A company called Bannerama tried this. They offered software to replace banners not with other banner ads, but with pithy quotes & other content. Don't know what happened to them--bannerama.com isn't working.
The gist of the Forbes piece is that "companies won't give up their lost ad value without a fight." Of course CPMs were much higher when the article was written.
Aside from the delay, which comes as no surprise, I think that Blizzard has a good chance to make a truly impressive 3D RTS, that will blow away its peers and match the performance of their other games.
All of their other titles have relied on 2D (even Diablo 2, which is 2D and enhanced with 3D). StarCraft ran well even on non-bleeding edge gaming hardware. I have always loved their attention to detail in performance. They are the anti-Funcom (anyone who plays Anarchy Online with its 1FPS in towns even with a GeForce 2/3 knows what I mean). People who knocked Diablo 2 for its lack of "revolutionary" graphics were missing the big picture, IMHO.
Total Annihilation was an impressive 3D RTS in its time, however when the units filled the screen, performance fell through the floor. I'm optimistic that Blizzard, in committing to 3D in WCIII, will find a way to avoid this.
A quick scan of the article reveals, on one level, a closed-network device:
"A business model we're working on is something halfway between the new Napster and the way cellular phones are marketed in Europe," says Grison. "that is, the Music Service Provider would subsidize the products to almost 100%, and users would pay a monthly subscription fee that enables them to download a certain amount of music (either in P2P or from a portal)."
Aherm. "Halfway between Napster and cell phone marketing" is 400 free minutes of music, but 60% of those minutes will be blocked by the RIAA...
Granted, it's not with GF3 enhanced lightsaber effects, and it makes the game harder to finish with the karma system in place, but man, talk about satisfaction.
One thing you can ask yourself is, "what do I get out of my relationship with UGO?" If it's just money, then you're not getting anything, as they're withholding money you've earned. Bail. These tactics sound like desperation, and are causing you a lot of hassle.
I'm not a webmaster in the "community proprietor" sense, but I've been very interested in how Tip Jars are evolving.
It's my opinion that the smaller, agile, and useful web sites will survive via people throwing them a buck or two every so often. I did this just for the first time the other day, at a little site called MikoDocs, and man did it feel good. I found his site through Google and PayPal-ed the guy for saving me time. He sent a thank you response. Very fulfilling, way better than responding to a plea to click on an ad.
If the site you oversee is truly valuable to your users, and has an active community, I don't think you'll have any problems collecting money to cover costs, if that's your goal. Lum the Mad (whose site I can't get to at the moment) did a cool thing in sharing the balance sheet with his usership (expenses vs. donations). Very cool feedback that I think would encourage more people to donate. He even caps his donations when he covers the month's expenses.
I think it's time to smack down these parasitic "ad networks" and kick off the next wave -- Tip Jar Meritocracy (sm).
Kid 1: Dude, check out my tricked out Ford 2500 dually! $2000 spent on ground effects. $300 to have it lowered, $250 on tinting. $200 for neon lighting in the undercarriage. No, my dually isn't faster, but man is it sweet!
Kid 2: Dude, check out my Dual Athlon box! That's right, 2 Athlons! $400 spent on primo case, $250 on cooling components. Only problem is, Windows 98 doesn't do SMP, so until XP comes out, I'm only using 1 processor. I can get Win2K off of Bearshare but it would break my games. No, my dually isn't faster...in fact I'm wasting power and I live in California...but man is it sweet!
Blow is a good attempt, but has its share of problems that pushes this film into mediocre-land. An extra bit of bias was gained against Blow for me as I had also seen Memento earlier that day. Two different genres, but if you have an appetite for a new release, Memento is definitely worth a look. It had my friends and I enthusiastically dissecting it afterward.
For me, Blow sat meekly in the shadow of other films that you can't help but think of while watching. Boogie Nights and Casino definitely come to mind.
In fact, I'd call this film a poor man's Boogie Nights, removing the porn and focusing on drugs. George Jung (Johnny Depp) is the uber-drug-dealer who builds a virtual drug empire. Both films follow the same arc of 1. hero comes from modest beginnings to 2. rise to a crescendo followed by 3. a long, downward spiral. And it takes a long time for this to unfold in both films. But Paul Thomas Anderson lets us know where we are through the story and with an identifiable style. Blow does this with voiceover, and hits us over the head with such eye-rolling, watered down lines as "...and everything was perfect," which was the best way the film knew how to let the audience know that the shit was about to hit the fan.
Blow chose not to show any of the customers of George's cocaine empire. The people using the cocaine were absent. Having George come in contact with the demand side of the supply/demand equation so he could see the big picture might have given the film a dramatic boost. However the movie chooses to ignore this, in my opinion, at great cost. The inner workings of his business are mostly hidden from view as well. What we're left with is George's interaction with drug partners, his parents, and his romantic interests--long on talk, short on walk.
To top it off, Penelope Cruz does one the most melodromatic pieces of overacting I've seen since Sharon Stone in Casino. I wish I could go back in time to before I heard the breathtakingly beautiful Ms. Cruz open her mouth in this film.
Again, my recommendation is skip Blow and find Memento in your local indie theater.
