I love the "Undo Close Tab" option - it is pure genius!!
New content-sensitive capable advertisements with AuctionReporting.com
December042007We wanted to put together a small article about our new advertising client, AuctionReporting.com. Since this service is brand-new (it opened for business 10/7/2007), we also wanted to show other users how to take advantage of AuctionReporting's affiliate program.
In case you're wondering why our site is using this yet untested service, it is because we created it as well and are confident enough to place it on almost every page of our 300,000+ pages of content (except for the pages without a sidebar).
How it works
Publishers
This is the best part -- it is capable of being content-sensitive. For example, if you are browsing a web page that deals with educational software at BetterWindowsSoftware, the ads should be about the same topic! Aside from this being a huge increases to our revenue from ads, it also helps the user stay focused on what he or she is working on -- how relevant is an iPod ad on a page that is about global warming??
The interface for creating an ad may be little overwhelming at first, but options are good, right? You can specify a search term when you create an ad, or leave it blank for content-sensitive ad functionality. Border options include rounded corners, square borders, and no border (by setting border color to same color as background color). You can specify the colors of the text and graphic elements, even the font name can be set! You can limit results based on a price range as well.
The other big thing that you can accomplish is to be able to dynamically pass parameter values to the ad code. For more info, see: Programming with Ad Customizer
...the keywords that this advertisement uses is simply "digital camera,camera" and is limited to the Digital Cameras category.
Sellers
Those who are looking to increase exposure of their items that are currently for sale can use the seller ad services completely for free. All of the same enhancements geared for more clicks are the same as described above for the publishers ads service; the content-sensitive features do not apply to seller ads.
If you can drive more traffic to your items that are for sale, you can get a higher sale price for your items from the chance that there will be more bids.
This ad is for my Mother in Law's awesome knitted items, etc.
AuctionReporting.com's affiliate program
Webmasters who have an account at AuctionReporting can publish their links and banners that contain their referral info. A cookie is set on any user's browser that follows these links so that they can be credited with a percentage of commissions earned for all of their referrals currently under the "free usage" model (once that user subscribes, they wouldn't share their commissions anymore).
With a referral program like this, it is important to promote it if you want to benefit. Sometimes you have to encourage your visitors (like I am doing now). Once you're a subscribing member, you can publish affiliate banners like the ones below:
