Making Banner Ads Suck Less 326
My name is Kurt Gray, I'm the lead programmer for OSDN's ad system which serves ad banners on sites like Slashdot, Freshmeat, SourceForge, Themes, and partnering deal with Kuro5hin, etc. I open sourced our ad delivery code sometime last year and have been maintaining it in-house here as well. My quest now is to create a better ad banner delivery system, not only better for you the audience but also more useful to our sponsors. So I have some ideas about our ad system that we want to pitch to you all sitting out there reading this and your feedback on these ideas would be of great value to us. Note that this is being posted to both K5 and Slashdot because we want to get feedback from everyone we can.
First let me address two issues that have been discussed on Slashdot just recently on Micropayments instead of ads and Ad banners may soon get bigger and how these issues pertain to ad banners on the OSDN sites.
Why run ad banners? What about a tip-jar, or subscription
fees, or micropayments, or donations, or bill-the-ISPs instead of ad banners?
When you're running a web site, depending on your content, your audience, the size of your staff, your overhead costs, the size and nature of your audience, and many other factors, it might be possible to get by on just subscription fees, or micropayments, or some other revenue model that does not involve selling banner ads. But the size of the audience on OSDN's web sites and the nature of the content within is such that the subscription models break down. For a network of this size and content ad banners are the only realistic way to cover costs and hopefully earn a little profit (someday we hope). Another way of looking at it is to ask yourself why does Yahoo, CNet, and ZDNet still rely on banner ads? Because for a web sites that have a lot of traffic no one has proven that there is a better way to earn more revenue with less overhead. In any large media company, advertising is it. Even with print magazines the subscription fees and cover prices don't come close to covering the costs for a large circulation magazine: the subscription fees and cover price is just a barrier-of-entry to assure the advertisers that the readership paid to read the content and therefore is the right audience to see their ads.
....but ad banners don't work! There's too many ad filters now days!
Yes, a lot of people, even entire ISPs, have ad filters and proxy rules to block out banner ads but even still there are plenty enough ad impressions delivered every day. In fact those who filter ads are doing web publishers and advertisers a favor by making sure that no time, bandwidth, or impressions are wasted on people who definately will not respond to any kind of ad. So please, filter the ads out if you feel that strongly about it, in fact, I'll pitch you some ideas further on in this article in which our ad system could help you filter out the ads which is why I'm posting this.
...but too many people ignore banner ads, and nobody clicks on them! Advertising sucks! Free your head! Prioritize, man!
Yes, many people, including myself, scroll right past banner ads and ignore them completely. But chances are you did glance at many of the ads in a web given page, perhaps you saw a logo or brand name. In that sense the ad delivered just what it intended. It's called "branding": advertising for the sake of increased brand recognition and its most of what large advertisers hope for when advertsing in any medium including the web. Smaller advertisers will obsess over response to each ad, whether that be a click, or even a sale, and thus they become very unhappy when the click-thru is not to their satisfaction. So just because click-thru percentages are low across the board doesn't mean Internet advertising is doomed, but rather advertisers expectations and ad pricing schemes are changing accordingly. The smallest fish in the pond may be doomed but the pond remains.
What can we expect from OSDN web sites as far as ad banners? Bigger
fatter ads? More ads per page? Flashing noisy ads that will read my
browser cache and report all suspicous keywords to the NSA?
As you might expect, we are debating internally what OSDN sites can do to stay competitive in the ad banner business. Right now we are not competitive in many areas: we only accept the most basic ad formats, most OSDN sites only accept one ad size, our average click-thru rate is as low as anywhere else, and our rate card prices are higher than most. We've been able to get away with it so far because our web sites are very well known and our audience has just the kind of demographics advertisers drool over, but lately its become a buyers market, the ad budgets are drying up and the few big advertisers still spending online are having their way with the web publishers left groveling for the business. It's times like these when advertisers can force outrageous new ad formats down the throats of the web publishers, and other web publishers are stepping up their ad offerings to entice advertisers to their space -- it's a free market economy after all.
So what are we doing about it? First we're telling our sales people to go after more main stream advertising accounts: entertainment, auto makers, food and beverage, whatever we think fits our audience. Second, we're looking at which newer ad formats and what we're willing to accept. Third, I have to rewrite our ad delivery system to improve our ad targeting: platform targeting, geotargeting, and topic targeting at the very least. Along these lines I also have some ideas I want to bounce off you there reading this here article...
Let the users control the ad delivery. User preferences. Ad
filtering. User feedback. Interactive, or as George W. would say "Interactivfulness"
Here's a few scenerios, ideas I've been pitching around:
Comment forums for each ad banner:
What if you could comment on the ad banners, such as each ad banner has its own discussion forum? So if an ad bothers you, offends you, confuses you, entices you, anything about that ad, you can speak and be heard. Let's face it, many ad banners suck because nobody tells the ad agency that the creative needs improvement. On the other hand the ad may be messing with your browser and you just want someone to know about it. Or maybe you wanted whatever was being advertised, you clicked, and you still didn't get the information you were looking for, the ad feedback forum would be the place to get a response on that.
Turning off annoying ads:
Suppose you become absolutely sick and tired of seeing that "Fawking DSL!" ad or that "Punch the monkey" banner, suppose you could click a link right next to the banner "Never show me this ad again or I swear I will lose it and someone will have to call security." And you just click that link and bam, you'll never see that ad again. The number of people who turn off a particular ad could be a way of truly knowing how counter productive certain ads are.
Choice of ad topics and categories:
What if you could select which kinds of ads you want to see, and which kinds of ads you don't want to see? For example what if you could explicately set your ad preferences so that you're are more about networking, movies, gadgets, and events but you don't want to see ads for alcohol, web design, or luxury items... and these ad preferences would apply to you within whole OSDN network of web sites. Would we use your information to for demographic studies? Yes absolutely, we'd tell advertisers that we have X number of people over here who explicately told us that they'd prefer to see ads about their kind of product. The overall effect we won't waste our effort chasing after advertsiers that have nothing of interest to our community and we won't waste your bandwidth downloading ads you don't want.
What about ad system karma?
