Comments on: Partners Ad Evolution Thoughts

By: bastardly

bastardly — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 09:34:59 +0000

do a case study on blogAds.com; see where they stumbled or succeeded & go about planning strategy in this fashion. I like where Partners is going b/c it has achieved something truly special: making the publishers feel part of the team. The advertisers, in my opinion, will come in due time. It’s a matter of exposure & being in a stable financial position to hire the necessary staff that who’s main goal is to hunt down big-name advertisers.

Good luck w/ this, chris! You appear to be the man for the job!

By: Chris Garrett

Chris Garrett — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 01:49:42 +0000

Volunteering to do it for free Brem? Hiring *anybody* is a bit of a way off right now.

By: brem

brem — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:59:24 +0000

Hire someone who finds advertisers?

By: Chris Garrett

Chris Garrett — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 12:18:24 +0000

The code change for putting the script at the bottom I am working on will allow you to leave as it is to have the ads appear as they do now where you placed the script or alternatively if it finds a correctly named DIV squirt the ad into the boxes where you position them. Still working the cross-browser kinks out currently.

By: Scott M Stolz

Scott M Stolz — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 11:19:26 +0000

Ideally publishers could choose auto-pilot or to screen all ads. Perhaps there could be a setting that allows that for the publishers. I could see some sites of mine where I would want to screen all ads, where others auto-pilot would work just fine for me.

As far as types of ad units, I would try as many types as feasible. People want choices. Part of the reason why text ads are so popular is because there is no development time or cost associates with creating an image. I am not a graphics designers although I can fiddle and running text ads would be very appealing for me. Its easy for me to run a text ad, where it would require me to whip out Gimp and try to design an appealing ad (which would take me some time). Also, it should be noted that while Google started with text ads, it has branched out into image ads, and is even exploring CPA ads, and now even has “Advertise on this Site.” I would say leave no revenue stream unturned. If the big guys who have the money to do research think its profitable, it may be wise to at least consider if it works for our ad network. Also, on another note, publishers who dislike flashing image ads may be more accepting of link ads advertising the same products & services.

In summary, I think you should include:

1.) CPM across categories, you must have. I would suggest a bidding system.
2.) CPA ads that publishers can opt-in to individually or set on auto-pilot.
3.) Textual Ads for all categories of ads.

As far as the code being able to be placed at the bottom of the page but appear anywhere, that may be a very useful feature to some bloggers, but not necessarily easy for other bloggers. I assume you would adjust the position through CSS? In my case, I just create a block in Drupal and place the code there and it magically appears there. It would actually be more work for me to figure out the proper CSS and location the ad should appear in. If I was using other Blogging software, I could see how this may be useful (especially for the ones that use CSS for layout almost exclusively and you have to modify the template to add ads). So if you develop this, please do not make it a requirement. I don’t want to spend an hour trying to figure out how to place your ad on my site as I do not modify the templates CSS frequently other than minor cosmetic changes.