Project Wonderful WishList
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!
1. Semi-Automatic Bidding
The Campaign system has taken over a lot of the bidding for small sites. That's good, because it allows advertisers to spend lots of money very easily, and give the little guys a boost. It also makes the bids on smaller sites go up and down like yoyos, causes a lack of long-term bids, and leads to enormous fluctuations around the start of the month when everybody's campaigns expire and then get re-created. Perhaps a semi-automatic alternative would go down well.
For example, there could be a checkbox next to each ad slot on the search results page, which would add the chosen slot to a shopping cart. You could then place identical bids on each and every marked result, by filling out just one form.
Or, you could make one bid before you search, and then click a button marked "Bid on this ad box with parameters from your last bid."
2. A search for text-based ad slots
As it is right now, you can't search for ad boxes that support text ads only. I think the radio buttons on the search page need to be changed to check boxes - one for text ads, one for graphic ads, both checked by default.
3. Extended support for free ads, and the end of "Your Ad Here."
What I'd like to see, ideally, is no more "Your Ad Here" boxes. Project Wonderful's support for free adverts is truly wonderful, but does anybody still use them now that the Campaigns system eats them all up for us?
The Your Ad Here boxes seem like a waste of good pixels that could be used more effectively. Here's some ideas:
A) Extending the Campaigns system to allow free bidding, rationed out evenly between everybody using it for that purpose.
B) Replacing "Your Ad Here" with a randomly-chosen advert from the system, and crediting the ad box owner with an impression of a nominated ad on someone else's ad slot. Thus, your ad box serves the role of a banner exchange until someone puts in a bid. Banner exchanges have sucked in the past and will continue to suck, but they're better than "Your Ad Here."
C) An option to remove the ad box entirely from the page if there aren't any bids. Thus, skyscrapers with content above and below would disappear entirely, allowing the content to jump up from below.
D) An extended limit on free ads. Having a two-day limit on free advertising is all well and good, but it's not much use if there aren't any more ads queued up to display afterwards, and results in a "Your Ad Here" of no use to man nor beast. Maybe an ad could be "immune" from being outbid by other zero-dollar bids for one day, but would then carry on displaying until another bid came along.
E) Continuing on from above, there should be a simple button on the bidding form that says "Forget the details, just place a free bid - with ONE CLICK, BABY!" The free bid would be immune from other free bids for one day (or maybe two), and then would be able to be outbid by other free bids - but you wouldn't have to specify when it ended, and the system would assume you meant "Until Outbid."
F) Continuing further - why not extend that to paid bids too? If a bid is placed for a week's worth of advertising at a penny a day, and then it expires but the only bid beneath it is a zero-dollar bid, the previously-paid advert should take on the zero-dollar winner status, and carry on being displayed for free until another bid is placed.
4. A "Pause" button
If my account runs out of money, I don't want it to climb back up to a buck over a day and then run out of cash ten minutes later! Ten minutes of advertising is very little use, no matter how widespread. A simple "Pause my campaign" button would be much appreciated - and how about a "Pause all my bids" button, too?
5. Seperate reporting options for each ad box
I would really like to know how much each individual ad box has made for me, how the bids have fluctuated, and so on. I like to know how well each site performs, how much money I can expect per thousand visitors, who clicks on which ads et cetera, and while AdSense will give me that data to geek over, Project Wonderful will not. Which brings me on to number six:
6. Division of funds
I'd like to be able to seperate the money in my account between money to spend, and money earned.
I know that when I deposit a hundred bucks into my Project Wonderful account, it's all going to get spent. That's fine with me, Project Wonderful delivers by far the best return on investment advertising-wise. However, I also run several sites with PW advertising on them, and I'd like to be able to see the money coming in, and keep it seperate from the money going out. At least until the start of the month, when I'll probably just end up moving it into my To Spend balance.
