This afternoon we received our beta acceptance (which we applied for a couple weeks ago) e-mail from ADSDAQ:

This comes at a perfect time for the ad networks we’re now involved with on SuperMotors. In the past week, we have signed on with Casale Media and CPX Interactive (on top of Tribal Fusion, AuctionAds, Google Adsense, and our own in-house ads).

What’s also interesting is experiencing the different interfaces each ad network has developed. Tribal Fusion’s is very, very outdated and lacks reporting and information that I’d really like to see. However, according to this article, it looks like a new campaign manager is on the way for Tribal Fusion.

I’m really excited to put the ADSDAQ system to the test and help it centrally manage all of our ad networks while simultaneously maximizing our revenue potential. I’ll post more feedback on ADSDAQ after the beta period starts as well as my experience with Casale and CPX after we have a couple weeks of traffic under our belt with these two additional ad networks.

Tribal Fusion continues to be our #1 performer to date. I’m looking forward to seeing if these other networks give Tribal Fusion a run for their money. Even if they don’t, we will have a much more diverse ad network strategy, which is always a Good Thing.

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Being very heavily involved in consumer insights, online surveys, and consumer opinions, I take interest in seeing how other companies are performing their data collection to improve their websites. We’ve recently launched the OpinionLab service. Mens’Health is partnering with Keynote to facilitate their online evaluation of the menshealth.com website.

What I found disappointing with the opening e-mail is the following message: “Study will work best if you…use IE Web browser (Firefox has unpredictable results).” See the image below for reference:

Naturally, I have several opinions about this e-mail:

1. Consumers don’t associate IE with Internet Explorer. This is web developer or web marketing speak. The average consumer will have no idea what #1 means in the above e-mail.
2. “Firefox has unpredictable results” is not what I would lead with in any e-mail. If the application in which you want consumers to evaluate your site does not even work in their browser, then partner with another vendor who can provide a tool that is compatible with your audience’s preferred web browsers.
3. The assumption that visitors ALL use Windows and can readily access Internet Explorer (oh I’m sorry, “IE”) is another bad assumption. I am a Mac user and always hated these types of assumptions because it directly affects my ability to participate in a site/survey. I want my opinion heard, but if you don’t provide me with an alternate means to submit my feedback, then you’re not doing your customers any favors.

I clicked on the “click here to start” link and instead of being presented with “unpredictable results,” they flat-out deny access to the survey if Firefox is detected:

So basically, Internet Explorer 5.01 or higher and Windows 98 through Windows XP are compatible. IE 5 and Win98? No Firefox or Safari support? “Windows Vista support is on the way?”

Use Web Analytics to Justify Limiting the Compatibility of Your Web Applications
Use your web analytics packages to determine what the share of your visitors is in terms of the operating systems and web browsers they use. Make sure your online survey application works with your demographic. Firefox and Safari users account for 23% of visitors to SuperMotors.net. On Levolor.com they account for 16%. Those are very large percentages to be simply disregarding because you’ve partnered with the wrong vendor.

Moral of the Story
Browser and operating system specific websites are a product of the 1990’s. It’s 2007. Time to build web applications or partner with vendors who understand today’s web user by accommodating multiple browser types and not alienating them for choices they make. Additionally, with the way the user is instructed to use IE instead of Firefox makes it sound like it’s the user’s fault for choosing an unpredictable browsing platform. You should never speak to your customers like this — don’t imply fault or incompatibility in decisions your customer has made. You must adapt to them, they should not have to adapt to you!

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The North Carolina Department of Transportation feels it necessary to perform website maintenance on a Sunday morning. What I’ve always disliked about government web services is the lack of understanding of when citizens perform online tasks via government sites. This is what I was presented with today when I tried to renew my license plate tabs via the NC DOT website:

This would be completely unacceptable for a consumer website. I guess since the state requires registration and you have no other choice but to visit their site around their maintenance schedule or (gasp) go into a local DOT office, they really don’t have to cater to the schedules of citizens.

Website maintenance, regardless of industry, should be done during off-peak hours. Granted, Sunday mornings are probably not peak hours, they are still more prone to visits than they would be between the hours of 2AM and 7AM.

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I received an invitation today to apply for the new ADSDAQ ad exchange. I signed up for notification a couple months ago but had not heard anything until today.

