Ad Network Not Paying Up 72
Rev. DOG. writes: "According to Lowtax at Something Awful, the now defunct GameFan Network, bought out by Express.com a while back has sent a letter to their sites saying that they won't pay them a dime, because the bulk of the banner ads served up were for GameFan/Express or hosted sites. Apparently, during Lowtax's stay there, they wouldn't let him take any non-GameFan advertising. Anyway, it's all at the 10-9-00 article on the front page at SA, especially warning others on other banner-ad networks that they may be next." I'm not knocking on Gamefan/Express as much as this is a good example of /always/ read the fine print. Read it again. Have a lawyer read it. When I was selling the ads on here, there were a couple times that people tried to screw us over - so be prepared.
Zero, Not a Percentage? (Score:2)
Incidentally, does this letter give such sites the status of a creditor, so they can demand payment, sue for the debt ("Ha, got your car!"), and stand in line at bankruptcy court for a share of the assets?
Re:Excellent work! (Score:1)
I was using my bonus as a bully pulpit to let people see my side on the issues. Unfortunately, with the swarm of AMD articles, I fell out of the favorable portion of the Slashdot crowd. That's the price of speaking your mind, but hey, what's right is not always popular, and what's popular is not always right.
I'll probably ditch the bonus when I see that I'm outnumbered. That way, I'll risk losing 2 instead of 3 points. I'll keep the bonus for things which might soar to 5, so I won't be whoring points (as much).
I hope other KWs adopt this as a standard doctrine for posting (yeah, Signal_11, I'm talking to you!).
why should we even care about lowtax? (Score:1)
Granted, the whole ad-thing is a bit unfair - but then again someone who so blatently is immoral and screws people over for the sake of a laugh deserves this.
I mean, lowtax would laugh at someone in a wheelchair for christ's sake!
Heh, Junkbuster wins again (Score:1)
Sorry guys, I never see them. Junkbuster prunes them out.
Re:Gaming Sites and $$$ (Score:2)
At least, that's how I've heard it. Express.com are the ones to blame.
Fortunately, the print magazine won't be effected.
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Re:Nick Fisher (Score:1)
Vermifax
This is typical (Score:2)
Jeepmeister
Banner ads, the bills (Score:2)
Re:Economic collapse in sight? We can hope! (Score:1)
Just because they created the ad banner doesn't mean the current state of the Internet is their fault. All they did was prove that putting up a notice that said "HEY! NEKKID LADIES OVER HERE!" was effective. It was the clueless mainstream marketers who made the illogical leap that banner ads could pay for everything else.
Re:Well, duh! (Score:1)
I run a site that used to be part of the GameFan network as well. We signed up a few months ago, noticed we were never getting paid OR serving ads for anything other than express.com, and promptly left. Yeah, I feel a bit burned, but having control over my site's DNS, and local backups of our files made it easy to nip the abuse in the bud
Re:Banner ads, the bills (Score:1)
Advertising is a bullshit business that's only plausible w/ an unconscious audience. Do you go buying a car after every ad you see? Do you go clicking at everything that pops on a page? I'd hope not.
Slashdot became big because of the content which ironically is the reader comments and the support of readers' needs.
Not viewing ads means I'm saving myself aggravation and distraction. I'm obviously not going to click anyway. And please relax. My ad blocking affects only me.
Just check out the TiVo. They reported 80% of ads were being skipped.
If you have a product you'll make money. If you don't what the hell are you doing trying to sell?
Re:Banner ads, the bills (Score:2)
Possibly. Slashdot could probably get away with selling subscriptions to readers. Shit, they could probably sell karma points. ;-)
Besides, many people here (moreso than typical web users, I would think) filter [linux.kz] out [junkbusters.com] the ads anyway, so if the ad company has even the slightest clue, they're not paying much.
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Re:the voice of experience (Score:1)
Perhaps, but the bad negotiating wouldn't have mattered if someone wasn't trying to take advantage of suckers. I don't care if it's "standard practice" or not, it is dishonest and deliberately deceiving. The people I do business with aren't out to unfairly fuck me over a technicality, nor am I out to unfairly fuck them over a technicality. Only the weak and pathetic hide behind fine print, and such scum do not deserve to transact with honorable men.