7. CSV Export
I'd absolutely love to be able to press a button and get a snapshot of the current state of the market, in a format which I can import into OpenOffice (or upload to a set of custom PHP scripts running on a server somewhere) and dick around with. If we had a CSV export facility, or if Project Wonderful spat out a database dump once every hour, or couple of hours, or even once a day, how long d'you think it'd be before somebody came up with a snazzy Flash/AJAX frontend for sorting the data, identifying the bargains, showing the movers and shakers?
Export of my own activity within PW would also be a wonderful thing to have, complete with cross-referenced CPC and CPM per bid, so I can study the data and perfect my bidding strategies.
8. Multiple ads per bid
On ad boxes that don't require approval, I'd like to be able to submit two or three different ads in the same bid, and have them rotated with each impression. Statistics could then be generated on which ads get more clicks in the exact same spot on the exact same site, which would be very useful.
9. Optimisation options in Campaign settings
As it is, Campaigns won't place bids on all the boxes that they could place bids on. In mails to Ryan, he's mentioned that he's doing some behind-the-scenes tweaking in the hope of giving Campaigns better value for money, which I think is a good idea. However, I'd like to have some control over the automatic bidding process myself - maybe even in the form of a simple slider between Exposure and Value. With the lever all the way over to the right, the campaign would bid only on the ad boxes with the absolute best CPM, trying to give you better value for your advertising dollars. On the left, it'd simply bid indiscriminately across all the boxes that came up in the Search results when you set up the campaign, getting more clicks but costing more for each one.
10. Options to group ads together, and link those ad groups with ad boxes
For publishers and advertisers with more than one website, this would make it easier to see how each site is performing. You'd get a page that said "You've spent $(dollars).(cents) advertising (project or website - group name, in other words), using (num) different ads, and here's how each one of them has performed." Link the ad group with an ad box (or group of ad boxes) and you'd get a page like the one above, but which also said "And you've made $(dollars).(cents) back, from these (num) ad boxes, and here's how much each particular one has made."
More reporting is always good - and all this data is already in the PW system, it just needs to be sorted and presented.
Those are my ten Most Wanted features for Project Wonderful. What are yours? Comments are enabled - speak up, and let's make it happen!
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!
1. Semi-Automatic Bidding
The Campaign system has taken over a lot of the bidding for small sites. That's good, because it allows advertisers to spend lots of money very easily, and give the little guys a boost. It also makes the bids on smaller sites go up and down like yoyos, causes a lack of long-term bids, and leads to enormous fluctuations around the start of the month when everybody's campaigns expire and then get re-created. Perhaps a semi-automatic alternative would go down well.
For example, there could be a checkbox next to each ad slot on the search results page, which would add the chosen slot to a shopping cart. You could then place identical bids on each and every marked result, by filling out just one form.
Or, you could make one bid before you search, and then click a button marked "Bid on this ad box with parameters from your last bid."
2. A search for text-based ad slots
As it is right now, you can't search for ad boxes that support text ads only. I think the radio buttons on the search page need to be changed to check boxes - one for text ads, one for graphic ads, both checked by default.
3. Extended support for free ads, and the end of "Your Ad Here."
What I'd like to see, ideally, is no more "Your Ad Here" boxes. Project Wonderful's support for free adverts is truly wonderful, but does anybody still use them now that the Campaigns system eats them all up for us?
The Your Ad Here boxes seem like a waste of good pixels that could be used more effectively. Here's some ideas:
A) Extending the Campaigns system to allow free bidding, rationed out evenly between everybody using it for that purpose.
B) Replacing "Your Ad Here" with a randomly-chosen advert from the system, and crediting the ad box owner with an impression of a nominated ad on someone else's ad slot. Thus, your ad box serves the role of a banner exchange until someone puts in a bid. Banner exchanges have sucked in the past and will continue to suck, but they're better than "Your Ad Here."
C) An option to remove the ad box entirely from the page if there aren't any bids. Thus, skyscrapers with content above and below would disappear entirely, allowing the content to jump up from below.
D) An extended limit on free ads. Having a two-day limit on free advertising is all well and good, but it's not much use if there aren't any more ads queued up to display afterwards, and results in a "Your Ad Here" of no use to man nor beast. Maybe an ad could be "immune" from being outbid by other zero-dollar bids for one day, but would then carry on displaying until another bid came along.
