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Firefox New York Times Ad, Soon

Posted by timothy on from the uebermorgen dept.

An anonymous reader submits "CNet has an update on the status of the New York Times Firefox ad. According to the article, the delays are largely because of the decision to go with 10,000 names rather than the original 2500. The amount of content means each change to the ad requires 15 minutes of rendering. They also must be careful in crafting the ad, so that stay on the advocacy side of things. As a non-profit, they can still qualify for the under $50,000 rate, but if the ad is too commercial, they would need to pay the $130,000+ business rate. They say they're close to finishing, and the ad should run by mid-December, or at the latest, by Christmas. Firefox is also close to 10,000,000 downloads in the first month of release."

22 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. Too commercial? by trilks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They have to pay $130,000 if the ad is "too commercial"? How is that determined? And isn't a non-profit a non-profit, no matter what kind of ads they run?

    --
    You won't hate yourself in the morning if you don't get up before noon.
    1. Re:Too commercial? by maxchaote · · Score: 5, Insightful

      isn't a non-profit a non-profit, no matter what kind of ads they run?

      I can see it now... Wal-Mart's non-profit subsidiary, "The Friends of Sam Walton" (not a real charity) using their non-profit status to reduce Wal-Mart's advertising costs by over 50%.

      I'm afraid checks and balances have to be in place, even if they occasionally slow something like Firefox down.

    2. Re:Too commercial? by whome · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think it's more likely that the New york Times' advertising department will decline the ad because they're pissed off about Firefox users blocking all their popups.

    3. Re:Too commercial? by allism · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or about the bugmenot plugin keeping them from requiring a DNA sample from people who want to read the articles.

      --
      Denver Isuzu Suzuki
  2. If they mention using Firefox... by jelwell · · Score: 5, Informative

    If they mention using Firefox then it's going to be commercial. Although the author of the ad says they have a special guarantee about the pricing, so New York Time's standard pricing may not matter.

    Just because they're a non-profit doesn't make them a good cause. If they advocate using more standard compliant browsers rather than just Firefox or Mozilla browers they're more likely to qualify as an advocacy group rather than commercial entity. But based on the promotional drive I don't see how they can not mention Firefox directly.

    Joseph Elwell.

  3. The reason... by Adhemar · · Score: 5, Funny
    The trouble for Mozilla's ad campaign is that about 1,000 of the contributors didn't follow instructions in submitting their names. Now Davis is going through the list manually and contacting contributors who submitted Web addresses, company names, joke names and the like to clarify how they want to be listed in the ad.

    Now I can understand the delay.

    After all, would we really like to see Osama bin Laden support Firefox in the New York Times?

  4. 15 minutes of rendering by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Funny
    > According to the article, the delays are largely because of the decision to go with 10,000 names rather than the original 2500. The amount of content means each change to the ad requires 15 minutes of rendering.

    Hmm, so the ad runs at 11 users per second.

    Solution obvious! We either overclock the New York Times, or we lobby the printer industry to break the Adobe monopoly by supporting Firescript (originally called Postzilla, and occasionally still referred to as Lexscape by some marketroids at A Certain Very Big And Very Evil Corporation), the new page description language interpreter that provides for enhanced security, usability, and performance on phototypesetting equipment of all types!

  5. New distributed computing project by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Rendering the Firefox New York Times ad.

  6. Expect NYT sales to surge... by GillBates0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    on that day by atleast a few thousand. Yet another instance of open source promoting business.

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  7. Re:Firefox Hurting Linux by Tyrdium · · Score: 5, Insightful
    *cough*
    Smells like a troll...

    Anywho, I'll take a shot at this. Firefox and other Free, multi-platform software (Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, etc.) reduce dependence on Windows, because people aren't stuck with Windows-specific programs. For me, the only thing stopping me from moving to Linux is gaming (I don't believe Cedega supports the games I play). Basically, Microsoft's got my "patronage" hanging by a thread, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

  8. Timing by telstar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm curious about the timing of the ad. The last two weeks of the year are when most corporate executives take vacations ... meaning they may not keep up with news in the Times ... meaning if the goal is to convince these guys to use Firefox in their corporations, they may miss the target market entirely. I suppose you could make the case that these same guys now have more time to sit on a beach and read the Times, but has any thought been put into the timing of this thing?

  9. Exposure by zerosignal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if the amount of press coverage they've had about the ad will give them more exposure than the ad itself.

