![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
Hi everyone! This is my first time posting here. For those who don't know me, my name is Janine and I am an engineer on LiveJournal. I've been working for LiveJournal on and off since November 2005 (I'm full-time now), though I've been using LiveJournal since 2001. I was asked to write this post since I was the one who worked on this feature.
We are testing a new ad placement option for Plus users to choose to use on their journals: "Placement Between Entries". If you choose this new option, ads will appear between your entries on your recent, friends, and day views. Additionally, the ads on the side or on the top/bottom of these particular pages will be removed. The ads between entries will also be customized to match the colors of your journal style.
Keep in mind that we will only be running this option for a limited amount of time, since we are only testing to see how well it integrates into your journal. It's possible that we may close off the feature once enough users have selected it. If you have the "Placement Between Entries" option selected when this happens, you will still be able to use it as long as you don't change to another ad placement option.
At the end of the test, we will disable the option entirely and you will revert to your prior ad placement choice. We'll then review the feedback received and decide if we're going to bring back this option permanently.
The main points about this new option:
We want your feedback! Let us know if you like the ads between entries or not and why. We also want to know how the ads look, both in terms of placement and colors. Nothing is set in stone yet with this feature, so let us know if and how we can improve it.
Send your feedback by clicking on the "Feedback" link at the top of each ad, or feel free to comment here with questions. I or someone else on the team will answer. :)
We are testing a new ad placement option for Plus users to choose to use on their journals: "Placement Between Entries". If you choose this new option, ads will appear between your entries on your recent, friends, and day views. Additionally, the ads on the side or on the top/bottom of these particular pages will be removed. The ads between entries will also be customized to match the colors of your journal style.
Keep in mind that we will only be running this option for a limited amount of time, since we are only testing to see how well it integrates into your journal. It's possible that we may close off the feature once enough users have selected it. If you have the "Placement Between Entries" option selected when this happens, you will still be able to use it as long as you don't change to another ad placement option.
At the end of the test, we will disable the option entirely and you will revert to your prior ad placement choice. We'll then review the feedback received and decide if we're going to bring back this option permanently.
The main points about this new option:
- It is only available to Plus users using the S2 style system.
- Choosing this option will make 468x60-pixel ads appear between entries on your recent, friends, and day views, while your previous placement choice (horizontal or vertical) will be applied to all other views on your journal (such as entry and archive views).
- For the test, there will be a minimum of one and a maximum of three ads per page of entries. The exact number of ads depends on how many entries are showing on a page.
- The ads between entries are all Google AdSense ads right now (though graphical ads may be there in the future). The Google ads will be colored to match whatever theme you've chosen.
** Note: If you use custom CSS to change the colors of your layout, the ads won't match—they will only match if you customize your layout's colors through the customization wizard options ("Colors" section of the Custom Options tab). Keep in mind that the colors of Expressive, Expressive Seasonal, Mixit, Bloggish, and Style Contest cannot be customized through the wizard (only through custom CSS). - The ads between entries option is not currently available to users who are being served ads from SUP.
We want your feedback! Let us know if you like the ads between entries or not and why. We also want to know how the ads look, both in terms of placement and colors. Nothing is set in stone yet with this feature, so let us know if and how we can improve it.
Send your feedback by clicking on the "Feedback" link at the top of each ad, or feel free to comment here with questions. I or someone else on the team will answer. :)
Hi all. I'm going to begin helping out on the sales team so I thought I'd introduce myself. I've been working on LJ since 2002, but I've recently changed my focus to sales. I wanted to post some updates and upcoming items:
New Sponsored Community
We've just launched a new Sponsored Community based on the movie Blood and Chocolate.![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
vivian, the fictional journal of the main character of the movie, will update the community every day until the movie's opening with another chapter of her life. Go check it out at ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/sponcomm.gif)
mydarkestsecret.
Ads on logged out homepage
We always planned on doing this, but hadn't actually implemented it until recently. Later this week, we'll be adding a 300x250 box ad unit on the homepage. If you always stay logged in, you probably won't even notice.
Official communities
We've converted a few of our official communities (![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/newsinfo.gif)
news,![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
lj_spotlight,lj_maintenance, etc.) to the plus level.
Different ad sizes
We'll be swapping out the 300x250 box ad on http://www.livejournal.com/editpics.bml with a 160x600 skyscraper. Look for more of these types of changes in the future as we continue to focus on cleaner ad integration.
