NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Banner serving based on content of news...
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Banner serving based on content of news...
Mark J. Welch (MarkWelch_at_MarkWelch.com)
Wed, 23 Sep 1998 09:32:49 -0500 (CDT)
Richard, I stand corrected by several messages in this
thread: apparently, I am already selling banner ads based
on keywords. Sorta kinda.
Patrick Murphy wrote (in part):
> However, the Web does raise an interesting question. Once a
> newspaper or magazine is published, it's done with. Nothing
> can be changed. The Web, of course, permits change as long
> as the material remains accessible. A clever advertiser
> could scan for appropriate opportunites long after edit is
> initially posted. * * * It would be interesting to know whether
> many sites have formal policies on this kind of transaction.
> Personally, I don't know of any.
Okay, I guess I sell based on keywords, then. My site is
changed only gradually, and advertisers buy slices of time
against the editorial space, which generally remains static.
And in general, only advertisers that I write nice things about
tend to buy advertising. (I suspect that this less to do with
what I write and more to do with the fact that many of the
vendors I write bad things about are mostly fly-by-night
con artists unable and unwilling to pay upfront for advertising.)
BUT I have had two advertisers who recently bought advertising
and then cancelled their ads when I changed my writeup of the
company.
One was WebSponsors: they bought advertising just as they
launched their pay-per-action ad network, and within a few
weeks I began to receive multiple complaints and the company
admitted that they were not responding to most of the site
applications they received. I wrote a negative report, and the
company called angrily, demanding that I change the writeup
or they would cancel their advertising. I sent them back a
check for the balance of their prepaid campaign.
The other was XlinkX, a banner exchange service, also new at
the time they bought an ad campaign. Midway through their
first three-month campaign, I received complaints from web
sites that XlinkX was displaying "adult" ad banners on non-adult
web sites. I confirmed that the company was doing this, and I
wrote a very negative report on my site. The company was upset
and once again, I agreed to let them pull their advertising, and I
refunded the balance of the prepaid ad campaign.
Note that in BOTH cases, the advertiser had a contract in
place for advertising that was NOT related in any way to the
tone of the report on their service, but each was outraged
because they felt that as an advertiser, they should get
"special treatment." I was quite happy to honor their requests
to cancel their advertising because I really didn't want to run
advertising to help these companies anyway, once I knew
they were acting inappropriately. In one case, this meant
refunding money and leaving an ad space unsold for more
than a month (in the other, I had multiple bidders immediately
begging for the space for the space that was freed up).
In a third case, an advertiser bought advertising for a software
product, and I discovered that the product simply did not work,
and I pulled the ad campaign myself. After some initial upset,
the advertiser agreed that I'd done the right thing and is now
revamping the product. To my surprise, the advertiser asked
me to keep the $2,250 prepayment to be applied at some
future time.
Each of these advertisers bought placement on web pages
where the writeup of their company (and their competitors)
appeared. Indeed, that is the case for the ten advertisers
now running ads at my site. So I guess they are getting
"editorial adjacency" and so long as I don't change the
editorial content on the pages, they are really getting
"keywords." And many people believe that I won't write
negative things about my paying advertisers -- but I
disprove this at least once a month.
For some perspective, I'll go back a year and a half.
At that time, LinkExchange bought "exclusive
sponsorship" of my entire site. About a month after
that arrangement began, something occurred that led
me to write something quite negative about LinkExchange
-- right on a page where their ad appeared. LE co-founder
Tony Hsieh's response was to send me an email
THANKING ME -- he was pleased that their advertising
sponsorship would not compromise my editorial integrity.
Mark J. Welch
<MarkWelch_at_MarkWelch.com>
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