I'm thinking there could be a point-based reward system that gives you credit for everything you do that helps our advertising business. As you accumulate karma points in our ad system you could redeem them gain access to an extended set of features in the ad system itself...
To increase your ad system karma you could (Hypothetical examples)
- 1 point for every time you load a paid ad
- 0 points for clicking on an ad (I don't want to encourage excessive ad clicking)
- 50 points for loading bigger ads
- 100 points for loading a pop-up ad
- 500 points for filling out an advertiser's survey
- 100 points for loading a Flash ad
- 300 points for posting a meaningful critique on an ad
- 200 points for alerting us if an ad is broken
- 500 points for helping us test an ad before it goes live
Redeem your points to gain access to such features as (Hypothetical examples)
- Turn off all ads
- Upload your own ads
- Get stats on the ads you uploaded
- Specify which sites you want your ads to run on
- Whetever else anyone can think of...
How would ad system karma affect web site user karma?
It wouldn't. The ad system is totally disconnected from any web site user database. Our ad system runs ads on many web sites, so even if we felt compelled to tie it into the user accounts of any web site it would be a lot of work, too much work, and I don't see any reason to even attempt it.
So the ad system would have its own user accounts independant and unrelated to web site accounts. Does that complicate things? No, the ad system user account is low maintenance, transparent, maybe as simple as cookie, nothing too visible, not in your face all the time nagging you to come play. The ad system preferences web page could be one click away, simple web form, nothing too fancy.
Hey I don't like you spying on me! I'm going to wear a metal bowl on my
head and warn the others that you're all sneaky opportunist-type
people. You are one of them.
That's OK. I have my metal bowl on too. As far as these ad system ideas go, you wouldn't need to have an ad system user account if you want to be anonymous and outside the loop as far as the ad delivery goes that's fine. This user account would be something you'd actively choose to create, and if you don't bother doing so then fine, you're anonymous, unknown, you'll see the normal general rotation of banner ads, and maybe later hopefully you'll find that out food tastes better when you try out some of these features and take advantage of the bonuses.
We're a community, damnit! We're not your ad-clicking sheep! If you
can't sell ads then that's your problem! One day this web site will be
free of your commercial opportunist tryannical business, all the trolls will
leave, this site will be cool again, and then food will taste better!
These web sites have grown way beyond the realm of affordable to operate by volunteers and donors. If OSDN and/or VA collapsed someday then the OSDN web sites would not be simply released back into the wild but rather be liquidated as assets to the highest bidder, and you can bet the new owners would gladly run these sites into the ground for every last penny they can quickly earn from them. So at least you can be glad the original founders of these web sites still work here and they care a lot about how this web site works for you, the community. And if we're not able to turn a profit here despite our best efforts, whoever ends up grabbing our helm here will most likely toss this whole crew overboard, and I can assure you that the new crew will care far less about "community" then we ever did. But that's not your problem anyway because there are plenty of other web sites out there like this one, and if you log off now you may even discover that there is whole world of amazing life outside the Internet, I don't know much about that myself so I can't descibe it to you but I've downloaded pictures of it. So is this as good as it gets for these web sites? No, we can do better here, and last week resolved to be a lot more focused. We're determined not to give Jesse Berst and his ilk any reason to gloat.
So I can't think of what else I was going to pitch here. So please if you have feedback on any of the ideas pitched above then post them here.
Kurt Gray, OSDN, ad system engineer
Re:Uploading your own ad? (Score:2)
You'd be the same as a regular customer, but you'd be earning the credit towards putting ads up in a different way - not just dollars and cents.
I'm not an evil person! (Score:2)
Seems to me that in every discussion concerning banner ads, there's always someone who suggests that I am the spawn of Satan for daring to use an ad blocker [cjb.net], and therefore depriving good, honest, useful websites of the revenue they need to survive. Its interesting to see someone involved with the ad business say that I'm doing advertisers a favour by blocking their ads 'cos I wouldn't have responded anyway. Saves them bandwidth and saves them money, too. Not everyone's unhappy ;-)
As for the "ad karma".. well, as the Cowboy Neal interview [slashdot.org] showed, Slashdot karma is a game, no matter how much the editors don't want it to be. If "ad karma" engendered the same feelings, hey, I'd almost be tempted to turn off the filter for OSDN sites to I could play too!
Re:Ads I hate most (Score:2)
Happened every time I ran across that ad. I suppose it could have been unintentional bad programming, but it seemed Intel was trying to highlight the inadequacies of my processor. And nearly forced me into a hard reboot in the process.
I think that one banner ad pissed me off more than all the 'Punch the Monkey' 'Fawking DSL' and 'Hot Horny Women' ads combined. I haven't bought an Intel product since.
Brilliant! (Score:2)
If I were running cnet.com I'd be all over this - it's a damn sight better than putting big, distracting ads right in the middle of the 'content'...
Re:Ad Karma? (Score:2)
Re:Ad system feedback (Score:2)
Re:Persistent Ads (Score:2)
Re:Hybrid approach (Score:2)
Re:Ads (Score:2)
Re:We're not eyeballs. (Score:2)
I am actually excited about the 'click to never show this particular ad again' and the 'discussion forums for ad banners' ideas. The AdKarma doesn't seem like it will work, but he's just throwing out ideas here! Don't rake the guy over the coals because he had the audacity to ask the users of the sites that he serves ads for what *they* want.
AFAICT, Mr Gray is *not* asking us to do his job for him. He's inviting us to a discussion, and throwing out some ideas, and maybe his ideas will spark even better ones.
More power to ya' Kurt!
Advertising is immoral and should be illegal (Score:2)
Most ads directly offend the customer: "Here's how stupid you are: we can increase your likelihood of buying our car by simply showing you a hot chick, some nice music, driving through an unpolluted landscape on free roads, and then tell you that you can get $2000 cash back (without telling you the price of the car in the first place). You are such a stupid fuck, you don't even care about mileage, security ratings or features. Now have a nice day and don't forget to buy Ford."
The most dangerous effect of advertising is that it repeatedly hammers the same message into our heads: "BUY MORE STUFF AND YOU'LL BE HAPPY!!" Instead of merely satisfying the people's material needs, as is the purpose of any economy, advertising constantly tries to create bogus new needs. This insanity has got to stop and ads should therefore be outlawed.
