Megan

Thanks for the indepth update and the explanation of your thinking.

It's too easy for people to forget that server bills and staff have to be paid - even when what they receive from Squidoo is provided free.  Striking the balance between the needs or desires of lensmasters is a difficult one and you do it well.  After all who else provides an opportunity to rank so well in the Google results for nothing more than  our own time spent  lensmaking and promoting  - as I know all too well with a lens which is currently ranking 3rd out of 240 Million results :-)

Take care

Paul

Last edited by pkmcr (07/01/2009 11:51 am)

Something else that may be of interest: The standard for text links ads is to show 12 or more per page. But we're capping it at only 3 per lens.

My lens views are way down since the Glam ads, but hits can vary by 50% or more for no discernible reason under assumed normal conditions. An added reason may be that many of my lenses deal with learning and education - and it's summertime. Unless the numbers keep meandering toward that cliff, I'll hang on until school starts again. Of course there could be a third reason, maybe folks online have developed good taste and avoid my stuff ..

Nah, aint harf likely.

Thanks for the updates! As long as there are only few per lens... it's all fine.

don't know if I'll be opting out or not, I'll have to wait and see what this thing does to my lenses.

on the good side Squidoo is going to pay us for this
on the bad side we may lose tons of dail up traffic for it

this will require readers to have Flash installed to read our lenses now I've only had cable a short while - had dail up for years, I'm not a big fan of anything that requires Flash, since it doesn't work for most dail up connections

any word on how this will affect our dail up readers and what about lensmasters on dail up? Will it affect their ability to load the edit page if they have to wait for ads to load or will the ads only load on the published page and not on the edit page?

MeganCasey wrote:

Something else that may be of interest: The standard for text links ads is to show 12 or more per page. But we're capping it at only 3 per lens.

I'm glad of that part! I don't want my lenses to end up looking spammy! I've seen blogs using the intext ads and the page has got so many pop ups coming at you that I don't bother reading them. I'd hate for Squidoo to drive folks away by adding so many links that the lenses start looking spammy. If there was only a few than it may not have much impact on our dail up traffic.

Last edited by EelKat (07/01/2009 1:51 pm)

MeganCasey wrote:

Something else that may be of interest: The standard for text links ads is to show 12 or more per page. But we're capping it at only 3 per lens.

The standard is 12 or more per page?  That sure sounds like a lot for a standard.  3 sounds quite reasonable.

Thank you for the update Megan

I am very new to all this. So I'm really only just starting to learn. But I was just wondering if those text links might advertise the same product as my affiliate link and so consequently I would get substantially less of a payout if the reader clicks on the text link rather than on my affiliate link. I s'pose I could opt out....

Jeanette

Sounds great and kudos to you and the team for keeping the community in the loop....

MeganCasey wrote:

Nope. You can have a 100% cash setting if you like, and still opt out of textlink ads. If the 1 week test works and we all decide to continue with textlink ads, then we'll likely create a separate ad pool for that revenue. So the people who want the extra royalties can leave the ads on their lenses. And if you want to opt out, you just won't get a cut of that textlinks ad pool.

Now that is why I like Squidoo.  It is a sensitive issue on some lenses (not others) and being able to opt in/out separately of the text ads is definitely appreciated.  For instance, I'll opt out on my lenses set for charity (even though I leave glam ads on those - they are obvisouly ads and I want my charity lenses in the pool), but lenses about popstars, films etc, I'll leave the Text Ads on (if we get them permanently).

That also helps, Megan, with my question on relevance.  If a lensmaster finds she has written a lens for which the text ads are not relevant, she can turn them off.  Somebpdy else asked about canibalising her affiliate links - again if that is an issue in a particular lens, they can be turned off.  I think being able to turn off without setting the lens to charity is likely to allay most concerns.

Cheers
Kate

MeganCasey: Thanks for the updates.  I think this is moving in a positive direction and will be good for us.  If nothing else, I know ya'll are on top of it for us.

Text links = Yuk. These are annoying to the user and rarely relevant when I find them on other sites.

I appreciate being able to opt out of these; providing this option is very thoughtful to the community.

Alas, what the world need is advertising that is more relevant and useful, and that doesn't invoke banner blindness. Much of this is dependant on smarter advertisers, not just new technology and ways to serve the same ole, same ole.