Here are a couple of opinions from people trying out Project Wonderful for the first time, one as a publisher, and one as an advertiser.

Mixed feelings for Project Wonderful in this review from Weblog Tools Collection. The author seems to have the same problems that the rest of us are having - poor server performance (although this seems to have gotten much better lately), lack of advertisers, low prices for publishers. He also mentions PW's good points, praising the wide variety of ad types on offer and noting that using PW doesn't appear to negatively affect your PageRank. In the comments thread, Roman of Anawiki Games pointed out his pleasant experience as a PW advertiser.

In this article on Sodaware.net, Phil Newton describes what happened when he spent twenty bucks each on various different online advertising systems. No prizes for guessing which of the paid systems provided the best return. The author also mentions the phenomena we've seen before - in aggregate, smaller sites tend to give more visitors for less money.

From what I've seen, PW seems to be better for advertisers than it is for publishers right now. Of course, as more advertisers find out about PW's stellar value for money, competition will increase and things will hopefully get better for publishers too.

It's been a while since we've done this, but I thought it'd be a nice idea to get everybody's Most Wanted features together.

The Project Wonderful staff do lurk on PWT every now and then, so maybe by discussing what we'd like to see, we can actually make it happen.

Here's my top ten. Feel free to add to the list - you can comment anonymously by passing a CAPTCHA test, use your LiveJournal or Blogger.com login, or make an account for Project Wonderful Talk and join the discussion!

[intro from Caveman Joe]
Project Wonderful Talk member planetmike submitted this news via the "Contribute" link - thanks, planetmike!
You might, if you run a small site and accept campaign bids, recognise his ads - the ones that say "We play Christmas music 24 / 7." The first time I saw that advert, I mentally added a word and read it as "WARNING - we play Christmas music 24 / 7," but as I found out shortly after, some folks really dig this sort of stuff. In this article, planetmike talks about his success using Project Wonderful, and it makes for some interesting reading. I wouldn't have thought there'd be so much of a market for a Christmas music site, but I guess there is. I'm rather pleasantly surprised. The world is a more ludicrous and beautiful place now that I know this.
Without further ado, here's the article. Enjoy!
[intro ends, planetmike's text begins]

I discuss how the Project Wonderful system has worked for me in October, and compare the expense and results to using Google Adwords.

PlanetMike: Thoughts on the Project Wonderful ad system

Project Wonderful will, very soon, have an inbuilt ratings system for its adverts. This new feature will hopefully give publishers a way to automatically opt-out of adult-rated advertisements. It'll work the other way too, allowing publishers to rate their own websites so that your ads don't end up being shown anywhere inappropriate.

This seems like a good complement to the campaign system, which - for better or worse - allows us to place control of our advertising budget into the hands of a pre-established set of parameters, reducing our need to make decisions on what sites are appropriate for our ads.

Speaking of which, it's been quiet around here lately - how's everyone getting on with the campaign system? Do you still place many manual bids?