I operate a news website that relies on advertising sales to fund its operations. I've been rather disappointed in my readers, as the amount of clicks my advertisers receive is very very low compared to the amount of visits the website receives. I understand that this is typical in online advertising.
I would like to implement a strategy that requires readers to click on an ad that is overlayed on a node (article) in order to view the article. I would prefer to use a "lightbox" type method that would give the reader the option to click on one of two ads to make the overlay disappear.
I've seen similar methods on websites that require the user to "like" their publication on Facebook or "follow" them on Twitter to read a story. Unfortunately, I can't remember one of the websites that I saw this on.
I found an example of a site which employs a similar deal to what I'm talking about, except it's with an e-mail newsletter signup rather than an ad. (theblaze.com) The overlay appears on the first story you click. Also, this site gives you the option to close the overlay without signing up. I don't want that option. I want to require the reader to click an ad.
A few additional details:
- Once the user clicks an ad, the overlay will remove itself giving them access to the node
- The system should log the user's IP address so that they only have to complete this task once within a 24-hr period
I've tried searching for a Drupal solution, but have come up empty.
Is anyone in the community familiar with a module that may accomplish this task? If there is not a module, could you provide some insight on how I might go about accomplishing such a task?
Thank you,
Zack
www.ArlingtonVoice.com
Comments
I would like to implement a
Many ad providers either prohibit this outright or attempt to penalize, see e.g. Google AdSense TOS:
(bold mine - DR)
In short, you may not even ask someone to click on ads, much less force them. Are you sure your strategy is OK with your ad provider?
Short answer yes
The ads I'm talking about having people click are ones that I actually get on a phone, cold-call, and sell. We pay a third party company to use a special program to deliver our ads. They have no restrictions on how those ads are delivered or how many clicks they receive simply because they don't control the advertisements at all. It's not like Google, where the ads are already being supplied to us.
Yes, I do completely understand that Google and other AdShare programs where a third party company is supplying the ads to us prohibits this. I'm not talking about applying this method to these types of programs.
Again, this is applied to ads we personally sell and deliver.
Thanks,
Zack
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While I think this is poor practice and would personally stop visiting a site that made me do it, here's a "rough" way to accomplish it:
I'm assuming your articles are based off one content type (such as an article). You can create a custom template file, write in some PHP to check to see if the user has clicked on a link (you can store this info in the db with an "end time", which I would set at 48 hours min), and if so then show the node. If not, load the popup, and once the user clicks on a link open the link in a new window, and reload the current node after inserting their info into the db.