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Re:They're not alone (Score:1)
offtopic moderation question (Score:1)
Should I moderate trolls that are at 0 down to -1 or just leave them?
-Erik
The Tool Behind Gamefan (Score:4)
I had the misfortune of making his acquaintance about 5 years ago in the online game SubSpace [subspace.net]. I was pretty active in the SubSpace community and was witness to countless incidents where he proved what a prick he is. He did things ranging from getting people banned from the game even when they had done nothing wrong, to ping flooding individuals during League matches so that his squad would win. He pulled the same stunt on one of the more popular Quake servers and was cold busted by the guy that ran it. He had about a 60-page ping log, all coming from Nick Fisher's IP address.
Anyway, to anyone who has ever met this jackass, this type of behavior comes as no surprise. Download SubSpace [subspace.net] and see for yourself. Go into any zone, ask about 'trixter' (his rather fitting online name) and the Gamefan debacle. You'll get an earful. He still plays rather frequently, so you may even get the chance to tell him how you feel in person. (SubSpace only runs on Windows. Sorry.)
Talisman
Wow this didnt happen like a week ago (Score:1)
Re:Gaming Sites and $$$ (Score:1)
Ok, how does a company buy something erroneously? I mean, I can see how an individual can do this, as I have multiple copies of the same book, but I don't quite get this one...
Anyone got details?
More info on Nick Fisher (Score:1)
They all have Fisher's name or his company's name (Maximum Holdings) as at least one of the contacts.
Re:This is typical (Score:1)
If Rich (which he obviously is not) wants to set up a *voluntary* donations box where you can donate money to him quickly and easily, because you enjoyed the writing and want to keep the site from going under, that is his imperative.
Who the hell are you to judge him on this? Where is your web site? As if he hasn't already contributed enough of his time and effort into creating a freaking awesome site, now, when he needs your help, he has to contend with jerks who wouldn't bend over to move their own crippled mother off a traintrack without complaining about it.
Re:Tell the viewers & advertisers (Score:2)
We've seen this before... (Score:1)
Link Exchange (Score:1)
Of course, since Microsoft bought it, I see a lot more Microsoft, MSN, and even Link Exchange ads. They've gotten rid of the link exchange web site and hidden the directory so well that I can't find it anymore. Microsoft is their own worst enemy.
Re:The Tool Behind Gamefan (Score:1)
At one point, he was in control of now-defunct VRGN's Subspace servers. I volunteered to help them with the maintenance, and I was accepted on the basis of me running the largest non-VIE Subspace server at the time. As soon as Trixter got word of it, he threatened to immediately "withdraw all [his] blessings" from VRGN because an experienced volunteer wanted to help. That's the road to fame and glory alright.
I now also work for a rather large digital media company which sells over 350 million banner impressions a month. We have a lot consultants, but our most valuable asset is the ad sales team that we keep happy in a beautiful office overlooking a major city in southern California. Their sole focus is to call up every company and sell our inventory (available ad impressions) to them. We've also been making money since day one; maybe the approach has something to do with it.
Re:Sig 11 gone (Score:1)
Re:I'm a daily SA reader (Score:1)
The real hidden agenda (Score:1)
GameFan states to its network that it will pay $2.5 CPM, which means that for every 1000 impressions it will pay them $2.5.
I can guarantee you that if GameFan were to pay that much it would go out of business. The problem is simply that the market does not pay that much! A savvy company wishing to advertise with GameFan will NOT, EVER pay that much today! Average clickthrough on banners in substantially below 0.5%, so if someone were to pay $2.5 CPM, it would cost them $5 a click at least. That's not acceptable.
So... What happens? Well, people don't advertise, and GameFan Network doesn't make any money. But wait! People do advertise? So what's going on? Well, they're paying much less than $2.5 CPM (which is very much negotiable). So does GameFan lose money? No! Because GameFan/Express.com HAS A CONFLICT OF INTEREST!