No government agency is needed to enforce an advertising ban: simply let competitors sue each other for advertising. There is no first amendment issue here because economical speech doesn't enjoy full protection anyway.
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Fake Windows Alert (Score:2)
"Your Internet connection is not optimized" my ass.
Re:Preferences (Score:2)
I am not one bit interested in giving the ad-men any more information about myself than absolutely necessary. And I certainly am not interested in "rating" advertisements. If I am interested in an advertisement I click on it, if I am not, I don't.
Slashdot is actually a good example of how this can work correctly. I find that many of the ads here on /. are quire interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I have on occassion actually clicked on their advertising link to find one of their sponsors. Slashdot may not get the amount of raw views that Yahoo! does, but it is fairly easy to guess what the denizens of /. are going to be interested in.
Symbiosis (Score:2)
This is a community. The sinister Andover keiretsu puts the infrastructure, I am putting this comment, you are putting the reading, the advertisers put the money.
If these elements start to fail, the community suffers. No infrastructure leads to bad user experience. No monay leads to bad infrastructure. No readers lead to no advertisers...
This land is your land, this land is my land.
__
Re:Preferences (Score:2)
In fact, all the ideas listed except for ad karma sounded quite good to me.
One other point. I'd like to specify what speed connection I have, so I can get fancy animated ads only when I'm connected via a high-bandwidth connection.
general feedback (Score:2)
The idea of being able to opt in and out of certain categories is also appealing. Probably upwards of 75% of the ads I see are for products or services I couldn't care less about. I'd prefer the ads I do have to look at to be at least marginally interesting. And the key factor is that I trust OSDN a hell of a lot more than I trust Doubleclick, as far as tracking my ad-viewing and whatnot, knowwhatImsayin?
The karma system...? Kinda seems silly.
MoNsTeR
Give me an option (Score:2)
sounds great (Score:2)
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The problem is far deeper. (Score:2)
--neutrino
I click about once a month (Score:2)
last click through- ThinkGeek on this site.
I guess this is about one in ten thousand response.
Re:Don't worry (Score:2)
Re:Logic. (Score:2)
I'm sure you like to think so. Perhaps you're even right. But encouraging you to believe that is a fairly common marketing approach.
Re:Ad Karma? (Score:2)
The points, just go into little perks from using their credit card and such. Similar to the mileage plus perks. I usually click on ads, it works, and it's quite non-intrusive. They send light weight emails out, with a brief description of the product and how many points you receive.
Best ad campaign I have seen.
Re:Persistent Ads (Score:2)
(But when you come down to it, this one-and-only ad that caught my attention: it was probably just and ad for Philip and Alex's guide to website design. A book I'd already bought and read, or else I wouldn't have recognized Greenspun's photo. So even in this case, the ad was useless: my opinion is that advertising is doomed, as are most commercial web sties... without a new revenue model, the internet is going to return to a volunteer-supported activity. What a shame that would be, eh?)
Karma-type systems require tuning (Score:2)
A good example of a karma-like system is the shops in the game nethack. The devteam has generally indicated that there are two 'approved' ways to get objects from shops: paying for them, and getting your pet to steal from the shop for you. This was originally enforced by making shopkeepers tough (generally tougher than the average adventurer can have a hope of killing), and having them be human, with an in-game penalty for killing a fellow human. To make simply teleporting out of a shop with stuff less attractive, the Keystone Kops were added. Also the shopkeeper himself would track you down and beat the stuffing out of you.
This was roughly the state of shops when I started playing back in version 2.2. There were literally dozens of ways around these deterrents to shoplifting-- dig a hole in the shop's floor and jump through, dig a second entrance to the shop, use a high-powered wand on the shopkeeper, teleport objects out of the shop and go grab them elsewhere, etc. Over the years, things have been added to the game that negate these: if you jump down a hole in a shop, the shopkeeper grabs your pack so then he has all your stuff, shopkeepers repair holes in shop walls, shopkeepers stay out of direct wand path when you're a distance away from them, shopkeepers keep track of stuff teleported out of the shop and charge you for them anyways, etc. The effect is that nowadays, the 'approved' ways to get items from shops are generally the easiest. The game has been tuned that way in response to player abuse.
So, yes of course, no karma system is perfect. But it doesn't have to be-- all it has to do is keep up with those who try to abuse it. Takes a little effort, but what doesn't?
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that's just plain wrong (Score:2)
The fact that you are being attacked anonymously sickens me. I cannot allow this to continue without doing my part to help rectify the situation.
You are a jackass.
There, now you've got at least one person expressing his opinion of you while logged in.
HTH
--Shoeboy
ALT text (Score:2)
If it said "IBM 75GXP. 7200rpm. ATA/100. $200." I'd click. But if it said "Click here for great savings on hardware", I would NOT click.
See the pattern here? Give me information that actually makes me interested, and I might follow up. Give me a teaser and I won't be bothered, because they almost always lead to something lame. Advertise what you're selling! That's what you want me to buy, isn't it? If it's not good enough or cheap enough, I'm not going to buy it even if I do click through.
And on the issue of popups and redirects: for crying out loud, don't advertisers realise they have competitors? Competitors who have the same goods at the same prices and *didn't* waste 30 seconds of my precious time! Who will I buy from? Some moron apparently did a study and discovered that annoying ads are remembered best by viewers. No kidding. We remember them in the same way that we hold a grudge.
(And gee I'm glad people are starting to use Flash for ads. It means I can now load all the images on a page and still not have to see the ads.)
If you get the impression that I think advertisers are morons and their own worst enemies... well I guess that would be just about right.
But the question was more about innovative features. So here's my idea. When you're surfing, you're interested in something else than the ads. But you might see something that interests you and you might check out later. But how do you get that link back later on? Figure out a technology where I can flag ads as interesting and return to them later on, without interrupting my browsing experience at the time. Obviously this can't involve re-loading the page after indicating interest; that's too obtrusive and time-consuming. It can't add the link to my personal bookmarks for every ad; that would just be a PITA. But it could add a single link (if it didn't already exist) to a page that has all the links from ads I was interested in; something cookie-based I guess. I don't know how this might be done, but that's something I would actually use.
