Ad support - question for Telligents

Sorry for taking up your time - I'm curious what type of ad support is going to be in the next version (2.0), also, the version after if any.

I want to make sure I don't code something that Telligents is/will work on

We've done very little coding related to ad support. I highly doubt we're doing anything that you'd have to worry about in terms of duplication in that area.

I see - well, Google adsense support would be a killer feature

I think to make anything that would be affective or worthwhile would take integration with a major online advertising company - I'm thinking that establising a relationship with a good online advertising company with a web service api would be ideal

Usually in online advertising and affiliate programs you get cut a check only if you make more than x dollars.  I guess a cool advertising system would automatically deposit in accounts, have some basic affiliate reporting and sub-affiliates, have view and click through tracking - but most of all would integrate with an existing advertising system that handles tracking, and the interaction between publishers and advertisers.

If we had that in CS, well, lots of interesting scenarios popup - thanks for letting me know this won't be in the next version of CS An add-in that would help people make money off of their communities would be wicked.

sedgewick wrote:

I see - well, Google adsense support would be a killer feature

I second this statement. Placing an ad in the second post position of each thread is very profitable. This should be made available in the control panel so that the webmaster can simply turn the feature on and insert in their adsense code.

Has anything changed on this front? I'd love to see support for placing ads in places like to the right of the first post on a thread, and between the first and second post. These positions are some of the best for ad visibility, and therefore more profitable. It is worth remembering that the more income CS generates for site owners, the more likely the site owners are to pay for a commercial license of CS, and add additional components. Ollie

I was just reading my post, I used the word 'wicked'

Ollie, I would definitely say that it would be great if CS had lots of regions in the master pages (default) for ads that can be easily turned on or off.

This is called a 'Placement' in ad terminology.

However, to create a powerful ad system that any ad agency works with, is not something I would recommend being a core feature.  Hey I gotta make a profit somehow

Was wondering where you've been hiding...looking at your profile I see the TLA SDE/T...I'm assuming you got assimilated?

no that was before, I got promoted to sde.  Long story, but no, I don't work for 'them'. I can own all the software I want

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting CS provides an advert server - simply an easy way to put advertising and marketing content into key positions in the page: - Before the first post - After the first post - Inside the body of the first post, right-aligned - After the second post etc I imagine this would be relatively easy to do, but the benefits to those running communities with advertising income (the vast majority I'd imagine) will benefit enormously. Joel Comm's book on optimising Adsense recommends putting ads immediately before and after the first post, and although I can see that getting an ad before the first post should be quite easy, my guess is that to get an ad inserted after the first post could be fairly involved. Ollie

Hi Ollie,

Better support for ads is something we have been thinking a lot about recently. I do not have any great answers for you at the moment, but there are a couple new things in 2.0, which might help out:

1. Ad Parts - Similar to ContentParts, beta 2 contains support for a similar ad control. You can drop it on any CS page and edit inline.
   
2. Render Events - There is now an event RenderBody which is fired before a post is rendered to the browser. This gives you (the developer) an opportunity to change the text, add something new, etc. This is not a cached value, so it can be done for each user
3. TextParts - TextParts are a simple text processing API built into CS modules. It basically gives you strongly typed access to a string which looks like [Name:Prop1:Prop2]. This could (in theory) also be used for ad placement/etc.

I should have an example or two posted for #2 and #3 before the new year.

Also note, in beta 2, there is a new config section for ads (CP > Tools > Ads) which enables you a little more control over who sees ads as well.

-Scott

Hi Scott, It's really great to hear that you guys are thinking about these things. The changes you describe sound like a strong move in a good direction. I'm very excited as we enter the final stages of preparation for migrating to CS. I'm optimistic that with the SEO improvements compared to DotNetBB, the incredible performance, and the improved usability and features, we'll see a solid increase is traffic and revenue, which can then be used to improve my community even further. It's a very pleasant feeling knowing that I'm moving onto a stable platform with a positive future (unlike dear old DotNetBB!). An improvement perhaps worth considering is to support Google Adsense's feature for specifying content to ignore for content matching. As an example at the moment I find a fair few Adsense ads are showing "calendar" related ads, because of the word "Calendar" in the site navigation. These problems can be avoided by making sure the text after the ads is more relevant, but another way is to use the Adsense tags to tell it which parts of the page are navigational and structural rather than the actual content the ads should be targetted to. The risk otherwise is that the blogs page may list ads about blogs, rather than ads relating to the actual blogs listed and their content. See here for more information: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23168&topic=371 Ollie

FYI, I just checked in a new control which should help with ad placement. The control is called "AdRepeater". It will *not* be wired up in any skins, but for those of you tweaking skins for custom ads it should be rather simple to use.

1. Replace any ASP:Repeater with with CS:Repeater (this control derives from RepeaterPlusNone, so even that control can be replaced)
2. Ad an <AdTemplate> region with your ad. Note: You do  *NOT* have access to the databound post
3. Set a location.
   
1. PreSecond (default) - displays add between the first and second post. None if there is only one post
2. PreSecondAndLast - displays same location as PreSecond and also adds one more ad before the FooterTemplate
3. Seperator - displays an ad after every post except for the last post (if a SeperatorItemTemplate is defined, the ad would come before the seperator
4. PreFooter - displays an add before the FooterTemplate

-Scott

You're my hero, Scott! Thank you

Any chance of an easy way to put an ad inside the top post on the page, to the right-hand side?

Ollie

 

One of the cooler new  2.0 features (dev oriented) is runtime events. This allows you to alter a post before it is rendered. With this you can create "live" posts or simply inject an ad with some mark up.

What is currently missing is knowing the posts index in the list (simply managing an index value doesn't work, since posts can be resorted in memory). I originally was testing an idea or two for this, when I came up with the AdRepeater.

We are shooting for code complete this Friday, so the chances of something making it in are slim, but I will follow up if I can come up with something.

-Scott

Thanks Scott, I really appreciate you listening.

Ollie