GameFan/Express.com is itself a website, with means of revenue dependent on people visiting the site. With this clause in their contract, this is what happens:
GameFan states that it will pay $2.5 CPM for any ad NOT for GameFan.
GameFan sells on its own site let's say an average of $1 CPM and fills its real estate.
GameFan also takes any idiot advertiser who wants to pay $2.5 CPM and shoves him in the network itself.
Anything else that's left unpaid, GameFan uses to drive traffic to its site, where it gets $0.5 CPM.
End result? GameFan makes $0.5 CPM out of every click on an ad IT SERVES, FOR ITSELF, on the network!
I'd call that a scam, but hey...
Re:Banner ads, the bills (Score:1)
Strange. Banner ads came well after the WWW. So did the homepages of AT&T, IBM, and MCI.
So why wouldn't the internet simply revert to the mostly text (ie: content) filled universe it once was.
As far as hating banner stripping software and the people who use it goes, well, like you say about ads, I'll say about modems: Busy webpages are expensive to download.
Yeah, I don't have a choice but to use a 33.6k modem either, so don't give me the "get cable modem" dance [seems like everyone on slashdot lives in SV nowadays]. And no, I WON'T pay $300 a month (and the rest) to use the internet over satellite so I can download ads (whoopie...). And moving is pointless. I already live 5 minutes from what is classed as a Canadian Metropolis.
>You think Slashdot would even be here if they didn't get ad revenue?
I was here before moderation (no, I didn't register till a couple of months ago due to a deep seated dislike of the poor moderation that once infested slashdot) so I can say this: Slashdot didn't always have ads (IIRC).
Ad blocking software seems to have only taken off in the last year or two. Probably has a lot to do with "Punch my monkey and win nothing!" and "Flash Flash FLASH ugly FLASH click me NOW n0w NOW!!!! flash FLaSH fLaSh!!!" and, for certain, "downloading 110k animated gif... (5% done)". Maybe ad companies should reflect on this and reconsider how annoying/big their ads are. Right now the time spent installing and configuring ad blocking software, plus the time spent updating the blocking lists is much less than downloading the various crappy, huge, ads that are out there.
Just my $2/100.
Re:The Tool Behind Gamefan (Score:1)
I heartily second everything Talisman has said about Nick Fisher 'AKA' Trixter in his message. I played a lot of SubSpace many years ago, and maintained a strategy guide for the game. Trixter was without a doubt the most obnoxious prick in the history of that game (and believe, me this is saying A LOT.)
To give credit where credit is due, he was one of the best SubSpace players out there, and I was a member of his squad (called ONE) at one time. But I did see the error of my ways however, and quit.
Nick Fisher is one of those people gifted with a golden tongue and a black heart. Beware all who may have the opportunity to deal with him in the future.
Re:Gaming Sites and $$$ (Score:1)
I wouldn't bother. Rinoa 0wNz Selphie anyday...
One more time slowly. (Score:1)
Click through and impressions.
An impression can be registered without me needing to see it.
A click-through system is not going to benefit anyone if I never click anyway.
Finally, HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU CLICK?
You don't HAVE to care about lowtax (Score:1)
The kid you were talking about was 14.
And he chose to play adult games as an adult and has been laughed at by a lot of people. (mostly deservedly)
Sometimes lowtax crosses a line and I look at what he's done and think "that isn't so funny".
But mostly I laugh my head of and send the page to a friend.
Just because your sense of humour responds to different things to mine/his/anyone elses doesn't mean that a hosted webmaster serving up 15gb of mostly text a day with a banner add on the top of every page shouldn't be paid by the advertisiers pon his pretty darn hot content.
Otherwise there will be no model for little people to make a living on the web.
Be a big corporate site or die.
Thats not the web i want.
Re:Banner ads, the bills (Score:2)
I will happily patronise a decent service in an effort to make the S2N ratio less N and more S.