It might be that a fool and his money are easily parted, but it's time advertisers realised the true implication of this: there aren't many fools who have money.
Re:Stop complaining about banner ads (Score:2)
I didn't have to pay for most sites back before the Web went all-commercial.
Or rather, "almost" all-commercial. Some of the most useful sites that I visit now still don't have ads, and I still don't have to pay to visit them.
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Re:I Love Banner Ads (Score:2)
That's why I call it YASIBM. It's the same deal that C(l)ue(less)Cat discovered: if the customer can find a workaround, the customer will find a workaround. And use it.
If you don't want your e-business to be YASIBM, then you need to do one of the following:
- use a scheme that the users can't work around, or
- use a scheme that won't hurt you too much if the users do work around it.
Notice that users do work around televison commercials, but the t-business model is designed where the networks don't die when that happens. By contrast, e-business is trying a more heavy-handed approach, and companies are dying as a result.Like everything else in life, e-businesses need to consider the difference between what they can do and what they should do. (In this case, I use "should" in the sense of "if they are smart" rather than "if they are ethical".)
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Re:Stop complaining about banner ads (Score:2)
Who says the Web is better now than what it used to be?
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Re:I Love Banner Ads (Score:2)
OK, you've convinced me that the e-advertising business is based on YASIBM (Yet Another Stupid Internet Business Model). I'm having a little trouble working up any sympathy for them, as the saying goes.
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Good ideas, but not my main problem with ads (Score:2)
I suspect that the karma idea might not work. Maybe. My gut feeling is that the simpler the idea, the more effective. I suspect the response rate to the karma idea might make it unfeasible.
However, my main complaint about banner ads is the fact that (A) the html code for the banner ad rarely, in my experience, has the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes filled in. This means, naturally, that the page can't really start to load properly until it has received that gif image from the ad server. (B) It would appear that many ad servers are running very slow machines ["No, no. They can't be running on a '286! It just feels that way!"] or have a narrow pipe or whatever, because the ad is frequently the last bloody file to load to my browser!
Any feedback is success. (Score:2)
If someone clicks "I really hate this ad, never show it to me again!" the people who made it go "Yay! They looked at it! They saw it so many times they got sick of it! We're geniuses!" and work on the next generation of even more annoying ads.
This, of course, isn't considering the obvious trick: fake feedback tools. Seriously, you don't think 90% of "This ad sucks" links will just link to the same page?
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A step further... (Score:2)
But... Combine ad karma and moderator karma, as in the postings. The moderators could moderate some ads up and some down. Then the system could generally give them out according to the karma level. Even low-karma ads would be shown, but not as often as the high-karma ones (which should be most interesting to the audience).
Being a moderator and moderating would be a wanted thing exactly the same way as being a post-moderator is: you can directly affect the appearance of the site. Every user (who is willing to be a moderator) has a karma level that affects how often (s)he gets moderator access.
The main problem would be rating the moderators. A simple way of doing it would be to check similarity with other moderators. If 50+ people moderate an ad up and one moderates it down, then the moderator gets a -1 hit (the karma level should probably be invisible to the user - otherwise somebody could get angry). With time the individuals who have a differing opinion from the main population would start getting moderation access fewer and fewer times.
Another method to rate moderators would be through some kind of meta-moderation.
Of course, this does not take into account individual wishes. Therefore everybody (who logs in) could set +5 for this category and -10 for that company. They could affect what ads they see, but not remove them (without ad filters). (Of course, moderating an ad could at the same time moderate its category, style, advertiser, company, etc.)
This system would give response to the advertisers too, in the form of a karma level (I doubt very much response would be given in discussion forums, except for really bad ads. And a -64 karma should say just about the same thing anyway...). All in all, the system might just become a self-fulfilling moderating system from which everybody (or at least the vast majority) benefits.
As to the comment [slashdot.org] on persistent ads, I don't think that would really work. Advertisers want to get as many different ads to you as possible. Instead, there could be a page where you could browse the latest ads you've seen. Or perhaps a link "View the ads I've seen on this page before?". Or like was replied [slashdot.org] a "Save/bookmark this ad" link.
Re:My early experiences with Web Ads (Score:2)
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Re:Ad Karma? (Score:2)
Re:User Controlled Advertising (Score:2)
Yes, some of us actually buy things, and WANT to see ads for them.
-russ
Is it crazy to want advertisers to know about me? (Score:2)
There's an awful lot of products out there in the world, and most of them are pretty hard to find without good ole advertising and the web. My Eclipse desklamp, for example, I discovered on a Slashdot banner ad. I love it. I wish I would have found a Philips Expandium CD-MP3 player banner ad instead of searching for it for the perfect CD-MP3 player for a week.
What do I want? I want to be able to comment on ads definately. I want to be able to mark certain ad categories as interesting to me. I'd love to be able to turn certain ad categories off. And most importantly, I'd like to see fewer animated ads.
Re:Targeting (Score:2)
exquisite finery? I shall be the, erm, queen
of the Internet!
Re:bad troll! (Score:2)
Hangs head in shame.
Re:Don't worry (Score:2)
I dunno, Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org] does pretty well using that model.
How to Advertise (Score:2)
bad troll! (Score:2)
#define troll
This_is_spam.c:5: unbalanced `#endif'
#endif
Ads (Score:2)
So we can do your market research for you?
"What about ad system karma?"
So OSDN will devolve into the flashy ads network?
"That's OK. I have my metal bowl on too."
Yeah, that sucks. Perhaps we should be coming up with different, better solutions?
"We're a community, damnit! We're not your ad-clicking sheep! If you can't sell ads then that's your problem! One day this web site will be free of your commercial opportunist tryannical business, all the trolls will leave, this site will be cool again, and then food will taste better!"
Amen
I'd seriously plunk down a micropayment, for, e.g., some of the interviews Slashdot has done, or reviews of technology, etc. Same for the in-depth reviews on Ars-Technica, Tom's Hardware, and some of the good articles on Wired. Not only would I not have to deal with ads, but I'd get the warm fuzzy feeling of doing the "right thing" while at the same time building up a loyalty to the site because I know that I'm probably one of the exclusive in-club that actually *does* tip.
