| LED Digest 1730: Linking, Google, Banners, and Copycats |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................. January 16, 2003 Issue #1730 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Banner Exchanges in 2004 ==-- ~ Ivan Jimenez "LEDers, take a look at Point Roll's three banner formats..." ~ Frank Zipperer "...does Google penalize a site for having exchange links on the front page? " --== Ad Blocking Software ==-- ~ Greg Watson "Hover Ad software can create all sorts of borders..." ~ Rick Gortatowsky "Legislation blocking advertising is unlikely though intrusive advertising might be..." ~ Tom Aman "...HTML is not a page layout language..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Copycats ==-- ~ Lee Roberts --== Whois Data for Sale ==-- ~ Mark Whitman ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Ivan Jimenez Subject: Banner Exchanges > The oversized banners used in the header at pages > similar to My Yahoo! have been getting my attention... > In addition, MSN has implemented the format. - Peter Warnock, LED 1729 Peter, Speaking of Yahoo!, they've been using a banner format from an agency ( http://pointroll.com ) we're very fond of that's been working exceptionally well. Not every publisher accepts their formats but more are getting on board each day. LEDers, take a look at Point Roll's three banner formats and let me know which you prefer. I'm developing a project that will implement at least one of these banner types, in a template fashion at less cost, so small business owners take advantage of them as well. Thanks all, Ivan J. Jimenez CosmicBreath.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Frank Zipperer Subject: Banner exchanges > ... I would recommend link exchanges with sites that are > similar to yours. As long as Google will continue to use > this as a factor in ranking calculations, this is the most > effective way to go (without putting out $$). - Mark Roberts, LED 1728 I have been building link exchanges on my web site for quite some time now and noticed that my Google page rank has slowly but surely increased. I just had a decrease in rank from 5/10 to 4/10 when I placed a weblink banner on my home page (because they required that location). I wonder if this is coincidental or does Google penalize a site for having exchange links on the front page? Has anyone else experienced this? Almost makes me think about removing the link to see if the rank goes back up. Frank Zipperer Frank Zipperer Photography http://www.fzippererphoto.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Greg Watson Subject: Ad blockers > ... where are people like Ken Evoy regarding > this whole ad blocking issue...? - Marty Milette, LED 1728 Where are they? Well, most were out in front of this last year. Corey Rudl was touting a new product called Hover Ad Creator which uses Javascript to create the same effect of popup ads without triggering the pop-up blockers. I'm on vacation this week so you can see a simple example of a "Hover Ad" on my website http://www.gregwatson.com promoting a 20% Vacation discount for orders that come in while I'm on vacation (I sell PMDD fertilizers). Corey's Hover Ad software can create all sorts of borders including those that look just like a standard browser popup window. Other borders / formats include Classic Windows popup, XP Window, Special Alert which looks like a dialog box, a timed count down box, a Set Your Home Page dialog box, and a drop-n-bounce box. You can read more about hover ads at http://www.marketingtips.com/hoverad/ . Greg Watson http://www.gregwatson.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Rick Gortatowsky Subject: Ad blockers > I don't see legislation being able to block > advertising done by site owners. - Peter Warnock, LED 1728 Legislation blocking advertising is unlikely though intrusive advertising might be, such as lite-porn banners on public sites. There is a great deal "up in the air" pertinent to the web. The Bush administration started working at web issues only 6 months after they took office. The fruits of those labors will not be witnessed until the coming election is over. No candidate is going to touch the Internet until as its a giant machine that can effect election outcomes. As to advertising itself my personal feelings are the web browsers will be addressing this. Opera to an extent already does as does Mozilla's current release. I am certainly not judging the content of the original posters site. I have not looked at it. A consumer however has every right to limit content they wish to see or not. How it all ends up being addressed will be interesting. I'd not be surprised a bit if Search Engines in response to be customer friendly attributes denote site content in the not so far future. I know I have personally in web surfing been directed to sites having gobs of advertising yet the substance I was looking for and searched upon is nowhere in sight at a site. Thats frustrating. This is actually where it probably should be addressed. Make