Re: Banner mgmt software/CentralAd

From: Jerry Preeper <preeper_at_cts.com>
Date: Wed 03 May 2000 16:26:44 -0700

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?

TO WHICH WAYNE BROWNING REPLIED:
> Scary as my experiences and way of using the CA
> software is, a clone of this, right down to the
> reasoning for having in-house banner management
> software, direct ad sales and the running of network
> banners, exists. It also gives the ability to lay code
> out once throughout your site rather than the cut and
> paste many sites without banner software are forced to
> do.
>
> CA has been a good solution, but yes, needs to improve
> their interface with their growing client base. It's
> what we call "a good problem" but one that if not
> addressed soon will become a "very bad" one.

I have had very similar experiences, however, I'm
guessing that it relates to the fact that I can not
upgrade to 4.0 and still run 3.0J. We have run into a
problem with the system and the overall number of
banner displays has been dropping dramatically, yet our
traffic is up 50% between January and March. We still
haven't figured out that problem.

That problem aside, since there appears to be a large
number of people on this list using the program maybe
someone has run across a solution to this issue of our
not being able to upgrade to 4.0, which I would love to
do so I can use the html and other banner types that I
now can't accept. For me, the prime selling feature of
3.0J was that I could set groupings to determine where
on my site that banners would be displayed. I run a
sports web site and everything is organized by league
and then team in directory structure. I could target
specific teams, simply using the exact same ssi call in
every page (not using any parameters as part of the cgi
call). I just simply create a group for that site and
run the targeted ad in that group. I have over 100
people who work on various html pages and 3.0J was
exactly what I needed. One banner call gets put on the
page no matter where the page is. No one has to keep
track of regions. However, in 4.0 this disappeared.
The only way I can target down to individual teams or
even a single page, was to customize the code. Now to
get the capability to target my ads, I have to add a
region code to the ssi call. With over 10,000 pages on
my site already, there is no conceivable way I can
change this.

If anyone has run into a similar issue and found a way
around it in 4.0, please, please, please email me... :)

Jerry Preeper
http://www.allsports.com/


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Received on Wed May 03 2000 - 18:26:44 CDT