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Update: The Drupal association posted an advertising policy on Drupal.org and the Drupal association website. We continue to try to expand the advertising program where it is contextual, useful, and relevant. We are working with over 100 hosting companies and over 70 companies who have requested information about the advertising program. As we roll out ads in new areas of the site, we work closely with partners who contribute a large amount of time to adjust and tune their ads so we can see if the ads are effective. These are not exclusive deals but trials so that we can get data to see if some forms of advertising are effective.
The Drupal association has agreed to a 60 day advertising trial on only the main handbooks page, and only the hosting and paid-services forums of Drupal.org. Approximately 35 parties submitted advertising proposals indicating they would like to advertise or how they thought advertising could be implemented on Drupal.org.
Update: November 10th, 2007 - we are now trying Google Ad sense. Please contact the association if you have any feedback.
- All ads will have a feedback link soliciting opinions from the Drupal community about the ads.
- The ads will be tuned based on clicks, revenue earned, and feedback from the community.
- All ads will be text based ads, there will not be any image ads.
- Advertisers can budget based on time or money.
Advertisements on Drupal.org must be relevant and useful to the Drupal community. Advertisements are available in the following three sections of Drupal.org, as described below and illustrated in these diagrams.
- http://drupal.org/hosting Ads are available to hosting companies in a text ad. The text ad will be below the user navigation block on the right side and will be displayed in rotating block per page load. Approval for hosting ads will be subject to a basic security review to ensure they provide the most recent secure release of Drupal. Ads will be displayed for the full 60 days of the trial.
- http://drupal.org/paid-services Ads are available to Drupal consulting companies or service provider in a text ad. The text ad will be below the user navigation block in the right side and will be displayed in rotating block per page load. Ads will be displayed for the last 30 days of the trial.
- http://drupal.org/handbooks Ads are available for book authors, book publishers, or book sellers for a Drupal related books only, in a text advertisement which is visible to anonymous Drupal.org users only. The text ad will be a rotating ad in a block below the user log in block on the right side. Ads will be displayed for the last 30 days of the trial.
During the 60 day advertising trial, the following criteria will be used to evaluate the advertising
- Feedback from the Drupal community, submitted through a feedback link on every advertisement.
- The amount of effort required by volunteers for the Drupal association to manage the advertising trial.
- Revenue earned for the non-profit all volunteer Drupal association to improve the Drupal infrastructure and support the Drupal project. The revenue earned will be compared to other revenue sources such as conference fees, donations, membership fees, and sponsorships to evaluate it's effectiveness.
- Feedback from the advertisers as to the effectiveness of advertising on Drupal.org. Feedback from new advertisers who are interested in advertising on Drupal.org.
UPDATE January 3rd, 2008: Achieve Internet now has a temporary affiliate banner ad at http://drupal.org/paid-services. We have worked out a market rate for their help in modifying the Blue Beach theme and testing in several browsers, in exchange for the header ad. This ad will be changed to promote the Drupalcon Boston 2008 job fair. We appreciate Achieve Internet's support on working on the Drupal.org infrastructure. Affliate ad sales will be available, pending community feedback, after Drupalcon Boston.
Comments
Great Idea to Help Fund Drupal.
We live in the real world--and that means Drupal needs money to keep itself alive and growing.
Putting advertisements on Drupal.com is a great way to generate revenue to fund the organization; it's an underutilized resource that should be used.
Hurrah for whoever got the ball rolling on this.
John Berns
Travel Guide
Travel Photographer
well said; long live drupal
well said; long live drupal
Follow up questions
1. Does paid-service include training?
Yes.
2. When will the trial run, I only want to advertise for specific dates?
We are working to set up the program now, so if you have specific dates in mind for a particular event, we will tell you which days overlap.
3. How do the ad rates work?
Ads will start in a randomly rotating block. You can choose to pay per view, per click, or affiliate sales. Your ads will be tuned based on feedback, and revenue performance. If you ads do not perform, the advertiser will be advised, or they will be dropped in favor of ads that do perform. It's up to the advertisers to determine which model they believe will be most effective. During the trial we are hoping to learn what will work.
4. How can we pay Drupal?
http://association.drupal.org/donate
5. If you use affiliate sales programs how can you trust that advertisers will pay you for actual sales?
Many of affiliate programs have legal contracts in place for their affiliate programs. We can audit the programs by doing secret shopping and purchasing the service to see if they are being reported. There are other techniques we can use, but if we told you we would have to .....
