March 02, 2005

Focus Ads

About time this idea saw some action: Weblogs, Inc. has introduced what it calls Focus Ads, which lets the user community comment on the companies that run ads on the site.

I proposed this exact same idea at MP3.com in 1999 -- you'd have a little "comment" button underneath all 468x60 ad banners and you could comment, vote/review, or just read everyone else's comments. I also proposed that there be an "ad map" on the site -- think of it as a "site map" that listed all the advertisers, and from there you could comment on or review others' comments on any of those companies.

Never got the execs to buy in on the idea, but I always hoped it'd get tried out somewhere.

Will be interested to see how this takes off. I suspect lots of sites will start doing this. I hope Endgadget didn't patent it.

Posted by brian at March 2, 2005 05:20 PM

Comments

They can't patent it: Fark and several other sites have been doing it for years...

Posted by: Dan at March 2, 2005 08:21 PM

hasn't fark been doing this for years?!

Posted by: Mickey at March 2, 2005 09:17 PM

Interesting, didn't know fark's been doing this for years. So should I sue them instead? :-)

Posted by: Brian at March 3, 2005 06:39 AM

Thanks for the kudos... we're having fun developing it with our advertisers.

Congrats on EVDB, nice meeting you @ PC Forum.

best jason

Posted by: Jason at April 6, 2005 09:59 AM

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