E) Continuing on from above, there should be a simple button on the bidding form that says "Forget the details, just place a free bid - with ONE CLICK, BABY!" The free bid would be immune from other free bids for one day (or maybe two), and then would be able to be outbid by other free bids - but you wouldn't have to specify when it ended, and the system would assume you meant "Until Outbid."
F) Continuing further - why not extend that to paid bids too? If a bid is placed for a week's worth of advertising at a penny a day, and then it expires but the only bid beneath it is a zero-dollar bid, the previously-paid advert should take on the zero-dollar winner status, and carry on being displayed for free until another bid is placed.
4. A "Pause" button
If my account runs out of money, I don't want it to climb back up to a buck over a day and then run out of cash ten minutes later! Ten minutes of advertising is very little use, no matter how widespread. A simple "Pause my campaign" button would be much appreciated - and how about a "Pause all my bids" button, too?
5. Seperate reporting options for each ad box
I would really like to know how much each individual ad box has made for me, how the bids have fluctuated, and so on. I like to know how well each site performs, how much money I can expect per thousand visitors, who clicks on which ads et cetera, and while AdSense will give me that data to geek over, Project Wonderful will not. Which brings me on to number six:
6. Division of funds
I'd like to be able to seperate the money in my account between money to spend, and money earned.
I know that when I deposit a hundred bucks into my Project Wonderful account, it's all going to get spent. That's fine with me, Project Wonderful delivers by far the best return on investment advertising-wise. However, I also run several sites with PW advertising on them, and I'd like to be able to see the money coming in, and keep it seperate from the money going out. At least until the start of the month, when I'll probably just end up moving it into my To Spend balance.
7. CSV Export
I'd absolutely love to be able to press a button and get a snapshot of the current state of the market, in a format which I can import into OpenOffice (or upload to a set of custom PHP scripts running on a server somewhere) and dick around with. If we had a CSV export facility, or if Project Wonderful spat out a database dump once every hour, or couple of hours, or even once a day, how long d'you think it'd be before somebody came up with a snazzy Flash/AJAX frontend for sorting the data, identifying the bargains, showing the movers and shakers?
Export of my own activity within PW would also be a wonderful thing to have, complete with cross-referenced CPC and CPM per bid, so I can study the data and perfect my bidding strategies.
8. Multiple ads per bid
On ad boxes that don't require approval, I'd like to be able to submit two or three different ads in the same bid, and have them rotated with each impression. Statistics could then be generated on which ads get more clicks in the exact same spot on the exact same site, which would be very useful.
9. Optimisation options in Campaign settings
As it is, Campaigns won't place bids on all the boxes that they could place bids on. In mails to Ryan, he's mentioned that he's doing some behind-the-scenes tweaking in the hope of giving Campaigns better value for money, which I think is a good idea. However, I'd like to have some control over the automatic bidding process myself - maybe even in the form of a simple slider between Exposure and Value. With the lever all the way over to the right, the campaign would bid only on the ad boxes with the absolute best CPM, trying to give you better value for your advertising dollars. On the left, it'd simply bid indiscriminately across all the boxes that came up in the Search results when you set up the campaign, getting more clicks but costing more for each one.
10. Options to group ads together, and link those ad groups with ad boxes
For publishers and advertisers with more than one website, this would make it easier to see how each site is performing. You'd get a page that said "You've spent $(dollars).(cents) advertising (project or website - group name, in other words), using (num) different ads, and here's how each one of them has performed." Link the ad group with an ad box (or group of ad boxes) and you'd get a page like the one above, but which also said "And you've made $(dollars).(cents) back, from these (num) ad boxes, and here's how much each particular one has made."
More reporting is always good - and all this data is already in the PW system, it just needs to be sorted and presented.
Those are my ten Most Wanted features for Project Wonderful. What are yours? Comments are enabled - speak up, and let's make it happen!
Project Wonderful WishList
Project Wonderful WishList