Kieran Lal
What ad management system ?
What module/system/code will be used to mange the advertising ?
The site I am about to develop will have advertising as well. However, it is not yet decided Drupal will be used. An existing ad management system might help to convice.
DrupalBar
Hosting, consulting and books. Good chosen categories that can be useful for us too.
I thought that maybe, as Dries said, the association can get money from the big people like Google. I've build a firefox bar to search the drupal sites, api and cvs, as the primary search site is Google maybe we can have an "agreement" with them (I don't know if that is possible), just like firefox, safari, etc. search bars.
Beta version:
DrupalBar
Paco
Hi This last version? I
Hi
This last version? I looking new...
Thanks
-------------------
This my project in drupal.
Sounds like a very well
Sounds like a very well thought out plan. Congrats and hopefully this will generate significant revenue for Drupal.
newms
Great Ideea
I am also interested in this program. Is there a special form where I can apply for ?
Thanks,
Stefaniu Criste
Romania
Sounds like a wonderful way
Sounds like a wonderful way to fund Drupal. And so long as its just text I'm sure it will be far less intrusive that the majority of the sites we all frequent anyways. This way it can help Drupal. And if it helps Drupal it helps all of us.
digging this up...
It's odd that this never made it to the front page. It's also concerning that it appears whoever makes the most "generous" offer gets the spot. What kind of quality audits are being performed, if any? Are you documenting any potential conflicts of interest between bidders and those who review the bids?
Money is coming left and right to Drupal in the form of grants and donations, where is the accounting that demonstrates a need for these advertisements?
Those who contribute time, code, and money, while asking for nothing in return, deserve to know.
--
John Forsythe
Actually it did get posted on the front page
This did get posted to the front page. Unfortunately, it was posted at the same time about 7 other stories were posted in rapid succession. I'll repost in a week or so so it gets more attention.
We are conducting a trial to answer the questions that you are asking. We need to improve our measurements, and ensure that the ads represent fair value. During the trial we will be accepting all ad bids and tuning them based on performance and feedback from the community. The Drupal association is working on becoming more transparent at the same time as it meeting the requirements of Beligian laws for non-profits.
Kieran
Drupal association board member
Kieran Lal
When does trial period end and a formal policy announced?
Kieran,
When does the trial period end? It has been over 1 year and I'm not getting clear answers on any of the forum posts.
It so appears that Drupal Association is not having policies to choose which ads make it and which don't and what is the benefit to Drupal Association. Is there any public information of source of funds v/s use of funds as well as any contribution "in-kind" for ad spot and policies thereof?
-
Roshan Shah
Advertising policy
http://association.drupal.org/drupal-org-adsense-banner-advertising
Roshan, we have had many communications explaining advertising opportunities. The advertising opportunities for Drupal services in paid-services is still under trial. There have only been less than 600 impressions of advertising for Drupal consulting services in the paid services forum out of over 150 000 page views in that forum in that last two months. We are testing advertising of services to see if it yields good results.
Kieran
Drupal association fund raiser
Kieran Lal
Can Drupal association come clean on polices and accounts?
Kieran,
A trial which is running for over a year http://drupal.org/node/161151#comment-258745 (your post on 6th August 2007) can also run for 99 years. Apolgize in advance for this but I hope you see where I am coming from. Your original post says that the trial is for 60 days!
Here are my questions:
1) What has changed between this 1 year?
2) Why are only a handful of companies chosen and there is no level playing field for everyone? If so, where is a consistent policy laid out. The URL you have provided again just scratches the surface but one can't objectively assess whether Company 'A' and Company 'B' have been treated consistently.
Also in this comment http://drupal.org/node/161151#comment-258648 - John has also asked for transparency in accounts. Drupal Association has been collecting funds for few years now. I do understand that there will be some annual filing done as per Belgian laws http://www.nbb.be/pub/03_00_00_00_00/03_05_00_00_00/03_05_01_00_00/03_05... but would be great if community can be shared the details of the same.
Also looked at Drupal Association FAQ - http://association.drupal.org/about/faq. Here is another post you may want to view http://groups.drupal.org/node/15352
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Roshan Shah
Level playing field
1) Adsense ads are open to everyone on /paid-services. Some businesses might not like the prices for adsense ads.
