Re: New ad server system

From: Philip Mak <mfraser_at_SEAS.GWU.EDU>
Date: Wed 11 Oct 2000 13:42:56 -0500

MICHAEL MARTINEZ <Michael_at_xenite.org> WROTE:
> The one thing that most causes me grief in remote
> banner systems is the timeout factor.

Speaking of timeout factors...

Having used several ad companies, I have general
complaints about the quality of their user interface
(for publishers to check their stats). Here are some
things that stuck in my mind. All of these are somewhat
trivial, but it would make my life easier if they were
fixed. I think I am more picky than the average user,
but anything that I am picky about would probably annoy
some other people as well.

[Offender: Advertising.com, Everyone.net]
- Session timeouts. Advertising.com and Everyone.net,
  for example, make me re-login every hour. At one point,
  Advertising.com even had a meta refresh on their page
  to automatically clear it after one hour. To me, this
  is just an annoyance. I suppose some publishers would
  be accessing their accounts from public computers, so
  maybe a configurable timeout (like Yahoo! Mail has)
  would be good.

[Offender: Everyone.net]
- Requiring too many clicks to get to my stats. I have
  to login, then click on "Plug-In AdSales", then "Online
  Reporting", then "Generate Report" after logging in
  before I can see them.

[Offender: ClearBlueMedia.com]
- SSL requirement. It is impossible to check your stats
  without using the https:// URL. Sometimes I like to be
  able to use lynx to view my stats when I am at the old
  SunOS boxes at the university that run Netscape too
  slowly.

[Offender: Advertising.com, SearchTraffic.com]
- Popups on the page. They use popups for
  announcements. I think they should just put the
  announcements on the page, at the top, in bold red
  letters (not blinking!).

[Offender: ClickFinders.com]
- Use of unnecessary graphics that slow things down.
  Here's a screenshot of what I mean:
  http://www.aaanime.net/~pmak/wait.gif In this example,
  they could have just used text for the menu options.
  But they used a lot of graphics, so I have to wait for
  them to load to be able to see which button does what!
  (One question to ask would be, WHAT BENEFIT does using
  decorative graphics give? I would conjecture that
  publishers are serious-minded people logging in to see
  how much money they made; not to look at the pretty
  pictures.)

[Offender: ClearBlueMedia.com, ClickFinders.com]
- It should be possible to see an entire month's stats
  all on the same page, broken down day by day showing
  the important things like page views served, CPM, CPC,
  CTR, etc.

[Offender: ClickFinders.com, SearchTraffic.com]
- It should be possible to see the statistics for
  individual websites that are on the same publisher
  account, not just the aggregate statistics of all of
  them.

-Philip Mak (mfraser_at_seas.gwu.edu)





Received on Wed Oct 11 2000 - 13:42:56 CDT