Tag: advertisement

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Dear Yahoo! Mail, how are you?

There is a fact that Yahoo! Mail is probably one of my first email service providers. Not sure about the exact date I created my account, but I think it was in 2000’s. It was the time when Yahoo! was so popular, had lots of services, and interesting products. Probably, it was also because that there were not many alternatives. Yahoo! Mail was a good choise.
But, it has been years. Many services — not only email — come and go. But, when we jump to the internet world, everybody will get an email. Not only about the very basic features (sending and receiving email), but email service should be build better, answering what users need. What internet users really need.
Let’s not forget also about some other services. Google launched its Gmail in April 2004 (so, it has been 8 years). Recently, Microsoft re-launched its Hotmail as Outlook.com. Every service tries to make improvements for its users to deliver the best product and features for them. This is how Yahoo! Mail inbox looks like.

If you have a Yahoo! Mail account, just try to login and see yourself. What do you think? Well, what do I think? And, why I’m writing this post, anyway? If I don’t like it, why should I write about it? Isn’t it easier to just leave it?

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Solution: OpenX Missing Statistic Reports

Yesterday, I was a little bit panic because I couldn’t found any statistic reports in an OpenX installation. I didn’t use the latest version (2.8.0). So, I did an upgrade to 2.8.5. But still, the statistics didn’t come back.
I finally found a solution at OpenX Community Forums. Here’s the trick:

  • Go to your database management tool. I’m using phpMyAdmin.
  • Run this simple query: update ox_application_variable set value = 1 where name ='admin_account_id';
  • Voila!

When I went back to the statistic page, I had all statistics available. Great.

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blip.tv Basic Features and Notes You Might Want to Know

When Budi Putra visited Jogjakarta last weekend, I was involved in a discussion about a video provider called blip.tv. I’m using it now effectively for my videoblog. We learned about the service, features, and other aspects that we need to know. It was because we wanted to find the video hosting provider that really meet our need. So far, blip.tv works great on my videoblog.
Here are what we found. If you need video hosting provider, and you consider blip.tv, you might want to know these things:

  1. blip.tv offers two types of account: free and pro accounts. The pro account offers many additional features like priority transcode access, transcode to iPod and MP3 formats, longer transcode times, hidden videos, and also timed publishing.
    It costs $8/month. If we purchase annually, we will get two extra months for free. blip.tv only accepts Paypal right now.
  2. If we do not want to continue our pro account subscription, some pro features will be removed and all hidden videos will be visible.
  3. There are no video upload limits per day, or weeks. The maximum video size is 1 GB per file.
  4. To upload videos, we can use some alternatives: using web-based uploader, cell phone, FTP or desktop software.
  5. The desktop uploader is called UpperBlip. It is compatible with many operating systems.
  6. By default, our “Show Page” is generated from our username. So, it will be something like this: username.blip.tv. We can have different address for show page URL. Username does not have to be the same with the show page. Show page address can be changed, but not the username. You have to contact blip.tv for this.
  7. blip.tv offers an advertisement program. This is an optional feature. If you don’t want to see any advertisement in your uploaded videos, you can simply disable them from the dashboard.
  8. blip.tv shares 50% of the adjusted gross advertising revenues that are actually received by Blip.tv and generated by user content with the user who uploaded the content. (source)
  9. We can customize the video player. If you want to embed the videos to different sites, we can have a preset to produce desired embed code.
  10. Many ways to distribute the videos e.g. automatic notification post to Twitter, Facebook, delicious, etc.

Of course, there are many other features and information. You can see more from FAQ and Help page. Do not forget also to read its terms of service.

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OpenX Hosted is available for all web publisher now!