New Sponsored Community
We've just launched a new Sponsored Community based on the movie Blood and Chocolate.
vivian, the fictional journal of the main character of the movie, will update the community every day until the movie's opening with another chapter of her life. Go check it out at mydarkestsecret.Ads on logged out homepage
We always planned on doing this, but hadn't actually implemented it until recently. Later this week, we'll be adding a 300x250 box ad unit on the homepage. If you always stay logged in, you probably won't even notice.
Official communities
We've converted a few of our official communities (
news,lj_spotlight,lj_maintenance, etc.) to the plus level. Different ad sizes
We'll be swapping out the 300x250 box ad on http://www.livejournal.com/editpics.bml with a 160x600 skyscraper. Look for more of these types of changes in the future as we continue to focus on cleaner ad integration.
We haven't posted here in a good while because the advertising business of LJ (and Vox) has been keeping all of us plenty busy, especially in the 4th quarter of the year.
But I did want to let you know that a someone new will be joining Six Apart to head up our advertising/sponsorship efforts (introductions will be made later once the new person starts) in January. I'll be working with the LiveJournal and Vox teams as an advisor during the transition, but am leaving my position as VP of Sales.![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2)
joydtaylor , rynfitz, ljkrissy , kimmi8 , burr86 , chasethestars and maybe even wiscoernie and others on staff will be available to answer your questions and update this community.
That's all for now, I just thought people would want to know that my "official" role as LJ's addevil spokesperson is coming to a close soon.
It's been a great year, I've learned a lot, especially from the people who have participated in this community, and I will continue to be an advocate and huge fan of LiveJournal.
Happy New Year everyone!
But I did want to let you know that a someone new will be joining Six Apart to head up our advertising/sponsorship efforts (introductions will be made later once the new person starts) in January. I'll be working with the LiveJournal and Vox teams as an advisor during the transition, but am leaving my position as VP of Sales.
joydtaylor , rynfitz, ljkrissy , kimmi8 , burr86 , chasethestars and maybe even wiscoernie and others on staff will be available to answer your questions and update this community. That's all for now, I just thought people would want to know that my "official" role as LJ's ad
It's been a great year, I've learned a lot, especially from the people who have participated in this community, and I will continue to be an advocate and huge fan of LiveJournal.
Happy New Year everyone!
- Location:the beautiful Bay Area in chilly northern CA
- Mood:
thankful - Music:carol of the bells
In addition to running a very successful banner campaign with us, Spreadshirt has just started a new Sponsored Community on LiveJournal. They want their community to be a place with current Spreadshirt users can share information, designs and tips and where new people can discover what Spreadshirt is all about.
Definately read their profile information because it will give you a sense of what they're about and why we like having them here in the greater LJ Community. They're fun, they get communities (they've created a great one of their own with their customers) and they're helping support the business of LJ with their marketing dollars and participation. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/sponcomm.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
spreadshirt
</div>
They're going to be posted a little later today, but I wanted to let this community know that we're making some updates to the Ad Guidelines.
We've actually revised them nine times since we launched the Plus level back in April. We continue to learn more and more about the nuances and requirements of serving ads in this very complex environment and will do our best to keep the community informed of any substantive changes and of the things we learn along the way.
The biggest change in the Ad Guidelines is that, in some cases, we won't be serving ads in an iFrame. Certain rich media ads have interactive elements to them that don't work properly when you click on them if they are served in an iFrame. I'm certainly no technical expert on stuff like this, so we rely on LiveJournal's engineering gurus to extensively test and approve any of these non-standard ad instances.
Last week we rejected one rich media/interactive ad because we could not be assured that the script needed to get the ad to work in an iFrame was secure enough for LiveJournal standards. This week we decided to accept a different interactive ad for the movie "Employee of the Month". In that case, the rich media vendor was very cooperative and allowed us to test, make changes, security audit and finally approve the ad to run on LiveJournal. However, our engineers determined that most secure way to run this ad is outside of an iFrame, so we needed to change the wording on the guidelines to reflect that, in some select cases, we may not run ads in iFrames.
We also clarified some of the guidelines around rich media ads in general, adding more specific language around how ads with interactive elements like video and sound can and can note be triggered.
The new version of the "Employee of the Month" ad should be live on the logged-in Home Page for Plus users later this evening or tomorrow morning. (There's a regular flash version there right now that's been running for a few days.) Check it out and support the advertisers that are supporting LiveJournal!
As always, your feedback and suggestions are welcome.
We've actually revised them nine times since we launched the Plus level back in April. We continue to learn more and more about the nuances and requirements of serving ads in this very complex environment and will do our best to keep the community informed of any substantive changes and of the things we learn along the way.
