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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steve Conan Trustrum" data-source="post: 1745672" data-attributes="member: 1620">I'll restate them here, just to keep people from having to search through that other thread to find where they were scattered:1) a hidden forum that only ENWorld staff and advertisers can go to discuss things. A place to bang heads behind closde doors and brainstorm collective ideas.2) Add new and varied advertising packages. Right now the current maximum bannersize and memory allotment are the same for each package. Change them up a bit, especially the 30k limit, to allow for greater flexibility. Price the packages to reflect the changes (more bandwidth for >30k = more money, for example) to allow clients a chance to ponder which choices would work best for them.3) Offer the chance to price based on ad location. I don't know if WotC pays advertising for the section taken up with the WotC Release Schedule or if that's an aspect of the fan site perspective based on "hey, there the big boys on the block so of course we list their schedule," but that's prime advertising space. Instead of a banner ad, offer a package that allows something like what appears in the WotC release schedule: a certain amount of impressions for a specific product ad, displaying the product's cover. Put it in the opposite margin. It's a great opportunity for companies to advertise specific releases instead of merely announcing them for free on the publisher boards.4) offer a redirect page. Using Misfit Studios as an example, I have a HUGE bandwidth allotment at my site. I barely scratch it. I could host wonderful ads for my company, but the only people who would see it are the people already visiting it. However, if ENWorld offered to sell me the visual space on their site, while I hosted it myself, that would be of tremendous value to me, and it would also cut down on ENWorld's used resources because I'd be the one worrying about bandwidth and storage. Just add a clause about ENWorld not being responsible for the customer's failure to account for their own provider's bandwidth restrictions and possible downtime and you've got a nice advertising option here.5) offer an option for front page advertising. I imagine it's the more desirable location, so if someone wants their ad to show there and only there allow them that option but increase the cost as a result. It's like paying more to have the exact same billboard displayed at Times Square and having it on route 66, out by a chicken farm.Such an ads success depends on where it's located. If on the front page, yeah, that would be a good idea. On a forum it can cause problems because if one person pays for a banner ad, the viewer refreshes and now they've got a side ad, they viewer has to wait while the forums repaginate and adjust. That gets annoying real fast and didn't work out at all well when RPG.net experimented with such a thing on their site. The outcry was tremendous.Absolutely. Morrus provides some examples earlier, so why not ask if it's okay to include some of the more effective ads in a ... promotional kit ... for lack of a better term. Either Morrus or someone else can write up a brief blurb on why each has worked and what general trends have not been working for other ads. Such things are normal as a part of customer service and is also a good selling point if ENWorld offers such a thing and other sites don't.As for the DriveThruRPG ad, I've found the opposite of you. What draws me is an interest in the logos of the participating company and the newness of the services offered. The ad in and of itself is not well designed. So much whitespace doesn't tend to work and normally only proves effective when contrasted against accompanying ads of the extreme opposite design. Ads have to catch the eye and a plain white background with lettering doesn't tend to do that. I'd wager that once DTRPG has been around longer you'll see some changes to those banners if they want people to keep clicking.On the other hand, some of the ones Morrus posted are very well done. They have good eye flow and interesting imagery. The trick is providing those elements without appearing to try and cram too much into the limited space otherwise nobody will look because their eyes won't know what they're supposed to be looking at.Yeah, that's is a very well designed ad, in my opinion. I always come here through the front page and every time my eye gets drawn to it, even though I've already seen it so much.</blockquote>

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