Let's stop trying to get the addict to help us design better drugs, and instead try to get the addict OFF the drugs.
Slashdot Users as 'Organization' (Score:2)
Won't work is karma is worth nothing... (Score:2)
If you have enough "karma ad" points, then you can get the latest cool item at thinkgeek. _That_ might work. You'll have to face the problem of cheating though...
List of banner adds on the site? (Score:2)
Slashdot Potential. (Score:2)
The advertising potential of slashdot us huge. I have spent so much money on stuff that has been suggested by slashdot articles or that I read about in somebody's comments. I maybe once looked for some gifts by clicking on a slashdot ad.
The problem with ads is the same as the problem of slashdot without a moderation system. You don't know what you are really going to get until you look into it. Ads are sold to the highest bidder and there isn't somebody that is much like me reviewing them saying, "this is something you should look into."
Do you know how many people visit my website because I put links in my signature that I think people will find useful? Its a lot. Something like that is the best way to get make advertising on slashdot work.
I would visit something if it is given a testimonial by people that I respect on slashdot. If people were given the option of testimonials to slashdot advertised products in their sigs and could somehow receive some benefit from doing so, I would be much more likely to visit.
If you could work out some way to rate sigs that is separate from comment moderation and have some threshold that somebody's sig has to cross to be visible.... And of course and easy interface for people to see what products are available for their testimonial.
Nobody wants to give up their journalistic integrity by caving in to advertisers, but I don't think that its any better to advertise things that you wouldn't yourself recommend.
Advertisers pay for this kind of info (Score:2)
Besides, there's only 3 results that can come from this: a) assuming Slashdot, et al. put in some sort of "approval-disapproval" system for free, ad agencies get for free what they'd normally pay viewers for, as well as pay a company to do the analysis for. b) assuming Slashdot puts in a system and charges for it, they get the cash, the ad agency gets the standard info, and we may/may not get better ads because people will randomly click on stuff like this without motivation. c) assuming Slashdot pays individuals somehow, whether through cash or karma or whatever, the customer probably won't get paid the standard rate for being a "guinea pig" - around $50 an hour, so they're giving their info/opinion up for cheap.
Don't help the advertisers; they get plenty of money for doing little or nothing anyway, so charge 'em plenty for the privlage of easy jobs.
Feedback! (Score:2)
I'd LOVE to be able to tell advertisers "I blocked your ad, because your damn server is overloaded and the ad took too long to load", or "I don't like javascript in ads, goodbye", or "Cookies? I don' need no steenkeen cookies", because they might actually LEARN from this and improve the ads (before you say advertisers cannot learn: even flatworms can learn.)
Perhaps if
Re:Preferences (Score:2)
I think the open-source world needs a good collaboritive filtering tool anyway, and this would be a great reason for someone to create one. It's too bad that firefly [firefly.com] sold its technology when it wasn't doing well (?) rather than releasing it under an oss license.
Re:My early experiences with Web Ads (Score:2)
Ad feedback is good, pop-up ads are evil. (Score:2)
As for pop-ups, the day slashdot shows a pop-up ad is the day I stop reading it.
My three cents (inflation) (Score:2)
Ideas I like: Comment forums, turn off annoying ads, choice of ad topics.
Ideas I don't like: pop-up ads, flash ads.
I'm a little creeped out by the idea of ad-karma, but if you could come up with some better rewards I could see myself going for the idea. Perhaps you should consider additional rewards, such as:
Don't bother trying to make us earn the right to turn off ads, though, we're smart enough to do it ourselves already without having to jump through hoops. You have to offer something we don't already have.
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Re:What To Do, What To Do (Score:2)
Re:Go ahead on this post (Score:2)
The mod points are worth it.
Olympic Sponsor, I've seen your posts. I've never enjoyed one. Bring me something with grit, and when you troll bring me something with grits. You sir, are quite boring.
Concept and graphic design critiqueing (Score:2)
Surely the easiest way of improving the ads that we see would be to open them up to criticism and set a certain standard. I'm not proposing that we only allow Open Source ads and geek ads, but finely constructed ads. Ads that make us laugh, ads that make us smile, ads that make us think, are far more valuable than just the ad from the company that had the money to put it up.
Perhaps
If you want to compete for my mindshare........take my opinion into account.
Ads I hate most (Score:2)
web sites "too big for volunteers" (Score:2)
I'm getting tired of seeing this line repeated around town these days. Many people will remember that we had and still have, a functioning message forum system for the same tens of thousands of people who read slashdot. It's called usenet. If slashdot and sites like it go into the toilet, rest assured that usenet, moderated usenet & listserv's will be waiting for us. In fact, maybe someone will come up with a way to structure a newsgroup like slashdot.
Re:What To Do, What To Do (Score:2)
....
But I'd much prefer being able to do more then click or not - being able to request more info
There are interactive ads that do essentially what you suggest (the mega ads on CNET and some IBM ads).
Re:Targeting (Score:2)
-
Wow, what a prediction. (Score:2)
Not so (Score:5, Funny) now eh?
Rich
Re:Karma? Don't you learn? (Score:2)
It *might* work better if you don't let people know how much karma they've got. That way, they can't boast about it even to themselves and they don't know how far they have to go to reach the next "goal", although if this was implemented I imagine we'd get a slashdot story one day: "OSDN Ad Banner Scoring System Found! (from the some-people-have-too-much-time dept.)"
oojah
Re:A different kind of Ad-Karna: Clue-Karma (Score:3)
This would work best in conjunction with a link to show detailed ad information, in particular the "classifications" the ad company has supplied to reach their target market. (i.e. "perl", "hard drives", "CPUs", "php", "developers wanted", "snack foods", etc.)
Classifications are usually created not by technicians, but by some marketing drone who probably has a hard time spelling CPU. A discussion forum and the ability to moderate up well-classified, interesting ads would help good ads get a better clickthru.
The big problem with moderation like this is that each company pays for a certain number of impressions. If their ad sucks, and gets moderated down, the OSDN may not be able to meet their stated number of impressions before the end of the ad campaign.