The concept is very intriguing and I am excited — hopefully we can get SuperMotors in on this. The premise is that you set your CPM, they guarantee they will display ads at the CPM you specify, if they can’t, they will distribute impressions to the other ad networks on which you are already a member (i.e. Tribal Fusion, Google AdSense, etc.). I’ll review the steps here that they outline on their site:

Step 1: Set your desired CPM
This will take a bit of strategy and testing, I’m sure, but setting the CPM at which you will display ads on your site is a very nice model. ADSDAQ will then match you up with advertisers matching your site’s demographic and choose the best performing ads to display on your site. Of course, this also means advertisers will also be able to specify their desired CPM, so don’t count on getting ridiculous with your CPMs, as it’s ultimately the advertisers who will be driving the pricing.

Step 2: Define your existing ad networks
We already use Tribal Fusion, Google AdSense, and AuctionAds. The dilemma we face is Tribal Fusion is our primary ad network, yet they only fill 71% of our available inventory we supply them. The remaining inventory goes to Google AdSense, which as we all know, is a CPC (Cost-Per-Click) ad network, and not a CPM network. In other words, we only get paid if users click on ads, not if they simply see the ads. AuctionAds (AA) on the other hand requires custom keywords that we dynamically supply on pages, so we really don’t run these in our standard ad rotations, which is fine — AA performs very well in the locations we currently have it implemented.

Maximizing revenue on excess inventory
So, enter ADSDAQ. It can act as our primary ad network. We analyze the CPM at which Tribal Fusion is paying us, we bump it up by a small margin (or even set it equal to Tribal Fusion’s CPM) and set this as our CPM for ADSDAQ. If ADSDAQ can’t fulfill inventory at this rate, it’ll distribute ads to the Tribal Fusion ad network. The key for us is filling the remaining 29% of our inventory with something more profitable than Google AdSense ads. This is difficult to do with other ad networks that are available because the Google ads perform fairly well.

The Big Assumption
This model of course assumes ADSDAQ can fulfill inventory at a higher price than Tribal Fusion. If it can’t, we will most likely reverse the model and still utilize Tribal Fusion as our primary network, have it load ADSDAQ ads at a lower cost (when it can’t fill our inventory), and have ADSDAQ display AdSense ads when all else fails. In any case, the ability to control ads based on CPMs we define is very desirable, and has the potential to be extremely effective for site owners who are strategic about it.

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Last week we implemented the OpinionLab real-time feedback/rating tool on Levolor.com. I can’t tell you how helpful it’s been in just 1 week of usage.

OpinionLab hosts a real-time survey/feedback tool which most of us recognize as the little spinning icon in the lower right-hand corner of some websites:

When the above icon is clicked on our site, it spawns a new window with a comment card like this:

This is simply a generic comment card that we have running site-wide. The consumer can optionally fill out as much or as little information as possible and even provide open-ended feedback in the comments field. OpinionLabs then stores this data on their server, logs the consumer’s web browser, operating system, browser resolution, their responses, and the specific URL the comment was submitted on.

Keep your finger on the pulse of visitor satisfaction with your website
Over time, this information can be tabulated to gauge the satisfaction from a site-wide perspective, section perspective, or individual page perspective. At first, I was skeptical that consumers would actually use this feature, but they have been, and the feedback is outstanding. There is nothing quite like getting real-time feedback from consumers about all aspects of your website.

Accessibility and ease of use are critical
When feedback/comment cards are easily accessible, website visitors are much more inclined to use them. This is an important takeaway that I think web marketers often forget. Accessibility and ease-of-use are important factors for anything, not just comment cards: think e-mail marketing (being able to forward a newsletter to a friend), photos and videos (making it easy to send the photo/video to a friend), and sharing articles (again, being able to send a note to a friend quickly from the webpage, and not just copying and pasting the URL in an e-mail).

Real-time feedback is where it’s at.
I’m convinced that this is where all websites need to be at if they want to continue to improve and offer any value to their consumers. Instead of sending out a survey once or twice per year and making huge, sweeping changes, real-time feedback allows you to test incremental changes and get feedback instantly from site visitors. CNN.com has released a beta of their website which contains rather drastic changes, but they’ve also implemented the OpinionLab tool to be able to collect all feedback regarding the beta:

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