advertising

[petesmc]

Is sitepoint finding it hard to get advertising on the forums or something?

[mkaufman]

No, they're booked for 6 months ahead I believe.

[petesmc]

Because there is no banner in the forum

[Hierophant]

There are banners but it there is a blank sporadically. I believe this has more to do with the Ad Serving Company than with the lack of banners.

I do know for a fact that Community Sponsorship for this month has been sold.

[PeterW]

I usually have problems downloading the adverts even when they are supposed to be there.. I dont know if it is because of my ISP. For this reason I have taken to using Opera to browse the forums because it doesn't divert you away from the page when it cant load the banner.. (like IE).
Perhaps sitepoint could hold the actual image on their servers and just submit their access logs to the ad company?
I know this would require trust.. but I think SP is a reputable company?

[jer]

I hope this doesn't turn future advertisors off sponsoring the forums.. but I honestly did not notice anything was different about the ads up top (which were apparently blank) until I read this thread, and took a look and saw "wow, it's just whitespace there".

On the brighter side.. at least by the end of a month (and i probably spend at least an hour a day reading threads here) I'm aware of who the sponsor is. For example, LiveHelper has something to do with providing customer service, and ServerAnswer.com is a host.

Just thought it was kind of odd I didn't notice it was missing.. I mean, I can understand that they get mentally filtered out when im surfing the forums.. but I thought i'd notice more if they werent there.

Oh well, just my 2 cents..

jer

[qslack]

Talking about the ads, has anyone noticed the LiveHelper one? They show a screenshot of a spreadsheet-like screen, with a small profile of visitors. But they're coming from 127.0.28.129 or something. Anything that starts from 127.* is coming from localhost, or the local computer. So, that means several people are sitting there, with custom browsers designed to say they are 127.0.129.124, all requesting pages.

They've obviously edited the ad.

[petesmc]

I went to that site a few times and i never saw anything about IPs, just on the ad. THe rest is a live chat thingo?

I hope LiveHelper isn't reading this

[qslack]

I'm not talking about their site. I'm talking about one of the two ads that's run on SP.

Why do you hope they're not reading this?

[aspen]

Of course they edited the ads. They can't very well display actual non-local host ip addresses. They'd either have to pick one they don't own (which could lead to legal issues) or pick one off their own servers, which could lead to server attacks. Sure its kinda far fetched but the corporate world is careful.

[qslack]

Well, at least they didn't use IPv6 IP addresses like they did in the movie The Net. Sandra Bullock typed in something like '350.447.291.123.'

aspen, you make a good point about legal troubles, but it's like editing the picture of cereal on a cereal box so your competitors don't know what it looks like immediately.

[Hierophant]

While clickthroughs are wanted by any company, the main focus of the Community Sponsorship is BRAND awareness. By reading this thread I can see that we are succeeding in that goal.

Some of you remember who we had as an Advertiser in October yet I bet you couldn't remember who was an advertiser on Yahoo yesterday.

I am working on a few things that would expand the Community Sponsorship without resorting to obtrusive ads so the companies would get more notice. Also keep in mind that the Sponsorship is the lowest priced ad in the SitePoint Network and currently averages about $5.75 per CPM.

[Matt Mickiewicz]

I'd like to officially welcome Search123.com, a pay-per-clickthrough search engine, as January's Forum sponsor.

Their ads should begin appearing here in a matter of minutes.
<Edited by Matt Mickiewicz on 01-03-2001 at 10:55 PM>

[jer]

pay-per-clickthrough perhaps?

Wayne: Thanks I should have realized that, it makes so much more sense, I guess that's more of a testimonial then right?

You also gave me an idea for a thread.. I've been wondering about branding and it's effectiveness for a while. If anybody's interested in discussing branding, look for a thread in the Promotion/Marketing forum soon.

[petesmc]

Cool, that is a nicer advert as it contrasts with forums colors

[steve]

Hi everyone, I am the webmaster of Livehelper.com and also designed all the banners that were run on the forums. The banner in question was a screen shot from my home computer and I was on the site twice. I changed my IP to 127.0.0.100 and 127.0.0.101 because they are reserved for private use and thus can't be used on the Internet. Really I thought I was the only person who was a big enough nerd to notice the ip's in the banner. If you’re going to be at CES be sure to check out the Livehelper booth. It has a presentation I did last night and didn't have time to change my IP Also IPv6 ip's don't look like "350.447.291.123" I believe. I remember reading the specifications a while ago but can’t recall the exact format. If you would like to see one I will go look up an example.

Have a good day,
Steven Bond

[Park T]

I have never seen it blank. Now I always see the Search123 ad. It used to be other stuff.

[Matt Mickiewicz]

LiveHelper was at CES? I just got back from Vegas today (at 2AM -- had to drive 2500+ km home thanks to an ear infection, that I developed on the morning of my flight home, which prevented me from getting on an airplane).

[steve]

A firm that has an investment in Livehelper asked us to do some informational stuff for their booth. They had a product demo, online tour, and some information on our up coming Pro version.

Also I hope you are feeling better Matt

Steven