There needs to be some way to provide positive motivation for companies to put up "good" ads. Rather than fiddling with the ad frequencies, perhaps OSDN could just create a "showcase" page which shows the ads in order of their moderation totals. "Good" ads could be recognized and "bad" ads would also be recognized. ;-) Another thought might be to give the highest-rated ads additional run time for no charge. Perhaps the best ads could go on the front page and all the others would only be shown deeper in?
Re:My early experiences with Web Ads (Score:3)
Trust me. It works great. I've been using Mozilla as my regular browser since 0.7 came out, and it's come a long way since the M## builds.
This is spam! (Score:3)
I saw it over on Kuro5hin already!
#endif
An experience with clicking a banner ad ... (Score:3)
Now, maybe just to have a say in this thread i clicked on the ad. Where it got me was a page where i could subscribe to a magazine. The page promises it'll take only 5 minutes and it's free anyway, so what have i got to loose? Well, the answer is simple: time. I don't want to wade through a tediuos subscription process before i can even have a look at the content. The whole experience is analogous to being invited somewhere i'm not too willing to go anyway, and then run into a locked door.
I don't know if the site is interesting or not, maybe later someone tells me it's interesting and i'll subscribe. But after they got my attention so far that i "clicked through" why don't the make every effort to use that very short attention span the everyday websurfer has for anything he's not actively searching and present something that might catch my interest and draw me in?
And mind you, i don't find Linux Benchmarks (the main argument for subscribing) uninteresting at all, i'd just have liked to look at some before subscribing. I even bothered to look at that frontpage for something that would lead me to some examples at least (better would have been the possibility to view it without subscribing).
Other click-through experiences so far have been:
- The site that pops up 3 windows all over the screen, and whenever i kill one it spawns two more. (no more javascipt then, ok)
- The site that requires me to download a plugin before i can even start entering it, let alone navigating.
- The site that requires my undivided attention in terms of bandwidth to even load the front page for some minutes. (Ctrl+W)
- The site which has it's code so botched up, it crashes my Browser
- The site that decided this is the place i want to be and made itself a oneway road (disabling the back button)
- The site that enlarges my Browser window across the whole screen (Ctrl-W even before the content loads)
- The site that opens up in a new window (if i want that i'll do it myself, thank you)
- The site that has so many banners on it's front page i can't even find the way to the sites' content.
- The site that first requires a subscription before i may enter (and i thought you wanted me here, apparently not)
- The site i just can't figure out what it is for, or what it tries to sell, but it's flashy and tells me i should bookmark it
- The site that can only navigated by opening a new window for each klick
- The "under construction" site
- The "server not found" site
- The "404, page not found" site
Admittedly, sometimes i get someplace useful (freshmeat), but that place i would probably have stumbled over anyway even without a banner to click, either because friends tell me, or i find it in a search query, or it's linked from somewhere.
So after all these experiences with ad-clicking i wonder that people still click on ads at all, since more often than not it will just take some time to load, and if the Browser survived
free ads (Score:3)
I can just see future conspiracy theories: the karma cap is part of a master plan to deprive karma whores of the positive feedback they love so much, and make them post ads for their own site (which previously got one hit a week), first for free, and later for money.
Some people might even put up humorous ads that don't link anywhere, just to burn off ad karma. This could be a good thing: it might get people to look at the ads instead of just scrolling past them, and it would be entertaining. But it might also mean that the exchange rate of points for ad views would have to be low. (As long as nobody tries to advertise the goatse site with what looks like a thinkgeek banner ad, I'll be happy.)
What do you think of letting slashdot users who don't have anything of their own to advertise give their ad points to someone who's advertising a "completely free" site (no ads, not selling anything)?
(Btw, does anyone know the minimum amount of money you have to put into a Google adwords [slashdot.org] account to try out an ad?)
P.S. I'm over the karma cap, so please accuse me of not-very-subtly plugging for my site rather than karma whoring.
Lynx (Score:3)
Apparently, the only text available is limited to "Click Here!"
I somehow doubt that many using text browsers ever "Click Here!".
Now, I ask you, why not include a hint of what you're advertising? For all I know I might be missing something historic, perhaps the first Microsoft ad on slashdot. (I still like the C'T Mutant Penguins, that ad pegged Linux, if only by accident).
I have to agree... (Score:3)
I am one of those weirdos who actually goes out of his way to experience certain forms of advertising, while avoiding others. I frequently spend decent amounts of my time howling with laughter and amazement at ads I view on adcritic.com [adcritic.com], while at the same time most of the TV I watch is taped, so I can skip over the same annoying ad that gets shown 6 times during a one hour prime time show.
How does this relate to banner ads this article and comment by Hemos? well, I like choice, be it what sort of products I am exposed to, or what sort of advertising I like...what if there was a way to give a hint of some fancy high end flash type ad through a little banner? I might click on it, if I think the art looks really cool...if I saw ads that categorized accordning to some preferences I had specified, or were geographically targeted (upcoming conserts,movie times...whatever) I would surely be more likely to click-through.
All in all, I have to say I was very impressed, and quite amused with the honest and interesting ideas proposed here.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Free (as in ads) (Score:3)
I don't mind seeing adds. There are some adds that I see and make me aware of something I've never seen or heard of before. But then there are other ads that just piss me off. Popup adds are especially bad, in my opinion, because I hate those extra windows just flying up without my permission. Some people hate banner ads because the sit there and flash their obnoxious message on the page you're trying to read.
So, what should a customizable, user-based ad system provide:
Location inline on the page,
In a new window,
All adds in one separate window,
Text based,
No animation
What else? Maybe we should have an opensource project to develop a better advertising system. Then there can be a nice little backdoor that will spam the advertsing company employees with thousands of ads every day.
Re:I have to agree (Score:3)
Re:Targeting (Score:3)
I want truly directed ads! (Score:3)
Do you know what I want to see?
I want to know about shows and performances in my area. If the Circus comes to town. If Cirque Du Soleil is playing. If Stomp! or whatever hot new show is there.
I want the link to connect to a ticket office, to schedules and fares, to a map service, and reviews of the performance.
I want to know about music performances as well, of Taiko drums and Chinese acrobats and martial arts tournaments in the area.
How do we get the banner ads to work like this?
