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Text Ads in Story Text
By thelizman , Section Code [] Posted on Fri Apr 04, 2003 at 12:00:00 PM PST

I don't know if this has been proposed, and my half-arsed search didn't turn anything up, but here's the deal. I love text ads. I think the idea of having a second class of text ads in the body of a story is a great revenue machine. However, when there is little or no Full Text (i.e., the whole story is in the intro copy), it looks disjointed and out of place. Likewise, I'd be miffed if I spent money on an ad that got little or no impression because there was no article surrounding it. Could we perhaps implement a code so that there has to be a minimum word count to trigger the ad?

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Text Ads in Story Text | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)

ad box (none / 0) (#1)
by rusty on Fri Apr 11, 2003 at 07:07:52 AM PST

It would be relatively easy to modify the ad box to look for story body data. Better would be to add a little single-request cache flag to indicate that a loaded article has a body, and have the ad box check that.

The presence or absence of extended copy on K5 hasn't really concerned me, because even with an intro-only article (of which there are relatively few) people will always click to read the comments.

It does look a little odd, but I don't think it's a huge deal.

Sponsored comments (none / 0) (#2)
by ruzel on Wed May 21, 2003 at 09:20:17 PM PST

Text ads are good -- they force advertisers to get to the point, instead of fool around with imagery and crap. I'm sorry, but it is very difficult for anyone to be clever in 180 x 60 pixels (or whatever dimension banner ads are).

Having said that, I've always wondered about the possibilities of a sponsored comment system. The best way to explain what that would be is by example. Let's say you have a site whose subject is design. On a scoop site like that you might have reviews of paper companies, design tools, and software products. A company could sign up to sponsor comments. When a user posts a comment in regards to a certain company or their product, they can choose if they would like the comment to be sponsored. The company would receive a preliminary copy of the comment and could approve it (or reject it). If they approve it, then they pay the scoop site for the testimonial. Logically, the scoop site would give the user a good cut.

Other users could of course have the option to filter out sponsored comments (in case you don't like such a thing). However, it seems like a good way for a company to go about utilizing testimonials. Anyone else think so?

Text Ads in Story Text | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)

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