Noah 15 Feb 06

I’ve never even heard of waxy.org

I think the deck is starting to get too much noise, how long before it’s just another banner ad system with a couple of high profile pages. How long before spybot starts removing “deck ad network tracking cookies”

Brian 15 Feb 06

Brad 15 Feb 06

What ever happened to the last guy (John Gruber) you announced for the deck? Did he fold?

matt Carey 15 Feb 06

interesting that waxy.org has no advertising of its own. The owner is paying (a not insignificant amount of money) to drive traffic for no immediate financial gain…

not saying this is good or bad, just interesting.

JF 15 Feb 06

What ever happened to the last guy (John Gruber) you announced for the deck? Did he fold?

Huh? Daring Fireball.

Brad 15 Feb 06

Huh?

You said he was coming to the deck, that’s what I was referring to. I haven’t seen daring fireball in the deck.

JF 15 Feb 06

Brad, visit daring fireball and look in the sidebar on the left. You may need to scroll down a little.

JF 15 Feb 06

I think the deck is starting to get too much noise, how long before it�s just another banner ad system with a couple of high profile pages. How long before spybot starts removing �deck ad network tracking cookies�

Wow, 5 very specific sites in and the haters come out already. “Too much noise” means 1 ad on a page on 5 sites on the entire internet.

Brad 15 Feb 06

Ohhh…

My understanding was that these people/companies you were announcing as part of the deck were the advertisers (those purchasing ads). I get it now. Thanks.

Stanley G. 15 Feb 06

Edward 15 Feb 06

Daring Fireball, ALA, SvN, and Coudal are all pretty far from noise. Oh well, at least we got a new Troll :-D

However:
Andy�s influential links list pretty much sets the daily surfing agenda for the web dev and design communities.

Um. I don’t think so…

Mike 15 Feb 06

Chris 15 Feb 06

Can we please change the “TROLL” icon to say “NOT SYCOPHANTIC”, since that is clearly what it means?

Anonymous Coward 15 Feb 06

Mike, what exactly is Edwards’ point? That he’s NEVER going to click on ads? That any company advertising their product is WASTING HIS TIME? That’s not a point and that doesn’t add any value to this discussion. That’s troll all the way.

Rabbit 15 Feb 06

Nice! I laughed out loud when I saw the first troll cap. But the second one I saw was somewhat messed up. CSS issue I imagine. The troll’s post was hovering on top of the post below it. (I’d link to a screenshot but I can’t FTP right now.)

Prolly something minor though because I hit refresh and it’s gone.

I wonder… am I considered a troll? *anxiety attack*

Edward 15 Feb 06

Anonymous Coward, I think you’re reading the comments upside down ;-) That troll is Stanley G, that troll ain’t me. (Ooo, a rhyme! Now that adds value.)

Sam 15 Feb 06

Just curious, is the ad going to be on the links page or on the main page?

Coudal 15 Feb 06

As with the other Deck sites, a single ad will appear on all the pages on Andy’s site.

WTF? 15 Feb 06

Tommy 15 Feb 06

Some of you “haters” need to get a life. I’m not a designer. I am not a programmer. But both of those are side things I have to do because I work for a small company.

Do I like banner ads, nope. But anything I’ve bought from “deck” sites has been a quality product. If John, Jason, or Jim recommend a product I’ll check it out. I trust them. And IMHO that is one of the main points of putting together this ad network.

And if they made a lot of money along the way good for them.

Tom 15 Feb 06

I agree with Tommy — this isn’t really an issue, and anyone complaining is just being foolish, as far as I’m concerned.

There is nothing wrong with advertising. If it isn’t your cup of tea, sure, you’ll ignore it or block it or what have you. But there isn’t anything wrong with the concept — especially when it’s pretty accurately targeted, informative, and non-invasive advertising like this is.

Kyle 15 Feb 06

I actually appreciate the deck .. not for the ads, but to find some other good blogs to read. I would have never found Daring fireball or Waxy without it.

Brad 15 Feb 06

What is stopping someone from posting the deck javascript include on their own site and thus lowering the stated quality of the deck?

script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.northmay.com/deck/decks_js.php” /script

pwb 15 Feb 06

How would that lower the stated quality?

Brad 15 Feb 06

As far as I understand, the deck is intended to be on sites of a certain standard (as judged by the members of the deck). If anyone can paste the js on their site, the ads would be appearing on sites they may not have intended to be sponsors of. I don’t think my friends at Veer would like their ad on just anyone’s blog.

Mathew Patterson 15 Feb 06

Many of us are forgetting that this post isn’t aimed at *every reader* of this blog. It is for people with products or services they want to get in front of people *like* us. For them, notification of another place to advertise is actually relevant information.

For me, I’d be more interested in hearing from the advertisers on the Deck - is it actually producing better results than less focused advertising options?

SLAPSHOTW/Matt 15 Feb 06

PWB, I agree. Brad- what exactly would that accomplish, and how would it hurt anybody?

-Matt

Brad 15 Feb 06

Not protecting the source of the deck corrupts (or pollutes) the original intent. Whether it is harmful or not is not my point, but that you aren’t guaranteed to be getting what you paid for. You aren’t just paying for who will see you, but who and where you won’t be seen. Read the original introduction to the deck below.

Advertisers wanting to reach an influential and loyal group of web publishers, writers, developers, editors, reporters and bloggers can now buy an ad that runs across three sites: A List Apart, Signal vs. Noise (this site), and Coudal. There are only five ad spots per month across the entire network so there�s very limited availability but very high visibility.

