TERI ROSS WROTE:
> I am curious to know if anyone on this list has had
> experience with CentralAd banner mgmt software and if
> they migrated to a different solution?
I first started using Central Ad 3.0J in April 98 and
upgraded last June to CA 4.0 (and a couple of patches
since). I have been very happy with the product and
our ISP was impressed enough with 4.0 to buy it for
their portal site.
3.0J (which is discontinued I think) can not handle
much traffic and had it's problems - but 4.0 which is
a ground up rewrite in C++ can handle a fair amount
admirably. Our site peaks at 110 hits per second of
which up to 25% of the hits are to the CA cgi bin and
our ISP reports that the server rarely ever has
processes backed up (400mhz, Red hat Linux 5.2, Apache
3.6). Properly installed I have found CA 4.0 to be
robust and reliable and most importantly not taxing on
our server at all.
I can not discern any problems with ghost impressions
but it is worth noting that particular attention needs
to be paid to the cache busting techniques when
writing your html to ensure underdelivery does not
become a problem.
CA sevice is poor these days (was not too bad 12 - 18
months ago and if Brian is reading this I recommend
that you upgrade your Bulletin Board to a version of
UBB so that you can better service CA users). The CA's
sites install notes are not too bad if you are a 1/2
decent tech.
I use CA because I sell advertising inhouse direct to
my target market and I believe that this is the only
compelling reason to run your own ad management
software.
However, I have double the inventory that I could ever
sell to my target market and so use a Network for
access to advertisers I could not effeciently reach. I
run the networks ad call and redirect through CA (set
up as a CA client like any other) with no trouble at
all and have less than 0.5% difference between what CA
reports and what the Network reports in both
impressions and click throughs. The networks ads are
delivered without any noticeable increase in display
time.
I believe that Ad Juggler is comparable and has one or
two features over CA but is much more difficult to
install - having said that - CA is not for the novice
when it comes to compiling on your server.
But to answer the question of migration - I probably
would not migrate to any of the sub $10,000 software
over CA - In my opinion the best solution for an
upgrade is Sabela for Publishers - hosted Ad Mangement
that is comparable or better than DART and well priced
- particuarly if you deliver more than 1million
impressions per month.
The only reason I would have to upgrade to Sablea (or
anything more powerful than CA) is because my small
business ad customers (who represent 100% of my
inhouse sales) were demanding more extensive reporting
and/or required Rich technologies like Enliven for
their creatives. In my experience, small business
advertisers are not running sophisticated campaigns
nor do they wish to spend the big dollars on Rich
technologies for their creatives and so CA's reporting
feature more than meets their requirements.
I run CA on static html and don't use the SSI options
available so I may stand to be corrected on it's
ability to handle some rich media anyway.
My overall experience with CA has been good - if CA ran
even a decent Q&A Forum for users to get some sort of
consistent support from (like UBB does) then I would
rank their product as excellent - To be fair to CA (or
any of the budget priced ad management solutions) I
think it needs to be appreciated that the Networks
have a vested interest in keeping decent ad management
software off the shelves and so it must be tough
providing a product in that market - any of you who
have shopped around will have noticed the gap in
products available between the sub $1000 solutions and
$10,000+ solutions.
If you have a decent tech who is wise in the ways of
compilling C++ software then you can get around 95% of
your support needs with CA - and at less than $1000 it
will deliver it's value in ads many times over.
Hope this helps
Richard Tribe
Publisher, Sno-Info
ski.com.au
Received on Sun Apr 30 2000 - 20:20:04 CDT
