How to manage an ad market

[Avruch]

Another game I've played had an advertising system that worked fairly well mechanically and was popular with players. Ultimately it was removed, so I think it's worthwhile to describe how the system worked and what eventually caused it to fail.

 

• The ad system functioned as a market; since multiple people wanted to place ads, the admins made it competitive.
• There were a limited number of ad slots available on the page (usually much smaller footprints than Sheepy has set up so far), and each transaction to place an ad required the player to specify the number of impressions desired and the bid price per impression.
• The system calculated the total cost and then confirmed it, and then the bid was entered.
• The transaction stayed live until all the impressions were complete, but impressions only occurred if your bid price was high enough to make the ad visible (and it remained visible only as long as you were a high bid).
• The ad could be targeted to make the value of the impression higher - i.e. your ad could be seen by a lot of people who you don't care to reach, wasting your money, so you could specify the country of origin, the time of day, etc. 

 

The result was a popular and effective advertising system that was widely used to bring attention to in-game published articles, to war events, as a recruiting or propaganda tool, etc. Of course the more eye catching your ad, the more throughput you got in terms of clicks (the ad system tracked the number of clicks you received). The immediate impact was virtually 100% of all ads had a cute babe in them, and some of them were pornographic. Because the volume of ads was high, the admins struggled to screen them all - or to respond to reports to take down ones that weren't properly screened. Ultimately this was the downfall of the system, and the ads were removed (the game now has no ads at all). 

[Dan77]

They were also used for exploits.  Some of the biggest exploits in the game came through the ad system which allowed html IIRC.  Some would take you to a mirror log in page to steal your password.  There were other cheats as well but I can't remember the details.

 

So it's good that Sheepy is manually checking them.  Any link could be malicious if he doesn't.

[Wayne]

eRep sucks, never copy anything from there...

[Alex]

Another game I've played had an advertising system that worked fairly well mechanically and was popular with players. Ultimately it was removed, so I think it's worthwhile to describe how the system worked and what eventually caused it to fail.

 

• The ad system functioned as a market; since multiple people wanted to place ads, the admins made it competitive.
• There were a limited number of ad slots available on the page (usually much smaller footprints than Sheepy has set up so far), and each transaction to place an ad required the player to specify the number of impressions desired and the bid price per impression.
• The system calculated the total cost and then confirmed it, and then the bid was entered.
• The transaction stayed live until all the impressions were complete, but impressions only occurred if your bid price was high enough to make the ad visible (and it remained visible only as long as you were a high bid).
• The ad could be targeted to make the value of the impression higher - i.e. your ad could be seen by a lot of people who you don't care to reach, wasting your money, so you could specify the country of origin, the time of day, etc. 

 

The result was a popular and effective advertising system that was widely used to bring attention to in-game published articles, to war events, as a recruiting or propaganda tool, etc. Of course the more eye catching your ad, the more throughput you got in terms of clicks (the ad system tracked the number of clicks you received). The immediate impact was virtually 100% of all ads had a cute babe in them, and some of them were pornographic. Because the volume of ads was high, the admins struggled to screen them all - or to respond to reports to take down ones that weren't properly screened. Ultimately this was the downfall of the system, and the ads were removed (the game now has no ads at all). 

 

This is really complicated. The current system accomplishes a lot of this, without turning the everyday player into a marketing aficionado.

[PigInZen]

Damn Sheepy I didn't know they allowed such big word usage in Montana.  Aficionado.  Bravo.