January 29, 2005
Pondering A New Advertising Concept
Direct Site Sponsorships
One of the issues raised by our new site design is where in the world we are going to put the advertisements we were going to launch here. It's a little difficult to see where ads would not get in the way of what we personally consider to be the best design here yet.
Entirely out of nowhere this afternoon we struck upon a possible alternative in the form of what amounts to site sponsorships rather than standard advertisements.
How it would work is this: Rather than a party taking out a normal advertisement on this site, they would sponsor the site for a month (or perhaps up to three months, in single-month blocks). What does sponsorship look like?
It would entail the sponsor getting their logo and a "sponsored by" tagline added directly to the big white Portland Communique logo itself.
There'd be no consternation as we tried to wedge advertisements into the current site design, and the sponsor would receive just about the highest level and form of "ad placement" possible -- something, incidentally, which would also factor into the rate decision we still need to make.
As we did for our site design testing, we've included a screenshot for those who want a clear and concise visualization for how such a system will work. We think we've thought through most of the possible issues with this approach, but since there often turn out to be things that didn't occur to us, please weigh in via email or reader comment if you have any thoughts.
Portland Communique Sponsorship Mock-Up
Comments (9)
The One True b!X on 29 Jan 2005
Here are some additional thoughts. Possibly, there could be two different classes of sponsorships. In one, the sponsor gets all pages except the category archive pages. That would be the ad with the highest rate. In the other, an advertiser can sponsor one of the category archives pages. That rate likely would be significantly lower.
Does that sort of division make sense, or should any given sponsor get sidewide placement, with no other classes involved in specific subparts parts of the site?
allehseya on 30 Jan 2005
Does that sort of division make sense, or should any given sponsor get sidewide placement, with no other classes involved in specific subparts parts of the site?
A tiered advertising or sponsorship plan makes sense. Am I understanding that advertisers could choose sections of the website to advertise in -- such as 'development' or 'arts and culture' etc?
I think the only drawback as I understand the highest rate sponsorship plan is that (hopefully) you might get more than one sponsor to be on all pages -- but then your logo would turn into a virtual uptown NYC street of flashing billboards and logos.
The One True b!X on 30 Jan 2005
Am I understanding that advertisers could choose sections of the website to advertise in -- such as 'development' or 'arts and culture' etc?
If that's the way I choose to do it, yes. But I would first need to research the logfiles to see how often the category archive listings are even used.
I think the only drawback as I understand the highest rate sponsorship plan is that (hopefully) you might get more than one sponsor to be on all pages...
Well, no, that would not happen because there's only space for one. They'd buy per month, for a maximum three-month stretch (or at least that's my inisial conception). The reason why it has value to them is precisely because they'd be the only one.
Mark Rosenbaum on 31 Jan 2005
I like the idea of sponsoring the site and would like my company to look at this opportunity. My concern is that no one would see it. The banner is not looked at by many who use your site- they go directly to your comments and scroll down from there. Once you scroll down you loose the headline and hence the advertising opportunity. With your sidebar ads, as I remember, they were always seen because they remained next to the written copy.
I'd like to be a part of finding a good solution which allows advertising and continuing your good work!
The One True b!X on 31 Jan 2005
The banner is not looked at by many who use your site- they go directly to your comments and scroll down from there.
You mean once they've read whatever they're looking at on the main page, I assume. No one ever clicks into the site directly to a comment link, so either as the hit the main page or an entry page (if they are coming in from an aggregator or from, say, ORblogs) they are going to see the top banner.
As for the fixed ads, see the various items and ensuing comment threads which established the utter lunacy of trying to make that work, since Internet Explorer has never established proper support for the "position: fixed" standard.
The One True b!X on 31 Jan 2005
One thing to add. Because IE's idiocy ultimately led to ditching any attempt at fixed-position ads, part of the thinking behind the ad-over-logo approach was that it provides a positive to balance out the negative of losing the fixed-position approach. In other words, a sponsor may lose being fixed on the page, but they gain, in essence, rental of this site's own logo.
The One True b!X on 31 Jan 2005
There's an alternative perhaps, because I do get what you're saying about clicking a comments link. Perhaps whoever it is that is sponsoring the site and has their logo and tagline prominently overlaid atop our own logo also gets a sort of reminder text-ad (for lack of a better term) positioned right above where the comments on any given entry begin.
I'm thinking, say, in the same form and layout of the entry footers which list the number of entries and comments. It would have "Sponsored By Birds" as a link, and be the first thing seen just above the block of comments themselves.
The One True b!X on 01 Feb 2005
You can see an example of that proposal on the testbed page.
The One True b!X on 03 Feb 2005
FYI, that testbed page is now running a live example of the ads as served by our in-house ad serving package. If you click either on the logo or the "reminder textad" above the reader comments, it triggers a click-through in that ad serving package. As far as I know, nothing in the code which inserts the ads is interfering with any page rendering.