We already got the TOS: This would have been fine if everybody had used common sense, but in my opinion we need stricter rules for adplacements, text colours, and font sizes. We all want our ads to be seen by the end users, and we all want more traffic to our web sites. Webmasters that hide the ads are not giving away any traffic while they are getting their fair share of traffic from the network. Something needs to be done. I suggest that: - Removal of the simple link option. It will be harder to cheat if you have to display a banner or a box. - More ad boxes become available, e.g. vertical boxes. - We get more stricter rules about how the ads must be placed.
I proudly display text ads and would be totally against the above stipulation. I find the banners look horrible as no-one actually uses banners. So instead you have that centered text. A lot of people have extremely short descriptions leaving that box nearly empty. I would prefer the display to look more like the Adsense boxes. I do understand your point though that more prominence required would be nice. I doubt you will see that though.
"we all want our ads seen by the end-users..." Well... I wouldn't quite agree with that - I couldn't care less how many non-targetted users come from random pages in the ad network and eat up bandwith. I do care about the SERP placement in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, which the coop improves dramatically, as this provides targetted customers who were actually looking for what a page is about.
I don't see any problem with having the coop text links be in the footer of a site. I have mine there, in a regular color and they are easily seen. Banners are simply not very pleasing to the eye, regardless of where they come from.
Well, he made the comment about being stricter about where ads are placed. A majority of the sites that have been discussed on here in regards to hidden have been either in the footer or far down on the pages. Not saying it was said specifically, but if he wants the ads to be placed in a more prominent area, the footer isn't exactly the best place for that. gosh i hope i'm making sense this morning lol
That's not the current problem... the's the major point of the ad network. The fact that it's not categorized means most of the traffic that we get is un-targetted. How many other photography-related sites are there in the co-op? 5 maybe, 10 at the most? Those are the only sites I could really hope to get any decent traffic from. The co-op is about links and SERPs a lot more than it's about traffic. That being said, I agree that "common sense" doesn't seem to come into play for a lot of people as well, which may need to be addressed.
The network is called "Co-op Advertising Network", it is not called the "Co-op SEO Network". It is fine that the coop is helping users with their SEO work as a side effect, but when it coems to the point where members don't care about the advertising and only about the networks effect on the SERPs then it has gone to far. The members who think it is ok to hide ads would be very unhappy if someone added a rel="nofollow" to the network links. They just want the SEO benefits while they don't care about the members who actually makes money from the ad traffic itself.
People are supposed to see my links on other sites? What a novel idea! But that's not what I thought the point was.
Sorvoja, I agree. I don't like this selfish kind of attitude neither. What I'm even more concerned about is whether Google will determine these sites as bad neighborhood.
Let me add here, I don't think they should ever be deliberatly hidden. However, I did expect them to just be links in the footer. But in the same font and style as the page is designed. Not treated differently.
Obviously the point of the network has heavy SEO implications, and that is therefore the main focus of the network. That being said, hiding links and whatever is not tolerated, as that undermind's the whole network.
I'm not in the network, but will be one day. The issue as I see it is quite simple. . . spam. Hidden text ads and other means of deception are really no more than spam. Every search engine and every directory needs to protect itself against spam. And the larger the network grows, the higher the spam rate will be unless there are measures taken. So, how will the co-op deal with spam? Will it be automated (a bot of some sort) or will there be continuous human review/monitoring? Perhaps a good starting point is an 'abuse' reporting form. Is there one already?