The biggest change in the Ad Guidelines is that, in some cases, we won't be serving ads in an iFrame. Certain rich media ads have interactive elements to them that don't work properly when you click on them if they are served in an iFrame. I'm certainly no technical expert on stuff like this, so we rely on LiveJournal's engineering gurus to extensively test and approve any of these non-standard ad instances.
Last week we rejected one rich media/interactive ad because we could not be assured that the script needed to get the ad to work in an iFrame was secure enough for LiveJournal standards. This week we decided to accept a different interactive ad for the movie "Employee of the Month". In that case, the rich media vendor was very cooperative and allowed us to test, make changes, security audit and finally approve the ad to run on LiveJournal. However, our engineers determined that most secure way to run this ad is outside of an iFrame, so we needed to change the wording on the guidelines to reflect that, in some select cases, we may not run ads in iFrames.
We also clarified some of the guidelines around rich media ads in general, adding more specific language around how ads with interactive elements like video and sound can and can note be triggered.
The new version of the "Employee of the Month" ad should be live on the logged-in Home Page for Plus users later this evening or tomorrow morning. (There's a regular flash version there right now that's been running for a few days.) Check it out and support the advertisers that are supporting LiveJournal!
As always, your feedback and suggestions are welcome.
Another First For LiveJournal First...
I mentioned the idea of Sponsored Communities a few posts back, but now it's official. We have our first LiveJournal "Sponsored Community". It's for the upcoming movie the Science of Sleep.
It looks like an interesting movie (I LOVED "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") and we're excited that they're using LJ to help promote it.
A couple of business things to note about Sponsored Communities:
The sponsored community "package" we sell to advertisers includes the following elements:
- resources, consulting and training on how to maintain a Community
- ads to promote the community (the 160x90 badge ads are used for this)
- enhanced placement in Interest search results (for non-paid users) for key words related to the community *
- promotion of the community in the LJ Community Spotlight (clearly marked as a "sponsored community and viewable to non-paid visitors of the LJ home page) *
- special pricing on banner advertising
* as some people were quick to point out, there was a glitch when we first launched this first Sponsored Community yesterday where Paid users were able to see the Sponsored Community link in the Spotlight and in Interest Searches.
We're still trying to find better and more interesting ways for advertisers to get their information out to people besides plastering banner ads everywhere. And are also trying to stay true to our lofty goals of finding new and better ways for advertisers to meaningfully participate in social communities and have conversations with bloggers. Keep telling us what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong and what new things you think we should be trying.
- Location:home office
- Mood:
chipper - Music:a dreamy lullaby
A lot of the feedback we received from you regarding the ad-sponsored Plus account level was about the placement of the ads. Many of you running on lower screen resolutions said that the skyscrapers took up too much space in your browser and left little reading room for entries. A lot of you who have tried the Plus level and switched back said that you would have stayed Plus if you had a choice in where the ads were placed, and even many Plus users have asked for that option.
Well, now it's available! You can choose between two 728x90 leaderboard ads (one at the top and one at the bottom) or a 160x600 skyscraper on the side and a Google link unit at the bottom. You can choose your preferred placement on the ad-settings page. There's a link to it from the Customize Journal page.
( screenshots )
Well, now it's available! You can choose between two 728x90 leaderboard ads (one at the top and one at the bottom) or a 160x600 skyscraper on the side and a Google link unit at the bottom. You can choose your preferred placement on the ad-settings page. There's a link to it from the Customize Journal page.
Note: As of October 2007, the option for ad placement is now in the Customize Journal Area (in the Page Setup section, below the theme previews)
( screenshots )
(I'm posting for Patty, since she's out of the office today.)
It looks like one of our advertisers possibly managed to sneak past our ad guidelines. The kpremium ad is designed and targeted for people in Western Europe and Australia, and we've received reports from people in those regions, indicating that it's doing obnoxious things with the browsers -- shrinking the window and generating popups. (Many people mentioned "ErrorSafe" in particular.)
We're looking into the exact cause of the problem, but until then, we've paused the kpremium ad from appearing in the rotation; we figure it's much better for us to temporarily remove it from the rotation while we investigate what's going on, than to leave it in the rotation for longer than necessary. We're all very sorry that this got past us and that it took us a few days before we could do anything. Thank you to everyone who reported these -- we're in the US, so we aren't running into the problem ourselves, but it's your reports that are helping us figure out what's going on.
