Lijit Throws Ads Onto My Site

When I have talked with Micah this is something that they have been experimenting with but it is suppose to be an opt-in service with revenue sharing bewteen Lijit and the blog authors.

Don't see it now, and never have. Odd. I tried using the Lijit widgit and found the information overlapped that from the WidgitBox one I already use. And I prefer the graphical buttons to the text links myself, but that's just a personal preference.

We certainly have been pushing towards having ads, but the platform isn't ready yet. Some switch probably got accidentally switched on your account and then corrected. I'll ask the guys about it in the morning.

Sorry, Chris.

When Micah presented at last New Tech Meetup he said you ether accept that there are ads and get rev share or uninstall, there is no opt out (or in)

Sounds like this is more than a few accidental occurrences. I've got advertising in my Wijit too.

What's up?

Hello Chris and all.

So it appears there has been some confusion about ads in the lijit widget.

1) We have always had ads in the search results themselves. There is no sudden change or fluke there.

We have been testing several different ad platforms lately (Google, Yahoo and other ad networks) in an anticipated launch of the consumer interface and revenue sharing. Perhaps this had made the ads more visible.

2) The image you have displayed in the post is actually a feature of lijit, known as re-search.

If you come from a search engine, an "intent-based" related content box opens suggesting other posts and content from the publisher.

In the example above, someone (probably you, Chris) did a search on a search engine for "chris brogan," and that triggered the resulting re-search box. All the of the links are to your content or trusted sources (other than the ad at the bottom).

As the example shows, we have begun to test placing an ad within that box. This box is opt-in or opt-out (just turn it off or on within your settings in your profile.)

I will say, most people get between a 1-2.5% click through rate on the results (not the ad), driving higher reader engagement.

3) All of this is in test mode. I welcome any comments or suggestions you might have about our ad placements (or the results, or the features, or our name, or anything). My email is micah@lijit.com and my cell phone number is 720-231-7120.

Chris, if that is not agreeable to you, I will contact you tomorrow, and we can discuss a couple of alternatives. You have always been a friend to Lijit (and me), and I would hate to have you disappointed in a tool that has been so useful for you.

(Frankly, that offer stands for anyone, I just wont play will play Metallica in the background like I will Chris. Just shoot me an email or call me, and we can discuss it.)

Well I can respect the instant comment response from them!

@Micah- thanks for the explanation. I hadn't done a search to land on my page, as I know where my page is. But that's what the mechanism is that does it, is what you're saying.

I just now tried that. Went to google, searched on me, and got that box. So now I get that.

NOW, the part that bugs me isn't the ad. Honestly, if you want to throw a little add into the wijit to make money for the service you offer, that's reasonable (never seen it until now, but let's shelf that).

What BUGS me is the fact the re-search box takes up another 300-plus pixels of real estate on my sidebar and pushes the things below it down. That's re-formatting my page and it doubles the real estate of the wijit. I don't want that at all. That's what would get me to pull it out, or shove it to the very bottom of the sidebar.

Is there another way to do that functionality? Why not do just the collapsed box part with a float-over to drop it down?

@Chris,

The re-search box doesnt have all the customizations that I would like it to have (you can either have it appear at the top of the blog, or with the widget, which is where it appears here).

I think that the best place for it is at the end of the post, which is where it appears on Seth Godin's blog (do a search for "seth godin" on Google, click any of the indented results--I usually pick "this time its different"--and you can see the placement.

I also think that the option to have it appear collapsed is a interesting idea.

If you think putting it at the end of posts (although in your case, it might compete with the Zementa related content block) is a good place, I will have one of our developers make the change (I think its actually something you can do, but its not self evident). I will also ask about having it collapsed to begin with.

I believe that within your settings you can also play with its width (to a certain degree), but only if it appears at the top of your blog. (doa search for "iphone flip" on google, and click on the learntoduck.com result. It appears at the top of my blog.)

@Micah-- thanks for the info. I'll think on it a bit.

Shortly after this investigation, I removed my Eco-Safe widget for super long load times. I seem to be on a widget tear. : )

Chris I also have LiJit's search widget on my blog. I just did the same thing, did a Google search for my blog, and an ad popped up in the box. Sorry but that's a deal-breaker for me.

@chris - I hope that a "tear" not a "tear." Wouldnt want lijit to make you cry... ;)

@mack - see my comment. You will see that you can turn that feature off. We are in a test mode with it, and any feedback you can provide would be great.

Micah, the feature HAS been turned off. Chris thanks again for letting us all know about this.

@mack - this is actually a good thing. I always assumed that people knew and understood that feature. It appears that I was wrong. What could I do (or what could we do in the signup process) to make it more clear, more evident?