For product or services, I rely on Google. I want a new video card? I do a Google search on the appropriate websites. I look for "video card reviews performance price"
But for topical, local, and timely information, Google isn't very good.
And I don't want to be always trawling various ticket sites for what's new. I just want to know if Disney's Lion King on Ice is in the area, or something.
I'm sure that's worthy of advertising as much as anything else!
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Re:What To Do, What To Do (Score:3)
Net savy shoppers who do shop online rarely take the first product offered. It's seldom the best deal. Excessive advertising usualy indicates cheap goods with high markup and low value. Common examples are the flashy bouncing credit cards and of course the punch the monkey, mouse etc.
Targeting (Score:3)
If you give people interesting ads, they will click. It's different to the real world. Since the success of ads is measured by clickthroughs (i.e. internet advertising is a direct sales route), then what you have to do is give people things they are directly interested in.
So things like those ads for $10 pearls, will fail on
As to successful indirect advertising (increasing sales, although not through clickthroughs), this is a different issue, and depends on a level of obtrusiveness that internet ads don't have. You can't make a catchy ad to sell rubbish on the internet, simply because that kind of full screen, 3-minute TV ads don't work, because you only have a few pixels on the screen.
Thus although traditional advertising is about selling people things they don't want, when selling online, you have to try and sell people things they do want - it's just a matter of finding the right people. And this, of course, is where profiles come in.
For the success of sites such as
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Re:Interesting Banner Ad.. (Score:3)
Karim
Re:Targeting (Score:4)
I mind them.
One reason is the distracting animations that make it hard to read the content I went to the site to read in the first place. Another reason is that I do most of my surfing over a dialup connection to a not particularly fast ISP, and I dislike having to wait for images to download just so I can read the content I went to the site to read in the first place.
Notice that a solution to both of my complaints would be to use simple text for ads. Sometimes "simpler" works better than "in-your-face". Text ads may not be quite so quick to catch the eye, but then they aren't catching my eye at all as it is. (I turn off automatic image downloading, and I quit visiting sites altogether if they make me wade through too much annoyance to get to the subject matter.)
--
Re:I Love Banner Ads (Score:4)
Is it also immoral to get up to take a leak during a television commercial? Or to use "technological means" to flip to another station?
--
Preferences (Score:4)
Given the opportunity to specify interests for all OSDN banner ads, I'd do it. I think it would increase click-thru in addition to letting you shop around a targeted demographic. Seems like a win-win. Bring it on.
Re:How to make banner ads suck less (Score:4)
But, wouldn't this make them suck more?
I'm sorry. I just had to ask.
Ad Karma? (Score:4)
God does not play dice with the universe. Albert Einstein
Re:Is it crazy to want advertisers to know about m (Score:4)
It literally sent chills down my spine. But, I guess there are many people who do follow that belief. Personally, I'm not the kind of person who would be comfortable going into a shoe store and having the person there know every kind of shoe I had owned, or to have telemarketers quote to me which magazines I had ever held subscriptions to, or any one of dozens of other examples where my right to privacy was taken away.
________
Advertising wouldn't be so bad if it was targeted (Score:4)
(Slashdot Cruiser, anyone).
Perhaps this wouldn't be such an issue if I weren't stuck on a 33.3 dialup connection, but as it stands, even with the "Light" version of Slashdot selected in my user info, some of the articles can take several minutes to load.
Obviously if Slashdot is to remain a free website available to anyone, they need to keep banner ads on their site, so what can be done to alleviate some of the annoyance that current banner advertising can cause? I propose a targeted advertising system that tracks user's preferences based upon the stories they read most often. This would require placing another cookie on a users computer with a unique ID string that Slashdot would use to keep track of what Slashdot stories a particular user reads. Let's say for example you frequently enjoy Slashdot's Anime section. Your cookie would reflect this information and you would be delivered ads for new Anime releases at each page load. Of course you would have to read logged in, but I believe most if not all readers do this anyway.
A system of this type shouldn't be terribly hard to implement, considering Slashdot already organizes stories by category, and it should not be too taxing on Slashdot's servers. I know I would be more likely to click on, and lessly annoyed by banner ads, if they were advertising products I had a particular interest in.
Just a suggestion, does anyone else have any input on the subject?
Karma? Don't you learn? (Score:4)
Anyway, the lesson is that you can't "just" introduce some scoring system without people getting crazy over it. If you decide to go with such a plan, get ready for ad karma whoring, trolling, bot and script hogging and all the rest of the headaches that are going to accompany it.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Re:What To Do, What To Do (Score:4)
Maybe every 50th ad check my email account and use the banner ad space to tell me if I have new mail.
Occasionally stick the latest Slashdot topic or CNN News story in the banner ad space. Not as an ad for Slashdot or CNN but because I specifically requested periodic updates from those sites.
Soon I'll get in the habit of actually checking the ad banner for items of interest instead of ignoring it so throughly that I'm not even aware there is one.
How to make banner ads suck less (Score:4)
- Enforce the "1 x 1 pixel" banner standard, or
- Pay me $1 for each banner viewed, or
- Fill them with pornographic images
I think those are the only real options here.
What To Do, What To Do (Score:5)
Why?
Because web advertising has been basically like TV or print - an ad is displayed and people can click or not. TV doesn't even have that option, but print can send back requests for more info. What can we do here? Click on an ad - that's been the only method of communication.
Me, I like to see *some* ads. I've found good companies and stuff I didn't know about through some of the ads. But I'd much prefer being able to do more then click or not - being able to request more info, or being able to to *turn off* a bad ad would rock. It's a system that I think would be worth implementing - not because I work on the web sites, but because it's something I'd like to have as user.
Hybrid approach (Score:5)
Maybe if you rely exclusively on subscription, it doesn't work. I suspect that relying on ads won't work either. But you're thinking to narrow -- why not have the best of both worlds?
Slashdot uses a login system, so that people can set their preferences. It already serves dynamic pages, based on who is reading it, anyway. It would be trivial to modify it so that it serves an ad-free page to people who paid a subscription, and an ad-cluttered page to everyone else.
People who hate ads but are willing to pay, win. People who hate paying, but don't mind (or would rather filter) ads, win. Slashdot gets revenue, and wins. Everybody wins.
