Comments on: Lijit Throws Ads Onto My Site

By: In a Constant State of Learning

In a Constant State of Learning — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:05:30 +0000

[...] of hours later (closer to 1am MST), I got home to a message from Aaron Brazell that Chris had written a post on Lijit and ads, and I should check it [...]

By: James

James — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:38:37 +0000

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

James

By: Micah Baldwin

Micah Baldwin — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:51:14 +0000

@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.

By: mack collier

mack collier — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:36:26 +0000

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.

By: Todd Vernon

Todd Vernon — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:36:28 +0000

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

By: fairuse

fairuse — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:26:42 +0000

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.

By: Aaron Brazell

Aaron Brazell — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:34:00 +0000

Fluttering pixie! On it!

By: chrisbrogan

chrisbrogan — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:50:00 +0000

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?

By: Micah Baldwin

Micah Baldwin — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:07:04 +0000

@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 ;)

By: Todd Vernon

Todd Vernon — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:09:26 +0000

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