We certainly were not trying to dupe anyone. After all, we consider that feature to be beneficial to the publisher. And its (relatively) customizable. Is it just the ad, or the feature itself?

Hey Micah & Chris,

I have never had google ads (or text ad links of any kind) on any of my sites and I never will -- I think they're ugly and distract my ADD-addled brain.

Call me clueless, but I never saw the ads on lijit before the NewTech Meetup. I should have paid more attention before I put the wijit on my blogs.

I removed lijit from my page after NewTech because I don't want ads on my site, even if the search result page is served by lijit.

I would probably purchase an ad-free lijit solution if the price was right -- and being a Z-list blogger with no visitors, lijit would probably make more than ads from my subscription.

Hey Chris,
Not to beat the dead horse here but I wanted to recap the research box and what its intent is.
On average about 30% of page views on a typical publication come as a result of traffic from search. In the past months search engines like Google have been aggressively mining the second click (the click after the search on these sites). You may have noticed the way Google is placing a search box under the Amazon search results to keep the reader engaged with Google rather than having them link off to Amazon. Bottom line is it’s getting more important everyday to capture a reader that comes to your publication in the ‘drive by’ scenarios. We have a few post on our blog about second-click.
http://www.lijit.com/blog/2008/01/30/publishers...
The research box is intended to put your content in front of these one-time readers in order to raise your chance of grabbing them as a true subscriber. Our collected data suggests that a couple percent of these page views results in content clicks in the research box and those are ‘found’ reader engagements that likely would not have happened. You can see the number of ‘re-search engagements’ in your stats page under the “readers tab”. As Micah says you can move the placement of this box anywhere you like or easily turn the feature off if it’s not something you are interested in. On larger publisher sites however this functionality drives thousands of page views that would not have happened otherwise.
As a side note, we have had some publishers ask for a persistent version of the re-search feature that would raise page views even more but we don’t know how to offer that yet simply because re-search requires ‘reader intent’ to be effective and we only really know that based on their first-click or entering something actively in the search box. In other words the ‘box’ could be there all the time but if there is no intent there is not value, hence the reason that feature is only visible when intent exists.
Lijit’s mission is to use search as an application to deliver value to publishers. Whenever we deliver value to publishers and/or subscribers we feel it’s fair to receive revenue for that value in the form of ad placement. For the past couple months we have been experimenting with Ad placements and Ad networks to see what kind of click through rates and eCPM we can achieve in different locations. This data is being used to set parameters on our new Self Serve Ad Network offering that allows publishers like you to broker their own ad inventory of keyword advertising (if they want to). Ad’s up to this point have largely been experimental and for reference we generated revenue during this time of less than 1% of what we spent innovating and delivering the service. When we release the beta ad platform shortly Ad revenue will be split with the publishers that join the ad network. We think this is a fair model as we should not make money if our publishers are not receiving value as well.
Chris you have been a great advocate of the value Lijit brings by engaging readers and putting intelligence in the hands of publishers. I thought you deserved a thoughtful and full reply to your post. Please contact me directly and we will help you out in any way we can!

Todd Vernon / CEO Lijit Networks

Hi Todd--

Thanks for the reply and it's great to see the CEO swing by. : ) I know Stan and Micah and Tara and Andy and lots o' folks there, so glad to make your acquaintance as well.

Question: my lijit wijit shows people my content. Your search box thingy just doubles that (and doubles space taken up on my sidebar). I mean, that's the result I got (see graphic in post). So, why would seeing the same thing twice up the ante? Why doesn't the wijit just do that naturally? Does that make sense what I'm asking?

And thanks for the full reply. I want you to be compensated for the work you've created, but want a much more creative way for you to try and capture value than to take up more of my sidebar.

Chris,

Here is an example of what happens. A user goes to Google and searches of iPhone. You probably have written something at one time or another about iPhone that got reasonably high page rank and you appear on page 1 of Google results.

Lets say that post is Hey - iPhone Users, etc..

Reader clicks that result on Google page and comes to your blog and reads the post. Most likely next thing he will do is click the back button and you lose him.

With Lijit and Re-search enabled, the Re-search box opens up automatically when the page loads and shows "Five Things to Do at a Social Network". In some percent of the 30% the readers will read this post also because presumable it mentions iphone.

This creates a discovery behaviour that glues readers to your blog longer. You reader probably never would have found the second post because it never received page rank high enough to get onto page one of Google results.

I think that what you mean by naturally and that is what happens, the entire things is automatic based on coming from a search engine where that sight set the q= parameter.

I really suggest moving the box (it works much better after the post, or at the top of the page).. You can see an example on my blog..