2) Hosting listings are open to everyone and we've worked hard to make sure everyone is included who has been asked. Only one company that has been asked to be included has not participated, Gloscon.
3) The ads Roshan is requesting are the banner ads at http://drupal.org/paid-services. We are currently trying to model an advertising program for paid consulting services but it has not been successful yet. We want it to work before we roll the ads out widely. Right now only one company has consulting services ads and we are tracking to see if it makes sense run those ads.
All of this has been explained to Roshan in private emails. I am going to lock this thread and update the title to point to the existing policies. The 60 day trial title just leads to confusion when we've have had an advertising policy publicly posted for over 6 months.
Kieran
Drupal association fund raiser.
Kieran Lal
how about Amazon bookstore?
I think this is very appropriate. Here's another idea. How about an Amazon bookstore promoting all sorts of Drupal, PHP, HTML/CSS, MySQL and server management books. This could be a nice little source of revenue as well as a useful service to the community (btw: I'd be happy to volunteer to maintain the list)
______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.hermeneuticheretic.net
http://www.czechupdate.com
http://www.techwillow.com
The operative word is "little" :)
A more-profitable route to follow would be to sell the books directly, as I'm doing (in a small way) at http://store.tomgeller.com. Of course it's more trouble, and requires an up-front investment.
As always, a cost-benefit analysis is in order. I just hate to see others (amazon.com) get the money for fulfilling orders, if indeed it turns out to be easy money.
I'd be interested in taking part in such a discussion.
---
Tom Geller * San Francisco
Author/Presenter, "Drupal Essential Training" video series at Lynda.com
TomGeller.com * GellerGuides.com * SaveMyHomeBook.com
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Tom Geller * tomgeller.com * Oberlin, Ohio
See my lynda.com videos about Drupal
Hmm
I have no objections to this, i simply wont click on them haha.. but yeah thats fine with me aslong as it doesnt get outragious
Vision Media
Free Photoshop Downloads
CSS Doc
Other ad services?
This ads are nice and the place chosen for them, too.
But it make me think if Google Ads is really the best option. I have no experience with ads, but, considering Drupal.org is quite more than a average website, it is possible that there are other ad services that may give the Association a better revenue. I can remember two, now: http://www.text-link-ads.com/ and http://www.coudal.com/deck/ - but other services are worth checking, aren't they?
José San Martin
José San Martin
http://www.chuva-inc.com/
Trying Ad sense for a few weeks
Hi, we tried to do our own ads but there was too much administration. We are now trying Google Ads. Thanks for the links, we can investigate those services.
Kieran
CTO CivicSpace
Try hosted and pre-configured Drupal 5 profile
http://civicspacelabs.org/create
Kieran Lal
Relevant ads? who'da thunk it?
personally, I prefer irrelevant ads.
like when I get the odd email about stoping uranium mining, and google offers me shares in Rio Tinto. that's classic.
fine by me - but relevant?
I'm happy to see ads. They don't bother me at all and make sense
... but I'm failing to see the relevance of:
which keeps popping up (hosting forum).
Meh. Easier to ignore I guess.
.dan.
How to troubleshoot Drupal | http://www.coders.co.nz/
.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards
Ok, I'll block that ad
Hi, I'll block that ad. Give me a few days to get to it.
Kieran
CTO CivicSpace
Try hosted and pre-configured Drupal 5 profile
http://civicspacelabs.org/create
Kieran Lal
I don't mind the ads....
As long as they make sense given the management/volunteer time needed to make them make sense.
Are the ads still in
Are the ads still in trial/test mode? Is that why there doesn't seem to be information regarding availability and pricing?
I can see Ads
(emphasis mine)
I think someone made an error, since i can see those ads too when i'm logged in.
less == more
i'm logged in, and i can see
i'm logged in, and i can see it, too. and its not a text but an image ad. quite disturbing. don't like this. blocked.
Adwords campaign netting 13 impressions in 3 days.
Not sure how to improve performance. We bid per click. How does one bid for impression?
Start Drupal Hosting
How about starting a new sister company specifically for hosting. There are millions of drupal users spread over the world, why not start a new company and power their hosting needs. And i am sure it would generate a better revenue than stripping the website with advertisements.