Advertising Experiment

May 31, 2015

Although I dislike having to see non-pen ads when signed in, at least it's better than that vomiting Hieronymous Bosch sidebar we once had.

Hey, that's art, no Art (from my birth-city!)

D.ick

June 3, 2015

Ok, we've been able to implement a temporary fix for the ads on mobile devices, so they should be gone again.

Waiting for the proper upgrade now .

Warm regards, Wim

June 4, 2015

Ads have disappeared! Thanks very much. IPad running Safari.

June 4, 2015

Thank you; yes ads are gone!

June 5, 2015

Do you want reports when a non fountain pen ad crops up? I just saw ads for shoes in the Inky thoughts forum

June 5, 2015

No, not yet - those are the content related ads, I assume, and there are bound to be some mistakes at times. I was already made aware of an ad with something about fountains .

Warm regards, Wim

June 7, 2015

Dearest Members of and Visitors to the little Fountain Pen Nut house on the digital prairie,

Supporter and other options
Not all that long ago, 3 months to be a little more exact, we started with our new Supporter options, started selling our inks again, and initialized a new advertising campaign. All this with the intention to cover all out-of-pocket costs for running this site, and in addition, to try and establish enough funding for professional help with running and managing FPN.

First goal
The first goal has been met. We were running low on funds, and now have collected enough for a year worth of running costs, and it appears that this is now staying more or less at this level, which is absolutely great. Thank you all for helping us out here, I is very much appreciated!

Second goal
The second goal, to generate some funding to get professional help, is not materializing, however. The idea was to use any funding from advertising to achieve this goal, and advertising is only picked up very slowly. Time to try another option in this regard, we thought, and we have aligned with an advertisement broker to see if we can achieve our goal after all.

How, what, when
"How will this work?", you may ask. Well, what we have done is offer our available space to other interested parties, other as in other than those who contact us directly, or whom we approach(ed) ourselves.
There will be one big distinction between the new type of advertising, and the old, which we will maintain, BTW. This difference lies in the fact that only Guests, i.e., Members not signed in and passers-by, will see these adverts, with the exception of the sidebar - we cannot control that as finely as we would like, but we are working on that. Anybody logged in will, as before only see our direct ads, plus an additional sidebar ad if space permits.

And concluding ...
There will not be many ads, as we do not want to clutter up our site, and in addition over the next period, say one or two months, maybe three, we will likely be experimenting with placement and position of these new ads, so please bear with us while we try to establish what will work and what not, not break the site, and keep things as pleasant as possible. However, as mentioned, these ads will not be visible to signed-in members, except for at most a single extra sidebar ad, and the latter only until we have managed to build in some further control over ad placement.

Let's hope this will give us the opportunity to give those on our volunteer team, who really need a break by now, that well earned break, and get help from one or more professionals with running and managing the site.

Warm regards, Wim
On behalf of the FPN Admin Team

Wim, IMHO the Ads are working well as I have noticed two very useful things:

When there are posts about specific brands, the banner ad generated seems to be a very reputable source and an accurate link to the brand, if not the actual model pen.

The sidebar "mini" ads generated are quite interesting FP-related books and other items on Amazon.com and other sites.

I believe you've done a professional job keeping progress with what is progressive commerce. "Clickthroughs" don't just create cookies; they help scale this wonderful resource.

June 7, 2015

Thank you, Steve, your kind words are much appreciated!

Still working on improvements with the advertising part. It has been quite the learning curve so far .

Warm regards, Wim

June 21, 2015

Wim:

I am signed in and I am a FPN supporter...should I be seeing advertising for Fairpoint Communications and Planned Parenthood, and other NON Fountain Pen related ads?

Thanks,

Bill

June 21, 2015

Hi Bill,

At the moment, yes. We are experimenting right now with the different options.

This we cannot test on our test site. These adverts are from regional campaigns, BTW, based on ip-address.

See also here: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/292598-are-you-considering-leaving-fpn-due-to-advertisements/page-3?p=3390350&do=findComment&comment=3390350

And then there is this too: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/292559-new-support-item-in-the-fpn-shop-support-options/

HTH, warm regards, Wim

June 21, 2015

Wim:

Thank-you for your prompt response (as always)

I applaud your efforts in attempting to generate much needed revenue, while trying to find the right balance with revenue generating annoying NON Fountain Pen ads...I am sure it is a most difficult balance to achieve.

Bill

June 21, 2015

The idea is to only use this as a fallback scenario. With http://www.fpn.marketing the idea is to control both types of ads with a preference for pen related ads, and a fallback when there aren't any available .

Warm regards, Wim

June 23, 2015

If the ads are related to region, I guess I should be a little embarrassed to be getting the Beano one.

June 23, 2015

Well , related to region as to where the advertiser would like to advertise .

This could be the USA, or a state or city, or a country in Europe, China, etc.

No need to feel embarrassed.

The general idea is that the better FPN gets known in the advertising world, the better the ads on display become .

Warm regards, WIm

July 4, 2015

I actually find some of the adverts quite interesting. I have regularly clicked on them just in case FPN gets some kind of "click rate" as with Google Click adds. Is it true, do you get any benefit from us clicking on the adds?

July 4, 2015

Only with the pricegrabber matrices at the right (6 ads in a block), and at the bottom, also max 6.

Please do only click when you are indeed interested - the ad agencies have very sophisticated software to see if these are clicks by people interested in these items or not.

Warm regards, Wim

July 4, 2015

Fair enough. Thanks

Ian

July 11, 2015

I view this site on a desktop computer. I recently upgraded my Internet service to a higher speed and celebrated by turning off Ad Block Plus for FPN. Previously ABP was necessary as the ads were killing my connection, now I can live with the ads so long as FPN is seeing some benefit. This raises the question, "*How* does FPN benefit?" I'm more than happy to scroll past advertisements for $1,850.00 pens that I'll never buy if these ads are pay-per-view. If they are pay-per-click then I'm wasting my time.

On what basis is FPN being recompensed?

July 12, 2015

Some are pay per view on the page, some pay per click. But it's no use to start clicking a lot of adverts as the ad-companies have software to determine if a click was genuine interest of fake to generate income. For your own peace of mind: If you see an ad you really are interested in: click and watch, otherwise just consume passively.

D.ick

July 12, 2015

Some are pay per view on the page, some pay per click. But it's no use to start clicking a lot of adverts as the ad-companies have software to determine if a click was genuine interest of fake to generate income. For your own peace of mind: If you see an ad you really are interested in: click and watch, otherwise just consume passively.

D.ick

Had no plan to. Just saying that the if the $3000 pen ads require a click then an Esterbrook-collecting newbie won't be garnering any revenue for FPN. ;-)