experimenting with a new type of ad

J Dogg · Administrator Joined: 16 Jan 2002 Location: Sunnyvale, CA

Just to let you know, I will be experimenting with a new type of ad in the forums that links certain words in posts to related advertisements. These will we marked clearly as ads, and a tooltip will appear upon mouseover. Again, this is only an experiment, and if it becomes annoying, I will remove them. If you want to see an example of these ads already in progress, look at the articles at betanews.com.
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Cutriss · Staff Member Joined: 24 Jan 2002

I was kinda confused about what does this, but then I figured out that it's somewhat similar to Microsoft's suggested implementation of Smart Tags. I also had trouble finding an example, so I'd point people to the article announcing GTA: San Andreas, as it will have two links in the first paragraph.

I dunno if you're planning on using the same implementation that BetaNews uses, but it doesn't work in Firebird. I haven't upgraded to Firefox, so I dunno if this was recently added. And I do have Flash installed.

IGN used this as well a while back. They may still do it, but I dunno, since I don't use IE anymore.
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Mr. Deus · Trick Member Joined: 27 Dec 2002 Location: smooveville

So long as we don't have this weird mix of black and blue/underlined text, I don't mind.

God, that would be so hard to read. I've been to websites where every other word is a hyperlink, and I just plain leave the sites. Pain in the ass to read.

J Dogg · Administrator Joined: 16 Jan 2002 Location: Sunnyvale, CA

VxJasonxV · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 3:21 pm Post subject:

No, the smart tags don't work on Firefox either. So all 0.2% of this forum using Firebird/fox will not have the possibility to generate revenue for the site. Unless they fall back onto IE for one reason or another.

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J Dogg · Administrator Joined: 16 Jan 2002 Location: Sunnyvale, CA

Can someone explain to me what MS Smart Tags is?
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VxJasonxV · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 4:30 pm Post subject:

Oh...
My mistake, I thought the HTML Ad Tags were also dubbed Smart Tags.

But a quick glance over a search @ microsoft.com suggests that Smart Tags is just a feature of office to identify pieces of data (phone numbers, dates, etc.) and... do something special with them

.

Cutriss, would you like to fill both of us in?

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Cutriss · Staff Member Joined: 24 Jan 2002

No, Microsoft just co-opted the name on a less invasive feature in Office XP so that it didn't end up with a bad rap.

Testament to that fact is the results of your search.

Since Slashdot's search engine doesn't seem to have any special Boolean operators, I had to settle for searching on "SmartTags", which turned up two results. Both are relevant, and the CNet article referenced in the first one is still alive and gives a good summary of what was going to go down.

The gist of it was that Microsoft would have the ability to wrap HTML content within XML, and process that HTML through their own marketing database and mark-up keywords on the client-side with marketing/redirects. This would include even being able to overwrite existing URL links.

For instance, if this had gone down, I could load up the homepage for SourceForge, and find that Microsoft had declared war on SF, and all of the links would go to a product page for Visual SourceSafe instead.

I doubt anything so overt would ever have occurred, but the ability was there.
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The Game II · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2004 7:55 pm Post subject:

OK, I just noticed these (heh, look at Deus' quote earlier). I just don't like them on the tournament threads. It might give an impression that such-and-such is sponsoring a tournament, when they're not.

I noticed that on my tournament (Monterey Bay Thunder). Game Boy Advance is hilighted. Sure, I'm giving away two out of my own tax refund money, but...I guess my thing is that I don't want people to think that Nintendo is sponsoring the event, then they get mad at me for no reason.

It's fine on other forums, but if there's a way to keep it out of the tourney forum, then I'd be for it.

My $1.00 - $0.98.

--GCII

EDIT: Heh, I just scrolled over Game Boy on this post. I didn't know JCPenny sold Game Boys

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VxJasonxV · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2004 11:03 pm Post subject:

I guess that confirms it. The Ad Tags are proprietary and firebird/fox won't show them.
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evn · Staff Member Joined: 23 Jan 2002 Location: Calgary AB

Bug report: They're also broken on safari (and I imagine Omniweb 5, and Konqueror too)

I have pithhelmet disabled for ddrfreak the same way as I do for arstechnica. Banner advertisements still come through fine, but this advertisement/link deal is broken.

Software: Safari 1.2.1, os x 10.3.3, pith helmet .72a (disabled)

I think this is a known issue about this format of advertising because ars was testing out this kind of add in the macintosh forum (because ad blocking tends to be more advanced and easier to use so more people have it enabled) and the ads were either inconsistent or broken.
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J Dogg · Administrator Joined: 16 Jan 2002 Location: Sunnyvale, CA

Wow, I definitely see the ads now. Hah, I had no idea JC Penny sold Game Boys either. Anyway, yeah, they'll only work on IE, and that's just how it is for now. Does it display funny on the other browsers, or does it just not show at all?
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Bringer of Death · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 2:13 am Post subject:

J Dogg · Administrator Joined: 16 Jan 2002 Location: Sunnyvale, CA

Bringer of Death · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 2:47 am Post subject:

VxJasonxV · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 8:30 am Post subject:

I see absolutely nothing on Firefox 0.8.
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XhaD · Trick Member Joined: 16 Jan 2002 Location: Moved on...

SXA · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 11:58 am Post subject:

I'm on the newest version of Opera and I can't see anything either.

PHUT! · Trick Member Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Location: West Coast

so can someone give a listing of which words will be highlighted?
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J Dogg · Administrator Joined: 16 Jan 2002 Location: Sunnyvale, CA