If you are COMMONWEALTH affiliate, READ THIS
Kuo-Sheng Kasey Chang
If you are a Commonwealth Affiliate, you need to read this.
If you're not, you may have ran into advertising banners with "Commonwealth
Network" if so, you may want to read this any way.
Can you get something for nothing on the web? Yes. One of the ways is to
display advertisements for other people. Or so I thought.
One of the "other people" was the Commonwealth Network, at
commonwealth.riddler.com. If you carry their banner, they will pay you 3
cents for every four (4) "unique host impressions" (uhi) you register in a
24-hour period. As defined by them, an UHI is an unique host, NOT AN USER,
not "a hit" in the regular sense. For example, the entire aol.com domain is
ONE HOST (darn! that's 6 million users!) and will generate only ONE UHI in
a 24-hour period, no matter how many of its members visit your site. This
was not apparent while reading their legalese contract, but was clarfied by
an e-mail question to their support department.
>>Question about "unique site impression". Does that mean
>>that entire AOL.COM, or any of the on-line services like
>>compuserve.com, netcom.com, etc. would get only "one hit"
>>per day?
>Yes, unfortunately that's how it is with those big services.
Fine, I thought. I'll put their banner on multiple pages, each will
generate an UHI. I'll try it. So I joined. I racked up almost four
thousand UHI's on my web site of about 20 pages in 17 days. Pretty
good, I thought, it'll pay my net bills. Then I got this e-mail from them
today:
[snip]
>After careful consideration, we will be changing the way
>we record and calculate Unique Host Impressions. Up to
>now, each Web page registered and accepted into the
>Commonwealth generated its own Unique Host Impressions.
>Unfortunately, we've had to re-evaluate this approach in
>order to make royalty payments more accurately reflect
>the value of Commonwealth banners to our sponsors. So,
>starting on Thursday, August 8, Unique Host Impressions
>will be calculated at the portfolio level rather than at
>the individual page level.
[snip]
Or, if you don't understand what it says, here's a translation from their
customer support department.
>>Or, for example, if I have 40 pages registered, and
>>someone goes in and browsed all 40 pages, under the
>>old way I'll get 40 impressions, but under the new
>>way I'll get only one?
>Yes.
I will not say anything that will get me in trouble with them, but I
STRONGLY urge you to think VERY CAREFULLY if you are even contemplating to
join or are already a member of the Commonwealth Network. Read this
carefully, go ahead and confirm it with them if you like
(csup...@riddler.com, include affiliate ID if member) and make up your own
mind.
And feel free to forward this letter to other people who are thinking about
joining Commonwealth, or are already an "affiliate". They may even thank
you for it.
And if you happen to be surfing around and hit a Commonwealth banner,
please think about this article.
[All e-mail snippets are actual e-mail from Commonwealth Customer Support
department, full e-mail available upon request.]
--Kasey Chang / kas...@discopy.com / soon to be EX-Commonwealth Affiliate
P.S. Accepting offers from Commonwealth competitors
=========================================================================
Kasey K. S. Chang (a guy) | Paradox for Windows Programmer
kas...@discopy.com ksc...@sfsu.edu | Star Trek Fan General PC Expert
URL> http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~kschang | X-COM Guru among other things...
=========================================================================
Jeff Yoak
You appear to be under the impression that this announcement was
targeted at you because of your high number of accesses on several
pages. This was a general change in policy and it makes a lot of
sense to me at least. I know several people who are part of
commonwealth who register large numbers of pages and then use various
techniques to attract visits from search engine users or cause users
to cycle through a large number of banner carrying pages with meta
refresh. The new Commonwealth policy rules out some of these
practices thus creating a greater value for the advertisers. I
wouldn't have advertised personally under the old system. I would
think about it now.
My two cents,
Jeff
>>Yes.
Kuo-Sheng Kasey Chang
In article <4ulh44$a...@sjx-ixn5.ix.netcom.com>,
yo...@ix.netcom.com (Jeff Yoak) wrote:
>You appear to be under the impression that this announcement was
>targeted at you because of your high number of accesses on several
>pages. This was a general change in policy and it makes a lot of
>sense to me at least.
And you appear to be under the impression that serving up multiple ads
for Commonwealth while NOT getting the credit that you deserve (i.e.
compensation) is a FAIR practice.
Or put it this way: advertising is based on HOPE. Advertisers pay X
amount of money to have one's ad to be displayed on a certain place
hoping that people would see it. Advertising mediums only SERVE UP
ads to be seen, and get paid.
In fact, web advertising is far more secure than "traditional" advertising
in that you are practically guaranteed that there's is actually a COUNT of
the ad being shown. In a traditional medium like TV and/or magazine, you
have to rely on inaccurate circulation numbers or Neilsen ratings, which
are just STATISTICS, not actual data. On the web, you have ACTUAL DATA.
When one serves up an web ad, one expects to be paid. Commonwealth, in
implementing the "unique host impression", the 24-hour no-hit clock, as
well as the recent "only portfolio count", is trying NOT to pay its
affiliates for each ad served. This is called CREATIVE ACCOUNTING.
>I know several people who are part of
>commonwealth who register large numbers of pages and then use various
>techniques to attract visits from search engine users or cause users
>to cycle through a large number of banner carrying pages with meta
>refresh. The new Commonwealth policy rules out some of these
>practices thus creating a greater value for the advertisers.
Of course it creates more value for its advertisers, BY CUTTING DOWN ITS
OWN AFFILIATES. Besides, attracting search engines is easy: spamdexing can
be spotted all over the place now that search engines are starting to
incorporate anti-spamdex routines. As for meta-refresh, that's clearly
cheating, but the answer is NOT by cutting down ALL affiliates with
multiple pages. That can be fixed by changing the no-hit clock to somewhere
like 2 seconds: no consecutive hits from same address in 2 seconds, even on
different pages, but no, they need to keep that 24-hour thing.
Or let me ask you: since ONLY ONE PAGE will count, how many places are YOU
going to put up your Commonwealth ad, since you may be joining now? I
seriously expect that you'll answer "only the title page".
>I wouldn't have advertised personally under the old system. I would
>think about it now.
You'll see that Commonwealth is essentially strangling itself by doing
this, IMHO of course. Ads serves will decrease dramatically as people
realize putting up more than one ad is a waste of effort, then they'll
invent some other excuse to pay even less, maybe "from now on, a unique
host impression is click-thrus only." We'll see.
Bamidele O. Shangobunmi
I have but ONE thing to say about this mess:
They rule. 1:2 ratio, you can have up to 99 banners, and it WORKS.
Visit my site to see how I have 28 banners up! Be sure to visit all
pages so that I can get maximum credits <laugh>
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