Do any networks offer this (banner expiry dates)

[justhomdotcom]

Whilst pondering over some of the questions and answers from one of my other threads regarding banners for competitions and offers a question entered my head.

Do any networks offer the facility to have a start and expiry date for banners.

The reason I ask is this.

Say for example you could set a "default" banner but then if you were running a time limited offer or competition you could get the the banners swapped over automatically so that the merchant didn't have to remember to upload a banner on the same day as launch and the affiliate didn't need to remember to swap over their banners (yes i know on some networks you can just do an exchange) and when the expiry date on the banner has been reached it automatically swaps back over to the default.

The only downside I can see from this would be an affiliates loss of control of what banner gets displayed on their site but I assume if something like this does exist it would be on a opt in basis.

Just a thought anyway.

[Mogga]

*rolls eyes*

There's a merchant who has a banner called say "aprils offers" and at the end of April they think, oh yes time to change the banner so they eventually about 10th May upload a new banner called "mays offer" - which means poor affiliates are either forced to show outofdate banners for days, or not use a banner or wait until the merchant decides to upload a new banner AND then they have to actually manually fetch and upload the new banner code.

It is slightly insane.

What works is a banner called "offers" which shows the latest offer and the merchant just changes the graphic so the affiliate always has the latest offer.

There's no reason for banners to expire as they seem to with some merchants.

Some merchants I know have cut down on the number of sizes of banner used because "no one uses them" - well if you're the one poor soul who did you have to remember to find and delete the banner code.

Merchants would do well to have
1. A standard logo style banner - a constant.
2. Special offer banners which are updated without affiliates having to mess about.

I don't see why isn't possible given that most networks dynamically serve banners.

[justhomdotcom]

But that is where my idea of having a default banner comes into play, if a banner has expired then it auto switches to the default non offer banners until the merchant uploads a new offer banner.

Yes most if not all networks offer dynamic banners so if I exchange one for the other in my merchant panel then it SHOULD switch over on sites - sadly im experiecing this is not the case with AF as i've switched over all banners to our xmas ones but they are not showing up on affiliates sites (im in discussion with pete about this as we speak)

When it comes to small merchants like myself where usually only one person has the knowledge of swapping over banners something like this would be usefull as if for example what if i was off sick or laid up in hospital for a week (ok long shot I know but it's just an example) during that period of inactivity an affiliate could be showing an incorrect banner

[hero]

yes, we have embargo (not available prior to the day) and expiry dates for banners.
However, we're having problems explaining to merchants that expiring a banner (hidding it) doesn't hide it on the affiliate sites already using it, nothing works like a good old banner replacement....
thanks

[graeme]

Yes we do at Paid On Results. You can set a expiry date on a banner, and when it reaches the expiry date the banner is replaced with your default banners, or what we call Base Banners. So Affiliates won't see broken images or missing banners, they simply have the banners replaced. You can even define your base banners. Also when you delete a banner, they are also replaced on the Affiliate site with the Base Banners, so again no missing banners for Affiliates.

You can also replace a banner yourself, so you could set up your banners in the way Mogga talks about - by creating a Seasonal Set of banners and replace them with each new Seasonal range - Christmas, January Sales, Easter etc

Graeme

[justhomdotcom]

Graeme, POR is looking more attractive to me every day

[hero]

that's a very cool way around the problem, Graeme, good thinking!

[pricethat]

Or you can just have your own banner manager software pants man, loads of free scripts around and just serve the banners from your server when you put them into the network system. Most networks allow you to serve the banner from your server as well.

Great for getting referrer stats from too so you can actually see what sites your images are on so you can work on them a bit more.

[Supercod]

Some Merchants don’t have very good server setups and serving the banners off there system can slow and delay the banner showing quickly on the Affiliates website. In some cases so slow that the person has scrolled down or clicked on the next page without ever seeing the banner fully loaded.

Additionally the Paid On Results banner system has checks in place so that Merchants can’t force a 120by600 banner in to a 468by60 space that would in turn mess up the Affiliates website. I am not saying it’s perfect yet but we do listen to feedback and upgrade these things based on real world experience of how it works for Merchants and Affiliates.

[justhomdotcom]

Originally Posted by pricethat Or you can just have your own banner manager software pants man, loads of free scripts around and just serve the banners from your server when you put them into the network system. Most networks allow you to serve the banner from your server as well. Great for getting referrer stats from too so you can actually see what sites your images are on so you can work on them a bit more.

yeah i've used phpadsnew lots before and loved it but as said above if you have a site that already has a lot of traffic (and a very database intensive site) then the pressure on the server could be too much.