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Can I get some of what you're smoking? (Score:5)
Comment forums for each ad banner:
Great idea! The best part is that you've already tested it here on slashdot. Nearly ever article posted during the "Slashdot Cruiser" campaign contained at least 3 comments about what a horrible idea that was. Clearly you can leverage your existing expertise in this area.
Turning off annoying ads:
I've got a better idea, how about we see hot horny women and get fired? I think this could be a great experience for us to share together.
Choice of ad topics and categories:
Will hardware manufacturers that don't suck be an option? Cause while I'll probably never pay 10% more than the standard price for a "server" that has an asus desktop motherboard and a VA Linux case badge, I do like computer hardware ads. I just like them from real companies like Dell and Compaq that don't charge extra for printing "Linux Powered" on the outside of the box the computer ships in.
What about ad system karma?
Would that work like the slashdot karma system? Cause the idea of ad system bitchslapping is scary. I can handle a default posting score of -1, but I'd hate to have 20 popups on slashdot just because Taco got pissed at me.
1 point for every time you load a paid ad
0 points for clicking on an ad
50 points for loading bigger ads
100 points for loading a pop-up ad
500 points for filling out an advertiser's survey
100 points for loading a Flash ad
300 points for posting a meaningful critique on an ad
200 points for alerting us if an ad is broken
500 points for helping us test an ad before it goes live
The look on Larry Augustin's face when OSDN starts turning a profit: priceless.
There are some things that ad karma can't buy. For everything else there's mastercard.
I understand that you're brainstorming here, but your ideas are pretty silly.
--Shoeboy
Re:What To Do, What To Do (Score:5)
Desperately trying to dump karma so he won't be called a karma whore
My early experiences with Web Ads (Score:5)
Then they went to color. "Ok, just taking advantage of the medium," I thought. Some of them were informative, and I occasionally clicked through.
Then they started flashing at me, trying to get my attention. Hello! I'm Trying To Read, Here! It was worse than being in a room full of toddlers. I was quite disappointed that a
- newspaper publisher
of all possible outfits, was destroying the reading experience in this way. And I told them so. Naturally, they ignored me.And so I installed an ad filter and now I don't see a single one of their blessed ads, or any one elses.
The web ad industry is its own worst enemy.
Re:What To Do, What To Do (Score:5)
Re:What To Do, What To Do (Score:5)
Sorry, but I don't think you can afford my consulting fee.
The ad agency will have to figure it out themselves. That's what they get paid for.
Ad karma? (Score:5)
Sorry, but I've gotta say the "ad karma" idea is exceptionally bad. The only way I'm going to spend my time rating your banner ads is if you:
A different kind of Ad-Karna: Clue-Karma (Score:5)
People "moderate" their ads. They accumulate good karma for being good citizens.
Web site visitors can set their viewing threshold. Don't show me ads from advertisers unless their karma is over 20. Or maybe the ad score is over 3, etc.
Just imagine a moderation system for ads...
(Score -2, Obnoxious)
(Score -5, Company is a scumbag)
(Score -3, Tries to pretend the ad is interactive)
Those who can, do. Those who can't, get their MCSE.
Ad system feedback (Score:5)
This would be a huge improvement over the way web advertising works now. It could even lead the way for others to follow.
I would dearly love the ability to click "Never show me this ad again". I would dearly love to be able to send feedback directly to the advertiser, especially if I knew it didn't go to
I can imagine myself commenting negatively on ads more than positively. But that might change as advertisers accumulate more clue-karma. I can mostly imagine commenting negatively on ads that look interactive, but aren't. Obnoxious blinking ads, etc.
Just because advertisers don't have something to sell that I want, isn't my fault. Really. It isn't.
But some advertisers seem to think that they can persuade me to buy if they can just be more obnoxious and in-my-face than the other guy. I have news for them.
When advertisers have something I'm actually intersted in, then I'm interested (sometimes) in their ads. And (gasp!) I sometimes click through!
I have a few more ideas to suggest:
How about a page I can go to that is just full of ads! I can then immediately pick out the obnoxious ones and immediately click "Never show me again". This should give the advertiser some feedback.
When I click never show me this again, maybe I could optionally enter some feedback as to why! I find this ad offensive. I'm not interested. I think the techniques used in the ad demonstrates that your company is scum, etc.
Maybe I could rate ads, with a simple drop down menu? The higher I rate an ad, the more frequently I see it. This is simply a more fine grained version of "Never show me this ad again".
I might be willing to let advertisers (who haven't yet offended me) contact me. The problem with the way this works now, is that advertisers get your contact info. They then violate the trust you put in them, and you can't retract your contact info. What if the contact info could go to a trusted intermediary? I'm willing to let Acme Co. contact me, as long as they don't offend me. When they do, I tell the intermediary to remove me from their mailing list. This works great until the intermediary violates my trust.
That's maybe the core of the problem. Advertisers have violated people's trust so much, so many times, and in so many ways, that nobody trusts them anymore. Maybe they could earn that trust back, and people might not think so lowly of them.
Maybe I could go to a special page on your site, and indicate, "I'm in the market for a hard drive.". Then over the next week, I would get ads from advertisers who think they might have something of interest to sell me.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, get their MCSE.
Don't worry (Score:5)
Remember, you run this site. You can do whatever you want with it. There is absolutely no need to ask the users' permission to do anything. The servers are your property, the code was written by you, and everyone is reading this website and posting here at your sufferance.
You can't depend on the readers to run this site for you. What do us readers want? A site that's never down, with all sorts of features, that's easy to use, with responsive management, and no banners. Is that realistic? No. Are users interested in sitting down and facing harsh, ugly reality and thinking hard about these issues to the degree that's necessary to formulate even halfway decent proposals? Of course not. And it's unrealistic and dangerous to expect essentially apathetic (and very self-interested) parties to give you good advice.
In the end, the success or failure of the banner system is up to you. You can't rely on the users, and you can't blame them if you fail. But there's a ray of hope here too - you also have the freedom to ignore them.
I hope this is in some way helpful to you.
Persistent Ads (Score:5)
Interesting Banner Ad.. (Score:5)