Advertising questions

1) Why are their 8 banners in the rotation? Surely this means less impressions for paid campaigns, for the sake of a christmas banner!

2) Why are there 2 sponsor adverts? Surely it defeats the purpose of the ad location?

Just wondered...

Very good point, i was thinking the exact same thing when they put in the Christmas banner which isn't even needed.

The paying advertisers are losing out which shouldn't happen.

Your banner will appear on every page except the index and should recieve on average 45,000 impressions.

As long as they receive this everything is sweet. Also the banner was placed in there to help spread the christmas cheer.

No, it's flat rate, therefore they're losing impressions and the sponsor advert, that should be one advert....people don't pay to have another advert slapped next to theres!

Read my edited post!

It's taking up 1 paid for slot. If I remember rightly Salathe actually offered to pay for the spot for the Christmas banner (which was awfully nice of him) but instead we just decided to put it up and just sell 1 less spot. With over 1,000,000 page views per month we can handle 8 banners in rotation easily and still give advertisers an average of 45,000 impressions that is displayed on the advertising sales page. It's not hurting any campaigns at all. It was all answered here - http://www.talkfreelance.com/thread27635.html

As for the 2 spots on the left, I've actually only just noticed that once you mentioned it. I don't see what harm it's doing (not as if every other site out there doesn't have more than 1 spot in that position) although as I'm not in charge of advertising Julian will have to clear that one up for you

I don't see anywhere on the Advertising page which states that there will only ever be a single advertisement in the "sponsor" position on the homepage (which strangely isn't given that name on the homepage). Same goes for the forum-wide banner ads -- there is no statement about, for example, only ever rotating 5 banners in any given month. Both advertising slots however, do state (and thus guarantee) the number of advertising impressions that the adverts will get. If they're receiving the quoted number (or more!) then what's the problem? I could see it being an issue if maximum advertiser counts per month were quoted on the advertising page, but... they're not.

As for the Christmas banner ad, I was going to pay to have it up here for the month but Julian kindly waived the fee. What makes that any different than an advertiser (me) coming forward and paying for the banner slot (as I did)? Right now, TF is catering for the demand -- if 200 advertisers wanted the banner slots and TG could provide the quoted impression count for each and every advertiser, care to explain to me what's wrong there?

For some reason, I thought that there was to be only one 125x125 banner.

If I was to pay 150$ for a month, I would like to be unique...not another person beside me, if that was the case i'd go the 468x60 route.

Thats true, hmm...I don't see why the 125x125 spot gets more than the 468x60 spots anyway, also yea, loads of people view the index page most of the time

Actually, the banners get WAY more impressions.

Also, there is no tracking on the 125x125 as they're not on the phpadsnew software, they're just added manually through vbulletin. Plus, they're below the fold.

My biggest concern was really for the first advertiser, his banner is now even further down the page! On some resolutions it might have been viewable but now it might mean users have to scroll to see it, a little unfair?