and visibility about the individual stake. Not everyone cares about chat!! Therefore the ad ticker is not good at reaching everyone, because not everyone will go to the main page just to stare at the ticker to see who wants stakes. The ticker should be an advertising tool to direct potential stakers to a thread that already exists with more info.

As far as how popular staking is, just look at the mp thread. Lately it's been almost all staking.