So THAT explains it. My roommate and I had numerous problems IP conflict-style with Cable Co-Op 6 months after we got our cable modem. I figured that they had screwed up the IP assignment by giving ours to another customer, but it's highly likely that squatters were taking advantage. We were paying good money for the service, too - in excess of $80/mo.
I still blame Cable Co-Op and their ineptitude, but shame on you nonetheless.
Slashdot Mirror
A company called Bannerama tried this. They offered software to replace banners not with other banner ads, but with pithy quotes & other content. Don't know what happened to them--bannerama.com isn't working.
The gist of the Forbes piece is that "companies won't give up their lost ad value without a fight." Of course CPMs were much higher when the article was written.
Still searching for my Inner Adult...
All of their other titles have relied on 2D (even Diablo 2, which is 2D and enhanced with 3D). StarCraft ran well even on non-bleeding edge gaming hardware. I have always loved their attention to detail in performance. They are the anti-Funcom (anyone who plays Anarchy Online with its 1FPS in towns even with a GeForce 2/3 knows what I mean). People who knocked Diablo 2 for its lack of "revolutionary" graphics were missing the big picture, IMHO.
Total Annihilation was an impressive 3D RTS in its time, however when the units filled the screen, performance fell through the floor. I'm optimistic that Blizzard, in committing to 3D in WCIII, will find a way to avoid this.
Still searching for my Inner Adult...
Actually, 16 kilobits. That's some sweet power.
Fast forward, 2005. Buy one of these nano machines from Target. Buy copies of COMPUTE! NANO. Stay up till 3AM entering programs into it like this:
25,254,3,5,32,60,251,232:4A5D
...
Aherm...it's not always best, humor-wise, to go for the low-hanging fruit...
Aherm. "Halfway between Napster and cell phone marketing" is 400 free minutes of music, but 60% of those minutes will be blocked by the RIAA...
Granted, it's not with GF3 enhanced lightsaber effects, and it makes the game harder to finish with the karma system in place, but man, talk about satisfaction.
What about the "ster?" Does Napster have a claim as well? I would think they have more right to it than AOL since it has one more character...
I'm not a webmaster in the "community proprietor" sense, but I've been very interested in how Tip Jars are evolving.
It's my opinion that the smaller, agile, and useful web sites will survive via people throwing them a buck or two every so often. I did this just for the first time the other day, at a little site called MikoDocs, and man did it feel good. I found his site through Google and PayPal-ed the guy for saving me time. He sent a thank you response. Very fulfilling, way better than responding to a plea to click on an ad.
If the site you oversee is truly valuable to your users, and has an active community, I don't think you'll have any problems collecting money to cover costs, if that's your goal. Lum the Mad (whose site I can't get to at the moment) did a cool thing in sharing the balance sheet with his usership (expenses vs. donations). Very cool feedback that I think would encourage more people to donate. He even caps his donations when he covers the month's expenses.
I think it's time to smack down these parasitic "ad networks" and kick off the next wave -- Tip Jar Meritocracy (sm).
Kid 2: Dude, check out my Dual Athlon box! That's right, 2 Athlons! $400 spent on primo case, $250 on cooling components. Only problem is, Windows 98 doesn't do SMP, so until XP comes out, I'm only using 1 processor. I can get Win2K off of Bearshare but it would break my games. No, my dually isn't faster...in fact I'm wasting power and I live in California...but man is it sweet!
This movie bored me.
Blow is a good attempt, but has its share of problems that pushes this film into mediocre-land. An extra bit of bias was gained against Blow for me as I had also seen Memento earlier that day. Two different genres, but if you have an appetite for a new release, Memento is definitely worth a look. It had my friends and I enthusiastically dissecting it afterward.
For me, Blow sat meekly in the shadow of other films that you can't help but think of while watching. Boogie Nights and Casino definitely come to mind.
In fact, I'd call this film a poor man's Boogie Nights, removing the porn and focusing on drugs. George Jung (Johnny Depp) is the uber-drug-dealer who builds a virtual drug empire. Both films follow the same arc of 1. hero comes from modest beginnings to 2. rise to a crescendo followed by 3. a long, downward spiral. And it takes a long time for this to unfold in both films. But Paul Thomas Anderson lets us know where we are through the story and with an identifiable style. Blow does this with voiceover, and hits us over the head with such eye-rolling, watered down lines as "...and everything was perfect," which was the best way the film knew how to let the audience know that the shit was about to hit the fan.
Blow chose not to show any of the customers of George's cocaine empire. The people using the cocaine were absent. Having George come in contact with the demand side of the supply/demand equation so he could see the big picture might have given the film a dramatic boost. However the movie chooses to ignore this, in my opinion, at great cost. The inner workings of his business are mostly hidden from view as well. What we're left with is George's interaction with drug partners, his parents, and his romantic interests--long on talk, short on walk.
To top it off, Penelope Cruz does one the most melodromatic pieces of overacting I've seen since Sharon Stone in Casino. I wish I could go back in time to before I heard the breathtakingly beautiful Ms. Cruz open her mouth in this film.
Again, my recommendation is skip Blow and find Memento in your local indie theater.
Market these puppies to employees of companies who are rumored to have layoffs coming...
I still blame Cable Co-Op and their ineptitude, but shame on you nonetheless.