Genii Weblog

Advertising? Genii?

Wed 2 Nov 2005, 09:34 AM



by Ben Langhinrichs
Many of you know that I am not a particularly big fan of advertising, although I am a big fan of marketing, so you may have been surprised to see a few CoexEdit and CoexLinks advertisements show up.  Consider it an experiment.  So far, I've only advertised on vowe.net and, starting yesterday, on OpenNTF.org, which is as much as anything an excuse to donate to that organization without losing my capitalistic integrity.

So, what do you think of the ads themselves.  The vowe.net one for CoexEdit is:

CoexEdit ad for vowe.net

while there are two OpenNTF ads for CoexEdit.  The long, skinny one is similar to the vowe.net one with a slightly different message appropriate for the audience:

Long skinny CoexEdit ad for OpenNTF.org

while the square one is:

Square CoexEdit ad for OpenNTF.org

What do you think of the ads?  Do you like the sparse wording and images?  What do you think of the fact that we are advertising at all?  Any feedback would be very interesting to hear.

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


387.1. Vince Schuurman (11/02/2005 08:47 AM)

Sparse wording/images is good, but I personally find the square one hard to read.

May look prettier with some extra whitespace in.

(yes I know, space is money, even whitespace ;-).. maybe smaller font?)


387.2. Ben Poole (02/11/2005 09:33)

I'd noticed the ads, and I like them! Good idea, and wording is fine.

My suggestions are cosmetic: change the font (comic sans is a no-no!) & see if you can get a neater Notes icon: that one is a little "noisy", especially compared with the other icons there.


387.3. Rob McDonagh (11/02/2005 10:02 AM)

I noticed the add at vowe's site - the mixed text and icons caught my attention, so I read the rest of the ad. I liked it quite a bit.

That being said, I suspect Ben's suggestions about the visuals are solid - looking at it more critically, I see his points. I also agree with Vince about the square ad - it's hard to read. I'm not a graphic designer or visual layout expert, so I don't have a solution - but maybe you could shrink the icons a bit and simultaneously add some white space?


387.4. Bruce Elgort (11/02/2005 11:50 AM)

The square advert is my fault. I rushed Ben into crafting one up fairly quickly. I do love the banner ad though. :-)

Also, thanks for supporting OpenNTF.


387.5. Ben Langhinrichs (11/02/2005 02:40 PM)

I actually like the Comic Sans MS for the banner ad, but it doesn't work for the square icon. As Bruce said, I made it in just a few minutes. I'll have to see if I can make a better square version.


387.6. Ben's Daughter (11/03/2005 06:26 AM)

I'd have to agree with the above. I think the icons are clever, but the square one is a little difficult to read, and the notes icon doesn't quite fit with the rest.

Other than that, good job :)