It was in the private beta, need invitation. I got one. Now, OpenX hosted solution (beta) is available for web publisher. Say good bye to invitation, sign up now. Again, it’s free up to 25 million of ad impression per month. If you’re a Twitter user like me, do not forget to follow @openx

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OpenX Hosted Solution Invitation


Yesterday, I got an invitation to try OpenX hosted solution beta program. This hosted solution can serve up to 25 million ad impressions per month. If the “free version” is not enough to serve larger traffic, there will be premium hosted packages.
Compared to the self-hosted software, it’s a little bit different. I installed OpenX independently few months ago. I haven’t decided where I will use my OpenX account, but I will.

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Opera Mini Ads

Anyway, I like this Opera Mini TV ad. It’s said that this advertisement has been aired in Malaysia since July.
[viddler id-985b26da h-370 w-437]

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Google Ad Manager Invitation

Today, I got an opportunity to access the beta release of Google Ad Manager. I got this because I applied for this program in last March. I just activated my account, and it seems good.
gadman
The interface is clean, but there are some terms that I do not understand easily for the first time. I just browse in to pages inside the Ad Manager, and after some moments, I can figure out about how it works. Basically, if you’re familiar with advertising script like OpenX, for example, it should not be hard to understand.
There are more detailed information about using this ad manager. Luckily, there is already a brief tutorial about setting up Google Ad Manager on our site or blog. Very useful article! Right now, I am setting up some ad slots here in my blog. Let’s see how it goes. If you want to get invitation, apply now.

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Some notes about 21Cineplex website

Before going to theaters for a movie, I checked the schedule first. And I want to get the information about the movies — their schedules — I go to http://www.21cineplex.com/. It’s informative, but I found annoyance there.

  • I can’t bookmark a theater page. Whenever I want to go directly to a theater page, it takes me to frontpage. I think it’s because my browser does not send HTTP_REFERER?
  • Because I can’t add a theater to my bookmark, it means that I can not send a permanent link to other people. If I want to show a page to someone, for example: “Go to theater in Yogyakarta”, how to do that? “Open the site, then click this, then scroll down, you should see the link there”. Like that? Doh!
  • Every theater has its own RSS feed. This is good. But, it seems that the feeds are out-dated. I just open a feed few minutes ago (April 20), but I got the feed for April 9 (as seen from <pubDate> value).

A question: why?
There are some answers, but I am just guessing. Probably:

  • they put advertisement there. More page views, more value?
  • they think people are not interested to subscribe to RSS. RSS — in this case — means less page views?
  • nobody complains about this, so there is nothing wrong with the site.
  • the point is: “All information are there. There. The most important thing is that users can find them.”

Okey, I will stop complaining now.

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Google Launched Google Ad Manager

Google Ad Manager
Last year April 2007, Google acquired Doubleclick for for $3.1 billion. This week, Google introduced another service — still in beta — called Google Ad Manager. What is Google Ad Manager, anyway?

Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your direct-sold and network-based inventory. (reference)

This new service will give more options for publishers and advertisers to get connected. Before this service launched, Google already has services like Google Adsense and Google Adwords. Unlike these two service, right now Google Ad Manager is not yet open for public. We can apply for an invitation at this moment. Personally, I am interested using this service and I am still not sure whether I will use it for my personal blog or not. But, since I also maintain some other blogs — and some of them have (and will have) an advertising program, I think Google Ad Manager will be a great deal.

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Kompas Cyber Media: Let's give those ads some information

Willy Sudiarto Raharjo wrote:

I was wondering whether Kompas should change their text into “Kompas: Cyber Banner” (original: Kompas: Cyber Media) and “KCM – Hanya Berisi Banner” (original: KCM – Bukan Sekadar Berita) because it’s full of Banners, not information. Read more »

Logo Kompas
I do not visit Kompas website regularly, I mean everyday. And I can’t agrre more with what Willy wrote above. And, let’s try to find out what makes the site slow to load.
Here, we are talking about advertisement (static image and also flash ads). Are they annoying? I think so. This advertisements can be a great method for Kompas to make profit. I am not sure how much those advertisers should pay for their advertisements. But the point is: the ads are there, and we (as a user) can not do much about it. It’s is Kompas decision.

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