I'm looking for beta testers at Ad Bard, an open source advertising network that I'm building using Drupal and the Ad module. The project is current in beta testing, with the current goal being to build a network of websites focused in one way or another on free and open source software. If you're interested in participating, please sign up for a free account, and follow the directions to place the appropriate javascript on your website.
I'm also quite interested in hearing feedback on the idea. What would it take for an advertising network like this to be interesting to you? What features would you like to see? I look forward to any suggestions and/or criticisms.
Ultimately, there will be three classes of users on the Ad Bard Network. Website owners, Advertisers, and Resellers. We are currently in phase one of the project: trying to build a network of Website owners. For phase 1 the goal is to grow the network to a modest 5-10 million page views a month (from it's current 1 million page views a month). During this phase, development is focused on building tools for Website owners, allowing them to see ad view/click statistics and to easily track how much money advertisements are making them. The focus is also on simplifying account management.
Once the network size goal is reached, phase 2 will begin which will involve attracting advertisers to the network. During this phase, we will learn what a fair price-per-click is, and website owners will begin to get a feel for potential earnings.
Phase 3 will involve building and deploying the necessary tools to allow advertisement resellers. The goal is to allow ambitious web hosts to sell their own advertising (which would also reach other websites on the network), greatly increasing their potential earnings while also helping to grow the open source advertising network.
Throughout the entire project, the goal is to keep everything out in the open.
That's the general idea anyway. I welcome all feedback!
Comments
one feature - one rearranged priority
First - thanks for starting this. I hope that it will be successful. The publishers of the world (especially open source related folks) need a network that works - most of the people visiting these sites are relatively "ad blind".
I really like the ability to know which posts are getting the ad clicks. I think it provides feedback that is quite useful. If only 10 pages on a 600 page site are getting clicks, why bother showing them on the other pages? That also guides future content creation on the site - if articles 1, 2, and 3 about subject X are getting all the clicks then maybe I should write more about subject X.
I'd also appreicate if you could move the reseller piece up sooner - or at least give people some sort of credit for referring advertisers to the network. Maybe that's the case with the current default advertisement and I just don't know it.
Thanks again!
--
Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Updates
This functionality was pushed out about a week ago, allowing you to track all clicks. The interface is a little rough yet, but allows you to see all clicks and any money this has earned you. Improved searching, filtering and reporting is coming soon.
I have implemented the ability to track when a member site refers a new member to the Ad Bard Network. There's no visible user interface yet, but the back end data collection is already happening. Thus, if someone clicks the "Ads by Ad Bard" link, or if someone clicks a default ad advertising the Ad Bard Network, you will be credited.
As to what the credit will be, I'm open to suggestions. If the new member that signs up is another member website, no money is made so there's nothing to credit financially. If the new member that signs up is a reseller, again no direct money is made to credit to the member (and ads sold by a reseller already have 80% of their cost per click paid out with 20% left to pay for the network overhead itself.) If the new member becomes an advertiser, then there is some money that can be distributed. Perhaps 20% of all ads sold to that advertiser if the "Ads by Ad Bard" link is what was clicked, and 40% of all ads sold to that advertiser if a default ad advertising the Ad Bard Network was clicked.
Thoughts?
awesome!
That's great news. Congrats on gettings these new features implemented.
I'd say that a 20% cut in the case of ads sold to an advertiser is a reasonable deal. It's already a very generous cut for the other two sides, as you point out.
I just set the default adbard image to display but it's not on my site. I guess this is part of the caching system that you have in place. Either clearing that part of the cache or a "drupal_set_message" that alerted me that changes can take up to 15 minutes to show on a site would be very helpful as well.
Thanks!
--
Open Prediction Markets | Drupal Dashboard
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
defaults
It actually does do a drupal_set_message already, outputting the following text:
"Your defaults have been updated. Please allow ten minutes for the changes to take effect."The fact that you didn't see this tells me that the theme needs to be improved to better highlight these types of messages. I will look into that.
Flushing the cache on a member-action is actually not a viable option, for as the network grows this would quickly defeat the benefit of the cache. I will look to improve the ad's caching functions however so I can ie, update the default ads for a specific user without flushing the whole cache.
As always, your feedback is invaluable, thanks! Now, if you have any feedback as to how we can best get more members to participate in the network while we're still in our beta development phase, let me know!
features and priorities
Hello Greg,
Thanks for your feedback! Absolutely, proper click-tracking for member accounts is coming very soon. The ad module currently provides this information as a simple date sorted list, with most recent clicks first. I also am working on an improved reporting interface so you can quickly see at-a-glance which pages are the most popular, etc. Improving all of these interfaces is high on my list of priorities.
As for the ability to resell ads, and to properly assign credit to website owners for referring advertisers to the Ad Bard network, I 100% agree that this is a critical piece. All the priorities I have listed above are very high on the list, with my goal being to accomplish all of them before the end of the month. And with all of these features, I want all the algorithms and statistics to be publicly reviewable by those involved. The Ad Bard Network is brand new, but I hope to see it evolve and improve quickly.
Default ads are simply there to allow you to control what appears on your web page during the times that there are no paid ads available. You can use them for many things, for example to highlight important pages within your own website, to donate advertising space on your website to causes and projects that you believe in, to share some of your favorite images, or even to help sell Ad Bard ads, thereby making you more money by adding new paid ads to be displayed on your own web page. The ability to utilize them as a reseller tool is absolutely planned, but not yet fully implemented.
Keep the suggestions coming! We'll be rolling out improvements as quickly as we get them implemented, aiming for one major site upgrade each week.
Thanks again!
-Jeremy
Ad Bard Network Updates
There's been a lot of improvements made to the Ad Bard Network in the past couple of months, detailed here in the Drupal forums.
Drupal Module
I've uploaded an AdBard module, simplifying the process of displaying ads from the Ad Bard Network on a Drupal powered website. Currently available for both Drupal 5 and Drupal 6.