Advertising Coop possible enhancements

More and more like Google adsense, but without the cost and we get PR and link text value...

• I keep seeing my advert on my own site, bit of a waste of resource...
• There will come a time when there are certain ads I don't want showing up on my site - should be able to exclude like on Google adsense.

Could be programmed into the ads_network.php via php_self and exclusion list, or could be programmed into the control panel so that you only send ads not on the list - you only send ads that are not on the list.

Thanks.

 

I like both of your points very much as I thought of the same things while setting it up today. I bring about 2k impressions per day into the network.

One other item - I would like the ability to change the color of the text for the bare text links, err I suppose I can do that with css.

Eric

 

I think that the excluding your own ads from your sites is a good idea. the second suggestion I would see being highly problematic to implement and most likely not probable. excluding ads from sites would effectively mean lowering the weight of the advertiser's account and would have to be recalculated in order to compensate for the loss. on the other hand, what could be done is lower the publisher's weight if he/she chooses to exclude certain ads based on the new weight pool. in either case, I think that this would pose some major obstacles.

 

As well as the additional processing overheads that exclusions would bring there is also the side effect that the network could effectively become one big reciprocal link exchange as members would likely select on theme. This would undoubtedly put off new members and stifle the growth of the network.

At present nobody knows what impact the network will have on SERPs as it grows but everything I heard so far is positive (I've had some strange - positive leaps for keywords only promoted on the network). I'm a firm believer in 'don't fix it until it's broke' and at the minute the ad network is far from broke.

Mick

 

Eric,

How do you know how many impressions you bring into the network? What's the formula for calculating that?

 

i think being able to exclude links to yourself would be a good idea and would have a positive effect on the links.

 

I don't understand the "lowering your weight" argument - you would still show the same number of ads, just not certain ones, like competitors etc. You could exclude up to x number of ads, and not change the integrity of the co-op. Since the co-op is based on weighting, and random ads are distributed, the counter is currently incremented every time someones ad is given out for a website to show. If an ad is not distributed to a website, the counter obviously doesn't increment in that instance.

Excluding advertising your own site, would increase the number of times your ad was shown on other websites when the distribution is done from the server end.

I mean, any one of us could amend the script to still show the normal number, but exclude certain ads via the php script - But this would be rather unfair, as the ads would not then be redistributed for showing on other websites.

A natural follow on once the network gets big enough, is the ability to seek more of your own countries ads, and for each website to pick a theme of ads they prefer to show, and for websites to select a theme for their sites. Again, there is no effect to the weighting, as the same number of ads are being shown on each website.

 

Sorry Shawn, there is another perspective...

total weight of the network = 1000 sites 1 page each, 1 ad each = 1000 links

At any one time, each of those thousand sites are showing another sites ad.

If I choose not to show one ad (my own ad or a competitors etc), and instead show another sites ad. If that ad is then shown by another member of the co-op, there are still 1000 ads being shown. So redistribution at your server end, means no-one misses out and the weighting of the co-op remains unchanged.

If based on random distribution, my own ad is picked for my site, for that moment, the network has no value for me. If I instead showed another ad, my ad would then be available to another site, and I would get benefit.

We are only talking about firstly our own ads, then say competitors ads, or ads any member may consider undesirable for their website - this number is not likely to be that large to be any significant number. 5 ads out of thousands, 20 ads out of thousands, then those ads are redistributed onto other sites so they get shown their weighting of times...

The concept can be applied to themes and countries. If there are not sufficient ads for a theme or country then others are slotted in. Again, no-one misses out, as the ads not shown on a particular site are redistributed onto other sites.

This concept is a natural progression of a fantastic system. This network is going to get HUGE.

 

Shawn - you have found the logic to my argument in the second part of your post...

Lets rephrase it slightly.

So how would the mathematics of dishing out ads work? I have a weight of 10,000, my random number comes up to have my ad placed in a websites cache of available links, but my website is on their exclusion list, so my 10,000 stays at 10,000 rather than decrementing to 9,999. My random number come up for another website who allows my ad, my number decrements to 9,999. This logic is no different from how 'random' works. Random says my link is shown on a page or not. An exclusion also says not. Both 'random' and 'exclusion' allow for my link to be placed on the next available webpage.

 

Sounds great to me. Just the slightly extra overhead of checking against the exclusions etc.

Thanks for your patience Shawn.