Goto google and search for "Comcast DVR POS". Click the False Precision" link in google results and you will see my placement at the top of the page..

Thanks again Chris, this is a great thread...

-t

wow.
that's the most impressive customer service ever!

Lijit is listening to the customer, accepting the blame asking for input *and* willing to change based on all of that.

anyone not willing to work with that is missing a great chance to prove all of this counts for something more than a complaints department.

Micah all you have to do is give us the option up front to turn on the ads. You might not have intentionally tried to dupe us, but I gotta say, I feel like an idiot right now. If it's a very simple feature to turn off, then it's also equally easy to be straightforward with us upfront, yes?

The widget is off my blog and won't be coming back. And it's not that I am trying to be an asshat, but it's because I value the trust I think I have with my readers above all else. If I leave the widget on, I am always going to be worried about what else is happening that I'm not aware of.

Heck, I just don't want to give up another 300 pixels of real estate, but I know that moving it way down the page will be ineffective. Putting it after a blog post means it's fighting with Zemanta and FriendFeed.

Still thinking it all over. And in fact, question for those of you still following the post: is there value in the "My other media" stuff any more? Not being rude. Asking.

Go Lijit! Do good things. : )

Chris,

The My Content section and the re-search box both work toward the discovery aspect rather then search. I think both are useful depending on the context of the publisher. Personally i suspect most pubs get more value out of re-search (although based on this thread many don't know it)..

Just to fan the flames, the single most valuable feature of lijit in terms of 'behaviour' is actually the search cloud feature that you don't currently use. This creates discovery traffic up to 10 times the volume of a normal search box. More readers find more stuff they didn't even know they were interested in. Just an FYI

@Mack, thanks for the comments as well. We are in the middle of a site redesign and are going to describe re-search better as a result. Ad placements will much better described as the Ad Network and publisher revenue sharing is a big focus in the coming months..

-Todd

@mack I certainly respect your point of view. At Lijit, given our value proposition is trusted search, clearly trust is something that we value above all else.

You are correct in that the feature is not self-evident. As Todd said, we have heard your concerns and the concerns of others, and while we thought we had been completely transparent and upfront, your reaction clearly indicates that we have not. We will take that into account during our redesign, and I would love to hear your thoughts as to if it was "enough."

Also, a point of clarification, the re-search feature can be turned off, but, for now, the ads within the feature cannot. Similarly to the ads on the search results (much Google's search results when Google Custom Search Engine is used).

I hope that our efforts win you back as a publisher, if they dont, I hope that our efforts here at least won back some of your respect.

All the best,
Micah "Asshat" Baldwin ;)

And just to be clear for MY needs, I don't have a big issue with the ads per se (I mean, the whole opt in thing, but), but the real estate is my gripe. Maybe there's a cleverer way to get people's love and adoration when they land on my page. A fluttering pixie?

Fluttering pixie! On it!

Hay Chris: I vectored to this article via twitter. The reasons are 1) google ads drive me nuts when using a scroll wheel; freeze at ad till I move cursor to a safe place. 2) never been to Chris's site and decided it was a good reason to visit. As a reader I see Chris's real estate worry as the most important argument of the two. Chris's "My Content" area only shows 3 lines and a 4th cut in half horizontally.
That is real bad. I suggest not messing up page formatting as more important to lijit than another google ad. My first action when a page is badly formatted is to leave the page, not click advertising. I am watching this conversation while doing other task.

Chris,

We huddled up this afternoon and decided that our short test of running ad units in the re-search box was not properly messaged to our publisher base. We have always run Ad’s next to search results on search pages since inception of the service (18 months). The search page ad unit is fairly expected as this is the standard behavior for Google Custom Search as well. In testing for our upcoming Publisher Ad Network release, we ran a little too fast testing the Re-Search ad unit without messaging it properly to our publishers.

As a result we have stopped testing the re-search Ad unit on publisher sites. It will return as an opt-in component of publisher revenue sharing.

Publisher trust is a major concern of ours and we were just a little too heads down banging out code on this one and it got away from us.

Todd

Todd and Micah, no hard feelings, and here's hoping it can be turned into a positive! BTW for the record, Tara Anderson has been my Lijit contact up till now, and as I said on my blog, she had been extremely helpful.

@mack dammit, and I was beginning to dislike you... ;) Im sure it will work out. At lijit, we really try to make our actions speak louder than our words (after all if you follow me on twitter @micah, those arent always GOOD words...). I hope that Todd and our team's actions did just that.

As always, if you have any questions or need anything, I am micah@lijit.com and cell - 720-231-7120. Im at BlogHer this week, but available.

Thanks for the follow up Micah. I like your service and find it very valuable.... www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2

James