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I have been fortunate enough to have been selected as one of the beta testers for the soon-to-be-released AdSonar text ads by Quigo.
Quigo is getting very close to launching AdSonar and has given me the green light to share my experiences as a tester to fellow webmasters, so here goes:
First off, some background information:
1) Quigo's ads are currently fed by Ah-Ha and FindWhat ads and will be fed by Overture in the future (for publishers Overture specifically approves). Quigo is not owned by Overture/Yahoo. Additionally Quigo has their own ad index in development which is tailored to contextual advertising.
2) They are being very selective during the beta period over which sites they allow to test their ads simply because they don't want their product released to all sites until it's completely functional. The fact that some of you didn't hear back from them doesn't mean you won't hear back when they go live, so don't be put off.
3) If you run Google ads on your site, you are *still* allowed to have AdSonar ads on your site under Google's Terms of Service. The only restriction is that they cannot be on the same page at the same time. If you write a rotation script, as we plan to do, you can have the best of both worlds in accordance with the Terms of Service of both companies. Additionally that would probably mean less PSA's on your site from both sides.
Here are my impressions on the service itself, understanding that it's still in beta:
INTERFACE
Quigo's interface is extremely user-friendly and works as a wizard, taking you through all the steps quickly and easily. You can create different presets of ads (unlimited) to then place in your code. One amazing thing about the interface is that it allows you to customize almost every single element of the ad layout. In other words, if you want to make an ad table with 5 columns and 300 rows, you can do just that. It can make any shape and size table, with any number of ads.
THE ADS
Their ads will work on 2 layers of relevancy. First is a keyword matching element (which works similar to competitor's programs) gleaning keywords from the page and matching them to ads. Second is a layer of relevancy that you as a publisher can input - specific keywords for the page that will automatically affect the ads. Quigo says an algorithm will still checks the relevancy of these keywords in order to prevent publishers from manipulating this option.
There are no size restrictions either, so you aren't limited by conventional ad sizes.
Quigo plans on allowing the ads to open in a new window.
The ads say "Powered by Quigo" on them and are located under the ads on the right hand side, similar to AdSense ads. Quigo has mentioned that they are considering taking that part out. I'd be perfectly happy if it stayed in, but was just placed in a different location to distinguish it from Google.
The ad relevancy is pretty close as well. How well it will ultimately work for each site remains to be seen, but Quigo has smartly given you a way to improve the accuracy by allowing you to enter keywords in your meta tags. On my site the accuracy has been pretty good so far.
The only criticism I have of the ads (and I believe this only stems from their being in beta) is that they are slow to load. I have experienced 3-12 seconds delays in the ads' appearance after the rest of the site has fully loaded on a broadband connection.
EDIT: Quigo confirmed this was a beta-only issue.
the speed you are experiencing is due to the beta servers which
are in Tel Aviv... We'll migrate the system to our production data
centers (one in Virginia and one in Seattle) within 10-14 days. But your
comment on this point is certainly on spot.
FEEDBACK
First of all they have been open to all ideas I have suggested to them from the beginning. I don't know others' experiences, but I would imagine them to share the same. To give you a taste of just some of the ideas they have implemented or will implement at the behest of beta testers and some of the great ideas they have put in place on their own:
1) Reporting by ad - as mentioned before you can make different ad presets. If you have multiple sites, just place a different ad on each. You can then get full reports for each ad (site) individually!
2) Default house ads / fallback ads - When no inventory appears, instead of running PSA's that don't profit or benefit anyone, you can run and define your own ads (point them to pages on your site, or even sell the inventory to your advertisers - there won't be an AdSonar way to track revenue from those though).
3) The ads can be manipulated either via preset in the AdSonar admin, or in the javascript itself (which allows dynamically generated sites to edit the page look on the fly). I don't believe all aspects of the javascript can be edited dynamically, but relevant ones like color can.
4) The ads can be placed on separate ad pages (interstitials, pop-unders and pop-ups) for those of you who have those on your site. They will still draw their relevancy from the original page and best of all will comply with Google's terms because they aren't located on the same page.
Any idea or news from them?
Cheers
when are they planning to launch for every publisher who qualifies?
I don't know and they haven't said anything. My guess would be in November simply because they mentioned that they are moving their servers to the USA then. It would seem that would signal the end of the beta process or at least that we're really close to that point.
Does Quigo accept smaller publishers like Google does?
Probably not. I tried testing that by filling in the form on their site requesting information. The contact URL and email address I disclosed to them was from a relatively small site. They haven't bothered to reply, it's been months.
I replied, and have yet to hear back from them again.
Very strange.
CompWorld
[edited by: heini at 11:34 pm (utc) on Oct. 26, 2003]
[edit reason] rephrased... Please, never post emails, thanks! [/edit]
CompWorld
Bandwidth (speed), interface, etc, are all secondary to relevancy to searchers (customers).
Relevancy is what made Google what it is today, and to a much lesser extent, Overture.
My guess would be in November simply because they mentioned that they are moving their servers to the USA then
Still no news?