The difference (Score:1)
What GameFAN has done is run out of money by not being able to sell banner ads. Whatever the reason really is, the fact is: they ran out of cash. I think that Express.com, being the new parent company of GameFAN, is obligated to pay their member sites something for carrying the ads - otherwise, as someone else pointed out, it beggs the questions of an advert scam to draw people to GameFAN/Express.com.
I think we can all learn:
1) RTFL
2) IANAL, YANAL, so GAFL!
3) The advertiser shouldn't "adjust" pay based on "quality" delivered.
4) The advertiser should be pro-active and let people know that they are dying - perhaps lower the rates or something to entice new clients.
Verbatim
A large Australian metro newspaper - ad cheat (Score:1)
When challenged, they admitted fraud and withdrew invoices citing thousands more click-throughs than we actually got.
Mind you, the guy I was working for then was a crook in his own right - it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy...
Lawyers? (Score:3)
I did that. Once.
Too bad I didn't read his fine print.
Keeping in line with the trend... (Score:1)
Re:offtopic moderation question (Score:1)
Or do like me: downmod trolls if they are really annoying or offensive *and* you have nothing better to do with your modpoints at the time.
Re:Gaming Sites and $$$ (Score:2)
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Re:They're not alone (Score:1)
Nick Fisher (Score:1)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/10/10/1221
Knunov
Banner scam? (Score:1)
I have to wonder how sustainable this banner-impression based economy that so many companies seem to run on really is.
Re:Wow this didnt happen like a week ago (Score:1)
That aside, why is /. posting about it today? shouldn't they wait at least a week?
(Ha ha, only serious)
Tell the viewers & advertisers (Score:2)
I always thought that a better solution would be to have whatever perl/php/etc. script that serves the banners continue to show the banner, but modify the gif so it has a huge red line through it with overlaid text that says "advertiser www.banneradcompany.com does not pay out for ads". Then send e-mail to all the people whose ads you are showing and tell them to take a look at how their ad looks on your page.
Bad PR goes a long way in advertising.
Re:Stupid Ads on Slashdot (Score:1)
Re:Banner ads, the bills (Score:1)
Please, pull your head out of your arse and get a clue. Most of the quality, non-corporate sites can't afford to run at a loss, and banner ads are often the *only* income they get. Too many people block the ads, the sites disappear. It's that simple.
Re:why should we even care about lowtax? (Score:1)
Liar, Damn Liars, and Gamefan (Score:1)
Re:Banner ads, the bills (Score:1)
the voice of experience (Score:1)
Lowtax needs to do his homework. i've been very involved in a certain very successful gaming site for about 4 years. i've seen ad brokers come and go (out of business even). the practices and terms he describe are completely standard.
this sounds like a matter of bad negotiating. lowtax obviously didn't know what a good deal looks like, as he did not negotiate one (granted, very few people have the experience to know what a good banner contract looks like)
ad brokers "fill" inventory with non-paying in-store ads (like the commercials for tv shows), this is _indeed_ the mark of a broker not being able to sell their product (i.e. space on your site). you can draw two conclusions when you see this on your site:
the moral of the story is, ALWAYS make your contract breakable if they don't fill their inventory, or negotiate a guaranteed minimum income. anything less, and you are bending over. and remember to GETH THE F*CK OUT when you see alot of "stock" ads.
it _is_ possible to negotiate with these guys. most of them are desperately in need of clicks. in fact, alot of them are so desperate, they'll cut you a deal they can't fill. this happened to us, our "big dot com ipo" broker is now trading around the penny stock territory.
another piece of advice, is to stick with the bigboys (cnet comes to mind). if the big boys won't take you, you aren't good enough to make them money, and you likely aren't good enough to make _you_ money either.
remember, this is bidneth, nobody owes you anything. you get what you agree to.
I'm a daily SA reader (Score:1)
It really stinks. They've strung poor Rich along for ages and I'm sure he's doing well to hold on to his sanity.
To people who say "too bad, you should've read the small print" or whatever well the guy has been receiving payment for the same ads for ages. Then one day the cheque doesn't arrive and they tell him "we'll be paying you late - sorry" the time drags by and yesterday it turned in to "nope, we're not paying you ever because of some lame shit we just made up" and he's $3000 out of pocket for the bandwidth for the site.