  10. name branding? by OffTheLip · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My experience with firefox has been if I tell someone to use it they do, most of the time without questioning why. Not a hint of concern about 'publicized' IE security flaws of Microsoft failings. Seems most users just want to surf the net, take care of business or whatever. I guess this can still be claimed as a victory for firefox...

  11. i don't get this. by jimmyp9999 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't understand why Firefox is blowing 50K to put an ad in the NYT. A single ad is not going to cause anyone to adopt the browser - it is well known that ads take a lot of impressions to get someone to get action on it.

    As a "thank you" to the community it is pretty weak as well. It thanks only the NYT bottom line.

    A well-hyped $50K 1.0 launch party would be a better way to generate press and motivate people to switch to the browser. It would get far wider coverage than a single page in one edition of the NYT.

    1. Re:i don't get this. by That's+Unpossible! · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't understand why Firefox is blowing 50K to put an ad in the NYT.

      1. The ad itself has already gotten $50K worth of coverage across the internet.

      2. Firefox is not spending any money. People donated over $250,000 to Firefox because they wanted their name in an ad. So they spent the $50K on the ad, as promised, and held onto $200K for other ad campaigns.

      As a "thank you" to the community it is pretty weak as well. It thanks only the NYT bottom line.

      This was never offered as a thank you to the community. This ad was paid for by the community. Why would we thank ourselves? This ad is meant, pure and simple, as a way to get NYT readers to wonder how in the hell a program can be so good that it got 10,000 people to donate money to advertise it.

      It has already worked, and it hasn't even run in the fucking paper yet!

      A well-hyped $50K 1.0 launch party would be a better way to generate press and motivate people to switch to the browser.

      This is why you are posting to slashdot instead of handling marketing for any products.

      It would get far wider coverage than a single page in one edition of the NYT.

      You mean like multiple postings on slashdot, CNET, and other highly trafficked internet sites? Oh wait... that's what has happened with this ad campaign.

      --
      Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
  12. Re:Is an explanation in the summary too much to as by halivar · · Score: 5, Funny

    What "names" are they talking about? And a 15 minute ad?! Are they fucking insane?

    The Magic Clue-Ball(tm) tells me the New York Times is a newspaper, not a TV station. That means no moving video. Some things should be spelled out. Others belong to that category I like to call "general knowledge everyone but you seems to know".

  13. Re:15 minutes? by thelenm · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gecko.

    *ducks and runs*

    --
    Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
  14. Request! by Turn-X+Alphonse · · Score: 5, Funny

    Could someone who has donated change their name to Bill Gates please? Thanks!

    --
    I like muppets.
  15. Re:15 minutes? by theLOUDroom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My company does pre-press work for marketing campaigns. If they need 15 minutes to render a postscript file (or PDF) they need better hardware. We use off-the-shelf gear (PC and Mac, none of it SMP) and nothing we do that is full-page size takes 15 minutes, even at 300 dpi. What're they using, a PII-400???

    That's a silly statement to make.
    A PS or PDF file can be arbitrily complex for a given page size.

    I've personally caused a single 8.5x11 page to take twenty mintues to come out of a fast laser printer.
    All you need to do is send it a postscript file of something with a hundred thousand elements or so. (I'm my case, the VLSI layout for a microcontroller.)

    If you're starting out with a bitmap then DPI and page size are dominating factors. When you're starting with a list of names in a scaleable font, you're talk about VECTOR graphics.
    That is a "proper" way for a professional to work in this instance since they can then produce a result of arbitrary DPI or page size.

    --
    Life is too short to proofread.
  16. Re:15 minutes? by factoryjoe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, I'm working at Mozilla on their shiny new Dual 1.8GHz G5 PowerMac with 1.25GB RAM.

    The problem is that 10,000 names converted to outlines and intersected with a complex, gradiated shape isn't a task for mere mortals. But at the rate this thing is happening... Geez, Firefox 2.0 might be out! (j/k -- I'm almost done.)

  17. Re:Why now? by snuf23 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sssssssssssh! I'm giving everyone I know FireFox for Christmas! Don't let them know it's free! They'll all think I'm a cheap ass!

    --
    Sometimes my arms bend back.
  18. Re:10,000 names?? by factoryjoe · · Score: 5, Informative

    The ad is 13" x 21". The font I'm using is Univers 67 Bold Condensed for the names. They're set at 4.5pt/4.6pt, tracking set to -25. I have enough room for 1.75" of white space on the page.

    Since I'm designing it, I didn't do exactly what you would do, but you've got the right idea.

    Chris