Bad Impressions

October 8, 2003 2:52 PM

Text Ads. Broken? Or just worthless? [more inside]
posted by y6y6y6 to MetaFilter-Related at 2:52 PM (25 comments total)

And of course I kid. Because I love.

But seriously, I've been buying text ads since they first came out. To me it seems like the best of all worlds. I get to support MetaFilter, I get traffic for my site, and I get to self-link without guilt.

The deal is that my ad doesn't seem to be getting as many (if any) impressions anymore. I try to let the previous ad run out before buying a new one, but my current ad has been running since March. I used to get about 10,000 impressions a month, but this one that's been up for the last 6 months only has 25,000 impressions.

What's the deal? There seem to be about the same number of total ads in the system.
posted by y6y6y6 at 2:53 PM on October 8, 2003

And if you could buy a text ad by some means besided paypal, say by sending a check, that would be pretty nice.
posted by tss at 3:00 PM on October 8, 2003

Seems like an appropriate time to link to this.
posted by anathema at 3:04 PM on October 8, 2003

I changed the way the front page is rendered, to make it less taxing on the server, so non-members get a static page once per minute. So before every single page view required an update to the database, and now non-members (which outnumber members by about 4-to-1) just get the same static ad for one minute until a new page is produced, randomly grabbing another ad.

The upshot is you're getting a bazillion more views than reported, and the server's processor time is way down than doing db writes on every pageview by everyone, but the numbers are inaccurate, including the click-through (since every clickthrough is actually measured).

I should upgrade the RAM, update to the latest CFMX, and upgrade to Win2003 server to handle more requests like the way the ads used to be, but I've let the work lag.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:28 PM on October 8, 2003

So we're getting a lot more views than we've paid for. I wish more things would get broken this way.
posted by timeistight at 3:43 PM on October 8, 2003

"including the click-through (since every clickthrough is actually measured)."

Well poo. I was feeling all cocky since my click rate was up around 5%.

And that Adsense article is great BTW.
posted by y6y6y6 at 3:48 PM on October 8, 2003

Anyone who has one want to comment on the clickthrough performance? I'm interested, but impressions aren't that meaningful a metric to me.
posted by scarabic at 3:55 PM on October 8, 2003

" clickthrough performance?"

I got around 1.5% on everything I'd done before this.
posted by y6y6y6 at 4:00 PM on October 8, 2003

As people realized the majority of ads weren't that great, they started to ignore the textad box on the front page. The click-thru rates fell like a brick, from 5% in the first month down to the typical advertising industry average of 0.5%, and like that, the revolution of textads was over (there are still ads at MetaFilter and a few dozen people use them for some fairly high-quality ads these days).

This would be in the aggregate, of course.
posted by anathema at 4:09 PM on October 8, 2003

I got around 1.5% on everything I'd done before this.

ditto.
posted by quonsar at 4:21 PM on October 8, 2003

What's the deal?

I reckon its the misleading advertising and the lack of good sites advertised. I'm sick and tired of clicking on a link "Fzzy gwp - That means it's funny!" to find out that the site is as boring as shit, or "EDGY NY business card drawings" - yeah right, edgy my arse. i couldnt be bothered clicking through anymore. of course this may be a serious comment or not, i can't quite decide.
posted by carfilhiot at 5:28 PM on October 8, 2003

y6y6y6, I clicked on the Mefi Distilled ad this afternoon and got 404 Not Found.
posted by azimuth at 7:30 PM on October 8, 2003

"....... and got 404 Not Found."

Hello!!! I am a total moron!!!!! How are you today!!!!

...... fixed now........ [slinks away]
posted by y6y6y6 at 7:42 PM on October 8, 2003

I should upgrade the RAM, update to the latest CFMX, and upgrade to Win2003 server

I'm getting that printed on a T
posted by holloway at 9:16 PM on October 8, 2003

he just keep backing further and further into that windows/cold fusion hell, doesn't he...
posted by quonsar at 9:31 PM on October 8, 2003

I have no idea what any of you are talking about, but I sometimes randomly quote stuff from here to people I know (In the real world) in an attempt to make myself seem techno-savvy. Par example:

Me: Hey Susan.

Susan: Hello. What's up, dog?

Me: I upgraded my RAM, updated to the latest CFMX, and installed the wicked-cool new Win2003 server.

Susan: You are so smart. How are you so smart?

Etc.
posted by The God Complex at 9:32 PM on October 8, 2003

Me: I upgraded my RAM, updated to the latest CFMX, and installed the wicked-cool new Win2003 server

Admin: You're so fucking fired.
posted by quonsar at 10:07 PM on October 8, 2003

I get to support MetaFilter, I get traffic for my site, and I get to self-link without guilt.

Innit brilliant? :) In regards to (my) stats, some have 4.74% clickthrough, some have 0.72% and so on. Up and down really, depending on the actual text on the ad as well, I'm sure.

carfilhiot - don't give up so easy, just don't click on those ads again, or any ads written in ALL CAPS. ;)

I'd never click on the google ads, but on occasion I'll detour on a decent text ad, also because I like to support those who support metafilter.
posted by dabitch at 2:32 AM on October 9, 2003

he just keep backing further and further into that windows/cold fusion hell, doesn't he...

It's an abusive relationship. If we were real friends we'd drag him out of there*



*to a log cabin miles from nowhere, one loaded rifle, and corners and eyes and snow.
posted by holloway at 1:21 PM on October 9, 2003

Maybe we should hold a bake-sale for a Metafilter Linux conversion project.

Recode this puppy in PHP, run it against MySql and watch it fly.
posted by bshort at 3:02 PM on October 9, 2003

It's been mentioned before, Matt doesn't seem too interested in the idea these days.

There was a (stillborn) attempt to recode in php but no one led the project and people didn't know where to fit in.

I've offered a few too many times to do it but, yeah, there doesn't seem to be much interest. He's said before that he's spent so much time on this, and he doesn't want to throw it away. I guess the site just does what he wants?
posted by holloway at 3:45 PM on October 9, 2003

he's spent so much time on this, and he doesn't want to throw it away

The best thing I ever learned about in Econ 1 was the idea of sunk cost.

Whether you get a new system or not, the time you spent on the old one is long gone. The only criteria for the new system should be whether it's worth the time to install/learn/administer/etc.

Which is not to say that I don't get sentimental sometimes myself...
posted by tss at 4:14 PM on October 9, 2003

How difficult is it to convert from ColdFusion/MS-SQL to PHP/MySQL? What are the advantages of doing so?
posted by timeistight at 4:38 PM on October 9, 2003

A conversion could use the current sites html, and maybe some of the architecture (as I'm not sure how Matt has done it). It would mostly be a recode. I'd suggest an architecture styled after Apache Cocoon's pipeline, because it's so damn smart.

Generally PHP is faster than CF and for reads MySQL is faster than MS-SQL, but regardless of those choices it'd be the architecture that defines the speed. PHP/MySQL is crossplatform. It'll probably be cheaper than CFMX and MSSQL (because of future upgrades). They're guesses but I'm confident that it could be done if there was interest.

Anyway - this thread is now about what you had for breakfast.
posted by holloway at 5:31 PM on October 9, 2003

> there doesn't seem to be much interest

if it ain't broke don't fix it. ;9
posted by dabitch at 7:50 AM on October 10, 2003