Why one missed the mark and the other lifted sales by $6-billion
If you haven’t already seen the Gillette Ad, take a quick minute to watch it here. You’ve got to have
Yes, the Gillette ad speaks to the trend of virtue signaling. Yes, Gillette comments on what they believe to be “Toxic Masculinity”.
[Read more…]Some bloggers seem to avoid expenses and rely on organic traffic for their blogs. Yes, it’s achievable, but it’ll probably take you months or even years to finally see the best results you’re aiming for. Even though you follow the best practices and techniques for your blog, there are other options you can take.
Social media paid ads is one of them. Facebook being the most popular, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are among the channels you can use to create advertisements. In this post, you’ll understand more about them and how you can use them to create more awareness and reach more people within your targeted audience which will ultimately bring you, followers.
There are a lot of things online that make our lives better, but in all likelihood, ads are not the first thing that come to mind. Then again, I think we have to admit that ads serve a purpose, and if used tactfully and tastefully, they can add to one’s experience and not resort to ad blockers as a default defense mechanism.
That’s where Adnimation comes into the picture. Adnimation is (obviously) an online advertising company. It seeks to provide both publishers and advertisers an innovative way of playing with ads, as the name imples, via animation. [Read more…]
It is impossible to visit a website these days without seeing pop-up ads, feed recommendation ads and other forms of advertising. While some of those ads are basic images with links, others are just plain annoying.
If you have ever jumped on a site to see lottery scams, male enhancement ads and other annoyances you understand how polluted the internet has become.
The team at InsightsOne recently conducted its 2013 Bad Ads Survey and during that survey they found out which ads annoy customers the most.
Surprisingly it is not necessarily the type of ads (pop-up, auto play videos, etc) that annoys people, it is what they are trying to sell. [Read more…]
Despite the fact that blog platforms like Blogger and WordPress are moving away from CAPTCHA’s (aka those silly puzzles that verify whether you’re human), it looks like one company is trying to make CAPTCHA’s cool again by helping bloggers profit off of every word typed.
ADSCAPTCHA’s™ innovative Pay Per Type™ platform creates profits from CAPTCHA technology. Instead of paying for CAPTCHAs, website owners and developers can make money from every ADSCAPTCHA™ that is typed in full. That’s 280,000,000 opportunities – and counting – every day. […]
The ADSCAPTCHA™ model links advertisers, website owners and web developers so that everyone benefits. Website owners & developers get high-level internet security and a share of advertising revenues. Advertisers gain the most powerful marketing tool available today, customized to their targeted audience and budget. The ADSCAPTCHA™ experience for the user is more fun and more meaningful than standard CAPTCHAs, which means it is a powerful opportunity to “capture” the target audience. (ADSCAPTCHA.com)
Although ADSCAPTCHA is not the first to envision merging word puzzles with ads (as Confident Technologies is also attempting to do this), they probably will not be the last which means that bloggers will soon be arguing whether CAPTCHA’s are still relevant (now that there is money on the table).
Since there seems to be a loyal fan base devoted to CAPTCHA’s (note: I use to be one until I encountered Akismet by WordPress), here are a few reasons why bloggers should (and should not) use CAPTCHA ads for their blogs. [Read more…]
When it comes to being scammed, even the big guys can be taken in from time to time.
Gizmodo, Gawker Media’s hugely popular technology/gadget blog, has had to apologise to its readers for allowing ads containing malware to be published on its site during the past week.
Their ad sales team was duped by an elaborate scam that would have infected some users with software that may have caused random passwords and possibly initiated phishing attacks. [Read more…]
The Google Adsense Blog helps you to get started with Google Ad Manager, Google’s hosted solution for managing your ads. Ad Manager is free to use, but if you grow big you might have to pay up, be sure to read the terms of service so that you know what you’re getting into.
Here’s part 1 and part 2 to help you get going.
So why would you want to use Google Ad Manager? [Read more…]
Google’s general philosophy surrounding AdSense ad placement is to make them blend with the rest of a site’s content, so it’s always struck me as a little strange that publishers have had no control over the fonts displayed.
That’s just changed, with Google announcing an update which allow ads to be rendered in a number of fonts. Don’t get too excited, though, because there’s a small selection — Arial, Times and Verdana.
You don’t get much control beyond that. Obviously, you can’t alter the size of the fonts because the ad blocks are specific sizes and you’d end up clipping ads (this often happens if a user manually increases the font size on their browser). It only works on ads displaying Latin-based characters, and it won’t affect image-based adverts. [Read more…]
Chris Garret recently wrote about the suggestion that clicking on ads would be like tipping a blogger. Consider the opposite. Are you the kind of blog reader who would go to great lengths just to avoid clicking ads?
I’m like this sometimes. And it’s not only because I’ve grown desensitized to ads (ad blindness). But it also stems from being overly-cautious. For one, clicking on bad links seems to be one of the popular ways of getting infected with malware. Because of this I try to avoid clicking emailed links. I usually copy the URL and paste. Or if it’s a service I use, I type the URL directly. And when browsing, I always check the URL on my status bar before clicking. If I find an AdSense ad interesting, I usually just type in the URL–if the URL is visible–on another tab to see what it’s all about. [Read more…]
In Unrelated Ads Angst and Feed Clutter, part of the WTF Blog Design Clutter series, I talked about how to name the ad and feed sections on your blog so your readers and visitors aren’t confused with jargon or misleading representation.
Many of you asked me what title or label should be used to lure your visitors into clicking on your ads and subscribing to your feeds without driving them away or confusing them. Let’s brainstorm some possibilities.
If you use a misleading title for your advertising or “sponsored” section, you can really upset your readers and visitors when they click through to an ad. That’s a sure way to lose visitors. You need to warn them, but you also need to entice them to click, if your blog is serious about making money.
Like most online advertisers, Adsense is very clear about what you can and cannot do with their ads, including the use of deceptive titles that infer the ads are not ads. You need an honest, transparent, yet motivating title for your ads.
“Visit Our Sponsors” is simple and generic, as is “Our Commercial Recommendations.” You can be blatant with “Advertisements” or “Ad sponsors” as long as that still complies with the terms of service for the advertiser.
What about something more appropriate to your blog’s topic?
If your blog is about cars, why not title them, “Drive Some Business to Our Sponsors.” If your blog is about cats, what about “Our Sponsors are the Cat’s Meow” or “Here Kitty Kitty! Shop Here!”
Contextual ad services require keywords near their ads and on the page, so why not add more by being clever, not deceptive. You cannot imply the links in the ads are publisher-created content, but you can say they are ads or sponsors with some imagination.
You can also color the background or the area around the ads to set them apart but also integrated into the blog’s design to draw the eye towards them without distracting from the content. There are many ways of highlighting your ads without words that helps the visitor recognize them. Research the guidelines the advertiser provides, as some do not allow graphics or design emphasis, and check their top revenue earners to see what they are doing.
As featured in the article on feed clutter, I cited an article by Copyblogger about changing the title of your feed subscriptions from “Subscribe” to anything else could improve your blog’s subscription rate and help clean up the WTF confusion that term represents. If “subscription” implies payment, then what terms do you use to promote your blog feed?
The answer depends upon your reader’s familiarity with feeds. If they are familiar with feeds and feed readers, then all you need is the feed icon.
If they aren’t, what words can you use to get readers to sign up for your blog feed?
You can use phrases that link to your blog’s feed, or to a Page with a listing of your various feed options. Here are some phrases to consider:
Again, be clever with the phrasing and match it to your blog’s purpose:
Use the feed icon to add some visual hint and have fun with the all the possibilities. Got more suggestions?