We all run the risk in a salaried environment of a similar experience - I know I've had it happen to me - comapny starts going bust but they don't tell the employees and then Bam! "sorry no pay this month -we're broke" and you sit there looking at your credit card bill & mortgage cos you lived a month in the future.
Saying "you should've known it could happen" isn't much comfort.
and btw. people in wheelchairs are funny just like everybody else is.
as usual Post your comments in the forum [somethingawful.com]
Re:Banner ads, the bills (Score:2)
Here's a question for you then. How much money do you think Andover throws in? I'm not preaching conspiracy theories here, but seeing as how Slashdot is owned by Andover, and has affiliations to OSDN, I don't think banner ads play that big of a role in keeping Slashdot afloat.
Besides, the WWW existed before banner ads, what makes you think the WWW is going to die if we all don't start clicking on ads?
"As for the guys bragging here about the various ways they have devised to prevent ads from being seen on webpages - screw you."
No, screw you. And screw the ad companies too. Wanna know why?
Advertisers nowadays seem to have this notion that the more Flash / Java banners they use, the better the responses will be. Hello? Not everybody has the money to pay for a cable modem. Some people are still stuck on their 56 K modems, like me. And I don't want to wait while someone like Doubleclick tries to shove some 100 K "Punch the Money and Win $20 of Worthless Tokens!" ad through my modem. I've spent up to five minutes just waiting for a page to load, because either the banner ad was taking too long to load, or the ad server decided to be bitchy and slow.
And hey, while we've mentioned Doubleclick, how about all those privacy invasions? Sure, the data is anonymous, for now. Doubleclick wants to serve me a banner? Fine. But they also want to know everything about me in the process. So excuse me for being privacy-minded.
So yes, I filter banner ads. So fucking what? Your bitching is falling on the wrong people. Why don't you take you and your soapbox over to the advertisers and ask them why they want to serve 10 cookies with every monstrosity of a Flash / Java ad? Maybe then you'll see why people filter the ads out.
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On the wit for eyeballs for money game. (Score:1)
We've been really lucky and collected every dime we've been owed so far, but not without staying on top of it.. Read the contracts, for real.. No-payment for network ads is clearly in ours, their stats page even shows how many we've served as a percentage of the total.
Lowtax mentions a clause about not seeking other sponsors, but honestly, that couldn't have been stopping him, he did change to backbeat after all..
Re:On the wit for eyeballs for money game. (Score:1)
I suppose I'll have to change that to a proper header forward now..
Re:PAY JEFF K! (Score:2)
Re:The Tool Behind Gamefan (Score:2)
Infantry Q&A [bluesnews.com]
Infantry Q&A [loonyboi-12:42 AM EDT] - Post a Comment
GameAddicts has conducted an interview with Jeff Peterson, the lead programmer and co-owner of Harmless Games, the developers of Subspace and the upcoming game Infantry. The game was originally supposed to be funded and published by Brainscan, which is part of the Maximum Holdings, which was purchased by GameFan, which was purchased by Express.com (phew). With the recent turmoil at GameFan, Jeff says the publishing rights have been sold to another company, who will be making an announcement in the near future.
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Common sense, pointless whining (Score:1)
Try ValueClick (Score:1)
They pay well, they have good statistics tools (no JavaScript needed), and friendly customer support!
If you're lucky enough to make $2000 or more a month, they can even send your payment via wire.
Re:I'm a daily SA reader (Score:1)
hmm
Re:The Tool Behind Gamefan (Score:1)
Hemos selling ads??? (Score:2)
Selling ads must be one of the most horrible occupations associated with running a website, and not something that most techies are any good at either. If there's a good reason for bringing in external involvement, it's got to be to give that job to somebody else.
Well, duh! (Score:2)
I feel sorry for the guy, but aparrently he has nobody to blame but himself.
Shhheeeeesh! Before you get into a business transaction, any business transaction, you don't rely on what you're told by a corporate droid.