It looks like one of our advertisers possibly managed to sneak past our ad guidelines. The kpremium ad is designed and targeted for people in Western Europe and Australia, and we've received reports from people in those regions, indicating that it's doing obnoxious things with the browsers -- shrinking the window and generating popups. (Many people mentioned "ErrorSafe" in particular.)
We're looking into the exact cause of the problem, but until then, we've paused the kpremium ad from appearing in the rotation; we figure it's much better for us to temporarily remove it from the rotation while we investigate what's going on, than to leave it in the rotation for longer than necessary. We're all very sorry that this got past us and that it took us a few days before we could do anything. Thank you to everyone who reported these -- we're in the US, so we aren't running into the problem ourselves, but it's your reports that are helping us figure out what's going on.
We've been kicking ideas around here about what features could go into an ad-supported level for communities, just like we have the paid, basic and sponsored levels for individual account holders.
Why?
1) We'd like to be able to offer advertisers placement within public communities that are about specific interests. For example, movie studios would like to advertise in communities with movie reviews, food and beverage companies would like to advertise in recipe sharing or dining communities, companies wanting to reach parents want to advertise in mommy-centered communities. (And yes, I know there are certain communities that ads of any kind aren't going to be appropriate for, and we need to consider those cases individually).
2) Showing ads in communities with large public readership means we can increase our ability to generate revenue by showing ads to people who aren't LJ account holders and just like to read LJ community content.
3) We think there are more things to offer communities (in terms of site features) and we want to hear community moderators have to say about what they want and what motivates them to create communities before we create a sponsored-level with a bunch of features they may or may not find valuable. (I know, I know, that's Marketing 101; give the people what they want, not what you want to give them!)
So I'm going to reach out to the largest communities to get their ideas and gauge their interest in a "sponsored plus" account level. But it's not possible to talk to every community, so I'm going to throw out some questions to get some feedback here. If you know a community maintainer whose input we should pay particular attention to, send them this post and ask them to comment too.
As always, I appreciate your input, insights and ideas!
Question for Community Maintainers:
Why?
1) We'd like to be able to offer advertisers placement within public communities that are about specific interests. For example, movie studios would like to advertise in communities with movie reviews, food and beverage companies would like to advertise in recipe sharing or dining communities, companies wanting to reach parents want to advertise in mommy-centered communities. (And yes, I know there are certain communities that ads of any kind aren't going to be appropriate for, and we need to consider those cases individually).
2) Showing ads in communities with large public readership means we can increase our ability to generate revenue by showing ads to people who aren't LJ account holders and just like to read LJ community content.
3) We think there are more things to offer communities (in terms of site features) and we want to hear community moderators have to say about what they want and what motivates them to create communities before we create a sponsored-level with a bunch of features they may or may not find valuable. (I know, I know, that's Marketing 101; give the people what they want, not what you want to give them!)
So I'm going to reach out to the largest communities to get their ideas and gauge their interest in a "sponsored plus" account level. But it's not possible to talk to every community, so I'm going to throw out some questions to get some feedback here. If you know a community maintainer whose input we should pay particular attention to, send them this post and ask them to comment too.
As always, I appreciate your input, insights and ideas!
Question for Community Maintainers:
- What features of a LJ community account do you value most?
- What features do you wish you had for your community?
- Would you be open to having ads or sponsor placements on your community?
- What, if anything, would motivate you to sign up for a Sponsored Community Account?
- Mood:
rushed
After a little hiccup where they looked like off-set berets on top of the heads of the skyscrapers ads, the 160x90 badge ads were pushed live today.
I mentioned that they were coming in my last post, but wanted to note their arrival today.
Other changes made today include adding some fields to the page where users can indicate their ad catagory preferences. Now if users want to, they can also tell us their age, gender and location and we can use that information to further refine the ads they see. These are the same three pieces of data for your user profile. You can get to this page by clicking on the custom link under every ad.
That's all for now. Unless of course you know anyone that wants to advertise on LJ! If so, email us at lj_ads@livejournal.com
- Mood: chipper
Page Summary
- janinedog : New Ad Placement Option [+159]
- ryanfitz : A few ad updates... [+47]
- pmmarcov : Changing of the guard [+3]
- pmmarcov : Spreadshirt goes beyond the banner [+3]
- pmmarcov : Some clarifications and revisions to the ad guidelines [+57]
- pmmarcov : The Science of Sleep is a movie and a LJ Sponsored Community [+52]
- chasethestars : Choose where you want your ads! (S2 only) [+39]
- burr86 : kpremium advertisements [+85]
- pmmarcov : Ad Level For Communities [+70]
- pmmarcov : Badge Ads In The House [+12]
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