Advertising on other people's sites
Paid-for ads seem to take the form of a graphic advert, of a link with some extra text added ('to our sponsor X, the maker of exceedingly fine databases'), or a slightly wordier ascii statement inserted in, for example, an email newsletter. One of the problems with placing an ad in a Web-based publication is deciding how to count 'circulation' (and therefore how to price the ad). Generally, hit counts are used, but there is a big debate, considering issues such as:
- if a page is cached (stored locally on the user's computer for quick retrieval by subsequent users) then the hit count at home computer may be artificially low. For example, a hit may score for the first America OnLine user who accesses your page today, but all the later ones may be accessing a copy cached at AOL, so no extra hits are registered at your home site.
- one page may score more than one hit, eg if graphics files are retrieved after the initial page load.
- 'connect time' figures are meaningless for many types of internet use, as a user may hit your page A, go and make a cup of coffee, and then access your page B. Alternatively, they may have spent the time between accesses A and B reading every word on page A, but you cannot assume that.
These questions are being gradually sorted out, and traffic-count pages have started up, indicating the most popular sites (eg The Traffic Resource) although data is patchy. There is an Advertising index which lists sites which are charging for advertising (rate, activity levels and advertisers). The NCSA What's new page ($7,500 a week in September 1995), and Pathfinder (Time Warner; $30,000 a month in September 1995) are amongst the most expensive.
As an example, the Webster site describes options available to 'sponsors' (preferred term to 'advertisers') of the Webster WWW newsletter.
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Send an email to Sheila Webber at s.webber@sheffield.ac.uk
Sheila Webber. September 1995, amended November 1999 and moved to the University of Sheffield 2 August 2001