the search engines smart enough to differentiate some site content. Thus if a site is using an affiliate sales mechinism it ranks downward of actual frontline resellers or simply differentiated via an Icon in front of the engine listing. At the same time there are several innovations coming in Affiliate models. The "large players" of affiliate programs (we work with several we drop ship for) are looking at sweeping changes to the affiliate models. These changes make a great deal of sense. Many are already somewhat deployed. What it amounts to is the consumer having an auto-generated or self-chosen page or set of pages at a sales site. As these models finalize (probably this coming year) they will include a sub-domain, "JoeChickie.pointofsale.com" this gets indexed in search engines. The goal of numerous retailers are fundamentally reward the consumer as the affiliate and not a site that simply slaps goods out for a cut for directing traffic. Rewarding the consumer for affiliate referral results in traffic retention and a fundamenal mechanism / machine to capture sustained growth. It makes a lot of sense. Its an "AboutMe" type page(s) that continually reward the actual customer. In fact, in some trade rag's I have read many think this will considerably help offset the sales tax issues. The tax issues becoming far more complex to a point of sale. While I have not read proposed legislation I did read that affiliates are included as its part of the sale. So an affiliate would need pay sales tax. That if true INSTANTLY places a HUGE burden on a point of sale accounting wise. Now they would need determine there portion of the sale as well as an affiliates as the tax cannot be levied twice. Its been one of the arguements to keep a tax moritorium in place, part of the "We cant grow" arguement with a flat rate sales tax. Where-as rewarding the consumer themselves brings other opportunities. Reward them with store credit for driven sales, write off all that dough promotional just as they do now and capture more sales. The consumer is and has been the key to affiliate logic. Its simple. Some site advertises product. Consumer clicks through and buys. Affiliate gets a small cut which at least in the USA is tax deductible against positive taxable revenues. Then work to retain that consumer so they dont click through an affiliate again. Its an extrordinarily cheap way to get whats called qualified traffic. Now the desire is to evolve that model in rewarding the customer directly and make them a venue of generating qualified traffic. Thus more retention of customers and "money" stays in house irregardless of the coming taxation issues. It eliminates those issues and yields positive results. >From a business standpoint it makes a ton of sense. Why reward some stranger when in fact one can reward the actual customer. Rick Gortatowsky, President Software Society ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Ad blockers > Is this a form of theft - by removing advertising, even though > you're not putting the money in your own pocket - you're > depriving people of their method of earning a living? > Do viewers have the right to install software that defaces > their view of your site and removes your revenue generation > mechanisms? - Marty Milette, LED 1722 There are a couple of things Marty (and all Web page designers) should remember here: First, the very nature of the Web gives page viewers a LOT of say in how a page displays on their system - that is inherent in the way the Web works and the way browsers are designed. ALWAYS remember, HTML IS NOT A PAGE LAYOUT LANGUAGE, it is intended to give the browser some indication of how the designer would like the page to be displayed. The browser and the user always have the final say. For example, some people surf with images turned off - thus without even using ad blocking software the ads never display and the page will display a lot differently than you may have intended. Similarly, they may use browser settings that affect the size (and possibly even the font) that is used to display the page. One person asked some questions regarding his business and site in LED 1724 (Tom Anson re http://www.therapeutic-grade.com/). In taking a quick look at his site I found that the combination of the font sizing he had used for his home page and my browser settings (IE, View, Text Size: Smaller), the menu bar across the top of the page and a large portion of the menus down the left side of the page were almost unreadable (i.e. the text was way too small). Internet Explorer can be set to ignore colors, font styles and font sizes set in Web pages. Users can even set the browser to use their own style sheet (thus ignoring yours). To understand the degree of control a user has over how a page displays, spend some time looking at all of the options available in Internet Explorer. Then you will understand why it is pointless to get hung up on how a site may appear to any viewer - you do not have nearly as much control over that as you may think. Second, a lot of individuals use ad blocking software, not so much to prevent the ads from displaying, but more to prevent these advertisers from setting cookies on their systems so they can track surfing habits. For these people the blocking software is used in the interests of privacy. While modern browsers give a fair bit of control over what cookies are set on your system, turning cookies off or using too much control can become a real nuisance if you happen to surf a lot of sites where you need to allow cookies for a proper experience. It is much easier to set the control level a bit more lenient and use ad blocking software to prevent the setting of the worst ones by not allowing the ads to display. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com amant [at] cyberspyder [dot] com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Lee Roberts Subject: Copycats > ... a competitor has bought a domain that is very close > to mine in name, then copied my meta tags and statement > at the bottom of my pages soliciting new products verbatim... - A. Brantley, LED 1727 I've had one of my sites copied entirely and placed on another site. By entirely I refer to logo, trademarks, and content. My way of handling the situation was calling the guy at home at 3am. I was sure to get him on the phone then. Not only was he pleasant, he complied with my demands to have it removed by 9am his time. That gave him six hours to resolve the situation. Emails are a waste of time with the first contact for this type of thing. The only thing it shows is that you sent an email. It doesn't indicate that you reached anyone. However, a phone bill showing a duration of more than one minute indicates that you spoke to someone at that number. That will hold up in court much better than a simple email. Reason: a third-party verification that you reached someone at the number listed on the site. Second piece of advice. Use HTTrack or Teleporter Pro to copy the site as it is on the date you notice it. If you have to take them to court you have a direct copy of the information. Not only do you have the visual representation, you have the HTML source codes, the images, the programs indicated in their copies that the files were copied from the domain with comment tags. If you like you can print the resulting presentations so you have a copy of that as well. However, you need to print that from the site so your browser attaches the URL at the top of the printed page. Third piece of advice, trademark your company name and place it in the middle of your keywords. If they aren't smart enough to read your keywords you'll bust them each time and win in court each time. Lee Roberts http://www.applepiecart.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: Whois for sale If some misguided soul had spammed using this message: > We are offering fresh WhoIs data on 214,000 business websites. > Along with the WhoIs data comes an add-on of email addresses > and phone numbers extracted directly from the contact pages > of the mentioned 214,000 businesses. .. 10 or even 5 years ago they could expect to be deluged with highly hostile complaints and a variety of digital attacks from outraged spamees. This was a pretty effective deterrent for awhile. As the population of spammers and newcomers to the 'net increased the backlash to spammers decreased. Part of the "blame" for the spam problem rests with the 'net population as a whole for not maintaining the massive retaliation it once rained down on spammers and those who enable them. The bottom-feeders who enable and engage in spamming are positively destroying free email as we know it. The wheels are already in motion with major players such as AOL. As the saying goes, "what you permit you promote" so by doing nothing when spam hits our in box we are contributing to the demise of the current email structure. I personally am a spam retaliator to this day but only have time to ruin two or three spammer's day a month. I suggest that everyone go back on the offensive and nail every spammer, spam enabler, and those spammers masquerading as legitimate emailers to the freakin' wall every chance you get. And NEVER *ever* buy from a spammer no matter how cool the product. Find someone else who offers it, don't make spamming profitable. That being said, there's also a silver lining to the spam cloud. Lots of spam filtering software is now available and earning a nice income for some responsible online businesses. Even I eventually saw the light and am almost finished with the only system I'm aware of that doesn't filter spam but rather stops it cold with no lost legitimate email (I'm not spamming right now, I'm not offering it for sale or even providing a contact address). So the point is, we *all* have to take responsibility for the spam problem if we're complacent about it. If we use our heads however we might also be able to make fighting spam a profitable activity in some way. Mark Whitman ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken." - Frank Herbert |