I hope he learned a lesson without taking too much of a hit. Welcome to the world, pal
Gaming Sites and $$$ (Score:5)
I run a gaming site - granted, not a popular one, but that doesn't hurt my feelings any. And advertisements is something that any site has to deal with.
The problem I see with the whole Express.com/Gamefan Network thing isn't a legal thing, but a right thing. Sure, the legal thing for them to do is to cut their losses, don't pay the sites, and keep the corporation going.
Then there's the right thing to do. In the case of Something Awful, the guy's out $3000 in server costs because he's not going to get paid. I think more about the case of VoodooExtreme.com, which was probably getting a few million hits a day - and evidently they are owed $100,000 [gamerspress.com] that they're never going to see.
These are folks who had an agreement, that they would run their site, bring in traffic, and have ads up for the "parent company" - and in return they would recieve money to keep it going. In the case of some of these sites, people have probably quit their day jobs because they had enough money coming in (or promised to come in) to take care of them.
Yeah, Express.com doesn't have to pay them. But if they don't, you can bet that they're not getting another $0.02 out of me. I'll buy my anime and import stuff somewhere else. (Damn, and I had my eye on those Final Fantasy Selphie figurines).
Do the right thing, Express.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
Economic collapse in sight? We can hope! (Score:1)
After all, it's the love of *money* that is the root of all evil, not the love of enormous hooters.
A whole economy has sprung up around banner links, and not a pleasant economy either. Sure, banners can advertise legitimate services, and some of them are quite attractive doing so too. But I've seen bad banners too. Things that don't lead where they expect, or promise things they don't deliver. I've even seen samples of banners made to look like part of the website that they're being hosted on!
The Internet itself loses value under these circumstances. Information wants to be free, but it doesn't necessarily want to make itself known to everybody, and it can be awfully hard to pick out when the noise is intentionally disguising itself as signal.
(Side note: the advantage to using either a Mac or Linux box is the user interface -- I get to laugh myself silly at every banner advertisement that's dolled up to look like a dialog box which, if you're on the aforementioned, is appearing on the wrong OS.)
Then this happens. This beautifully apocryphal event that tells the world, "Banner adverts aren't all they're cracked up to be! Servers might not get rich off of them!" Business models shift. Sites either negotiate better contracts with the people they're shilling for, or work up alternative business models that don't require banner advertising for revenue. Or people start using their own servers.
Contracts get looked at a little more carefully, too. It'd be nice if the unscrupulous ones were left out in the cold by their own legal trickery, but that'd be too much to hope. All they have to do is latch onto the suckers. Then again, I'd like to think that suckers are an exhaustable resource, that if they're suckered enough, they start thinking.
It might not happen the way I'm hoping it will... what I'm hoping is that the banner advertising companies thin out and become more reputable. Who knows? They may even point to more interesting content...
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Boycott Express.com? (Score:1)
Re:Boycott Express.com? (Score:1)
PAY JEFF K! (Score:1)
Asking to get ripped off (Score:1)
j/k I love JEFF K! and somethingawful.com rox0rs your box0rs!
I don't get this... (Score:2)
And I don't see fault with not being allowed to solicit outside advertising either. I would think, that part of being a network, is that the network can control it's identity. If you start working on side deals, it will dilute the brand identity that the network is trying to build. It's just part of the price you pay, for the convenience of not having to shop for your own ad's, and for the strength of co-marketing that you should get from the affiliated sites.
I'd basically chalk this whole episode up, as a sterling example of a variation of "caveat emptor". Be sure of what you are getting, before you lay out the cash to get it. I feel for the guy, but at least he'll provide an object lesson to some others by publicizing his mistakes.
Re:Banner ads, the bills (Score:1)
1. Use Junkbuster.
2. Use a perl LWP::UserAgent script to clickthrough as many banner ads as you want without ever looking at them. Stagger the hits right, and I'll defy an ad network to refuse to pay because the hits are faked. After all, they're right there in the log file, and they did come from an honest-to-god client, every packet.
-- Dave
Re:This is typical (Score:1)
Jeepmeister
They're not alone (Score:1)