While these three sites serve up millions of page views each month, we�re not following the traditional cost-per-click model (although if we were it would be a bargain compared to other network CPM rates). Instead, The Deck delivers valuable Cost-Per-Influence. The rates are fixed ($2200/month per ad at this time). You get 20% of all page views across the 5-ad, 3-site network. And Deck ads are the only ads on the page � there�s no Google, Blogads, or other clutter to dilute your message.

So, if you want to reach the influencers, buy a card in The Deck.

Heywood 15 Feb 06

What’s to stop anyone from copying any ad image and “running it” on their website? And what difference would it make?

Brad 15 Feb 06

You’re not just copying an image, you are subscribing to dynamic ad content that changes on every refresh. Sure anyone could build their own ‘deck’ and advertise for people who have not authorized it, but I think you could get a quick cease and desist for that kind of stuff.

Tom 15 Feb 06

I don’t think people on the Deck are paying for where they won’t be seen. As far as I can tell, most advertisers don’t mind being advertised _more_ for _free_. Now, there is the possibility that it could lower their value in the eyes of potential customers — for instance, being shown as a “sponsor” of a terrible, evil website. I think this is a relatively minor worry, however, and, like others have said, what’s to stop anyone from co-opting any ad anyway?

Brad 15 Feb 06

Ok

Dan 15 Feb 06

Just for the record, the company i work for is using Campaign Monitor for email deployment because of the Deck. I understand the the necessity of ads, and as such appreciate when the ads are used by people I trust, and for products that are specifically targeted at my interests. The Deck is what other advertising media pretend to be.

Justin Reese 15 Feb 06

Brad, I’m trying to imagine a universe in which someone would actually execute this “scheme,” and… well, I just can’t. Child porn rings decide to serve CampaignMonitor ads without receiving any money? White supremacists scheme to “rouse the South” by advertising Jewelboxing on their newsletter page? Honestly, how and why would this scenario ever actually be executed?

Whether it is harmful or not is not my point, but that you aren’t guaranteed to be getting what you paid for.

You certainly are getting what you pay for. If someone co-opts it and gives you extra free advertising at their own expense, how is this possibly a fault of The Deck?

Coudal 15 Feb 06

It actually never occured to us that someone would want to run our ads without being compensated. On one hand more exposure is good, on the other, not having control of the environment where our advertisers’ messages appear is not so good. Interesting question.

We think we’re handling advertising in a way that gives us, as a group, a lot of control by only taking ads from products and services we respect and only showing one per page. We’ve turned down dozens of inquiries. The combined Deck readership is not for every advertiser but for the right products, properly promoted to the right audience, it can drive a lot of business. At least I assume it does, as virtually every one of our advertisers keeps renewing. And they’re a pretty smart bunch.

Lode 15 Feb 06

I don’t see the problem when someone links to your javascript. It’s pretty trivial to check if the referring site is in $members[]. If the ‘hijackers’ are not part of the deck, but still link to your javascript, they essentially put you in control to put whatever you please on their website. (Nasty image, redirect, error message, …).

(By the way: I’ve also got Waxy in my newsreader, but with 1 post/month on average + a linkdump which features nothing that can’t be found at diggdot.us, I don’t really see how influential the site can be. Either I’m missing something, or most of his traffic just comes from surfers out of old habits from when the author posted more often.)

JF 15 Feb 06

By the way: I�ve also got Waxy in my newsreader, but with 1 post/month on average + a linkdump which features nothing that can�t be found at diggdot.us, I don�t really see how influential the site can be

I’ll never understand why people think their surfing habits are representative of everyone else’s.

“I don�t really see how influential the site can be”

The answer is that there are a lot of other people out there that are influenced by a different set of ideas, sites, concepts, authors, etc. 99.99999% of the people have different influences than you do.

*shrug* 15 Feb 06

I’ll never understand why a response like Coudal’s is rational and composed and JF’s are condescending and callous.

Guess what. I’ve been to waxy.org. I’ve been to every site in The Deck. You go to waxy.org and see “1 post/month on average.” Then if you follow up on the original post’s “Andy�s influential links list pretty much sets the daily surfing agenda for the web dev and design communities,” you see that there’s a whole other facet of waxy.org that, guess what JF, Lode may have overlooked too. Nice of you to help point him in the right direction.

Anonymous Coward 15 Feb 06

I�ll never understand why a response like Coudal�s is rational and composed and JF�s are condescending and callous.

Maybe that’s because people are abusing JF all day long in these forums and Jim’s site doesn’t have comments turned on so he doesn’t have to take it. People aren’t punching bags but people sure like to throw and then think people should be all kind in return.

Get over it. It’s a blog.

Ryan Schroeder 15 Feb 06

maybe the troll icon should link to your original explanation of what it’s purpose is.

jzt 16 Feb 06

I still don’t get the Deck (mixed) metaphor. Are ads in the Deck cards or planks? And what’s a roadblock?

Coudal 16 Feb 06

The basic idea of The Deck name is that it represents a matched set of things. Individual entities that share common attributes.

A roadblock is an old broadcast term for when an advertiser buys a commercial slot scheduled at the same time on all the local tv stations in a market, thus assuring himself that he’ll reach 100% of the ‘households using television.’ For us, it gives someone with a very time-specific message, a job posting, product launch, movie debut, a way to buy all the avails across the network for a given day.

Scott 16 Feb 06

I think the overlap between the readers of these “techie” blogs and those who use adblocking is huge.

Dan 21 Feb 06

Both are mathematics