Project Wonderful's recent partition of bidding by region

[Alectric]

I figure this is a good place to discuss this.  Anyone who uses Project Wonderful probably noticed they just recently separated all bidding into four categories: America, Canada, Europe, and everywhere else.  So basically, the ad with the winning bid for America will be shown for people browsing in America, while the ad with the winning bid for Canada will be shown for people browsing in Canada, etc.

You can bid for all four categories to keep things similar to before, but the difference is that now you have to maintain four bids instead of one.  Obviously there are certain advertisers who could really benefit from this, but I'm not one of them.  As a host for adspace, I certainly like getting revenue from four bids now instead of one, but as an advertiser who has no reason to exclude any region, I don't like to have to pay for four bids, and try to keep track of them all, for each ad.  You'd think that the bids for each region would be about the same in sum as the bids used to be, but I'm not so sure this is the case.  Especially considering how the bidding jumps from 1 cent to 10 cent increments once you surpass 10 cents, I have a feeling that the price of advertising could change distinctly.  I'm not sure how exactly, and maybe it won't, but I don't know.  I just thought it was worth discussing.

[TTallan]

Yeah, it's... weird. I'm not sure how this new system really benefits anybody.

[JGray]

I have to see if I adjust to the new way of doing business before I can really comment. My kneejerk reaction is not liking it, but I have to make sure that it isn't a reaction to change in general as opposed to this specific change.

[Miluette]

I feel the same as JGray. I don't think it's opposition to change in my case, however, since they announced this a while ago and I thought "hey, cool" -- but it works a little differently than I thought, as in, "there's no option to keep doing it the old way too". And there probably never will be -- it looks like they changed the whole system.

I also don't like the new layout of adspace bid/info pages.

[Rob]

Hmmm. I'll have to take a look but I'm of the opinion that more control over where my money goes is always a good thing.

For example, I'm much more inclined to run ads in the US than anywhere else.

But I'll have to check it out. Sounds like more than just a minor change over there.

[ran]

@Rob: Really? You'd be inclined to cut out advertisement to a country that's directly above you, speaks the same language as you and is like you in many ways excluding government? As opposed to paying one price and showing it to the whole internet? 

[Rob]

@Rob: Really? You'd be inclined to cut out advertisement to a country that's directly above you, speaks the same language as you and is like you in many ways excluding government? As opposed to paying one price and showing it to the whole internet? 

Weeeeeeeeellllll since you put it that way..... 

I think cut out would be a strong way to put it. Actually I would probably continue with Canadia but that said I probably wouldn't go as strong with Europe or the rest of the world until I had a store set up with international shipping. I can understand the argument for keeping Canada since they are right next door and it takes less to effort for them to come to a convention or something (or for me to attend on of theirs).

For me, at this juncture with my little site every penny counts so I might be inclined to choose to advertise where it is most effective.

One result I do see though is that foreign comics are probably going to lose ad revenue and bids for US ads are probably going to be more expensive.

I'm not convinced it's a good thing, but I'm not convinced it's a bad thing either. I'd say like most things it has its benefits and its drawbacks.

[Nuke]

Well, this could be good as it may lead to an increase as popular sites will be getting multiple bids. It may lead to some decently opportunistic ad deals, too. Who knows, it could lead to an increase in income if people overpay for a certain demographic hoping for a better CTR and attach rate.

However, that could be mitigated by the fact that each region is now worth less. Especially for comics, as two of those regions(and a big chunk of the third) all speak and read English.

[LegendWoodsman]

With the World Wide Web becoming more of the Regional Wide Web, this seems only natural. Telus or Rogers level business would advertise on the Canadian side and Verizon and AT&T would advertise on the American side. This type of region coded advertising is already happening with other ad networks.

I'm not sure what PW's marketing approach to national advertisers is. I heard of Project Wonderful through Fleen and ComixTalk. I'm telling my friends about it (word of mouth). Will there be bigger companies wanting to bid on my ad space (rhet.)?

[Rob]

Well Project Wonderful was started by webcomic creators for webcomic creators. It has obviously grown quite a bit since then. I posted a link an interview with the creator in the general discussion area here:

http://forum.webcomicscommunity.com/index.php/topic,109.0.html

But I guess it didn't get much play because no one commented about it. It's become a much bigger business now but I don't think that it's changed all that much. If anything the bigger it gets the more potential we as advertisers have to get our message out there.

I've always been pretty happy with the service. I don't know how much this region thing is going to impact that but I'm wiling to go on a bit of faith given my previous satisfaction with the site. 

[Novil]

This is the worst thing ever.

Well, not really. But it is really bad for me as an advertiser who doesn’t care about the region of origin of his potential readers. It makes everything much more complicated. Instead of one bid you now have four. And if one site turns out to be good/bad, you have to alter all four bids. With the same percentage. You literally have to sit in front of your pc with a calculator.

It’s even a pain to look at the different stats as PW is not and has never been a particularly fast website.

Why in God’s name is it not possible to bid “worldwide” with one bid just like it was before?

I have already written e-mails to them. And I will continue to write them until they fix the system. As one of their best customers (top 100 I think) I hope my opinion has a little weight.

Everybody who does not like the new system should complain. If you don’t they will think we don’t bother about the change or even like it.

[Alectric]

Why in God’s name is it not possible to bid “worldwide” with one bid just like it was before?

I've been seeing this complaint, but when I think about it I don't know how this could be implemented.  They could make it so one bid gets set for all four regions, but as long as some people bid by region, there's the chance that your bid will be highest for one region and not another.  In that case, are they supposed to charge you for 1/4 of your bid for only winning in one region?  I don't think it can work that way.

[raerae]

For my previous comic a good portion of my readership was in Sweden, so I'm certainly rather irritated about this. I want to advertize my comic to whoever would read it, not to a certain region.

[LegendWoodsman]

Advocating devilry: I can see how the regional specs can be a good thing. If I'm going to a local convention, I can change the Canadian "Your ad here" banner to advertise the local show. Or, I can ask my local comic book store to buy ad space on the Canadian side and still have ad space available for the other regions. I can poke fun at foreigners with North American centred advertisements and poke fun of North Americans with European ads 

I guess the best way to say it is: you can customize your ad toward your target audience. Casting a wide net can catch some readers but a focused message may garner better results. Or at least that's what my copy of Complete Idiots Guide to Marketing has schooled me.

[wendyw]

I don't get the choice of regions at all.

Why seperate the US and Canada when they're close neighbours with the same language and yet they bundle the whole of europe together, with many more differences between languages and cultures. Take the UK for example, just because that's where I live . We speak the same language as the US and Canada. We import a huge amount of US media and the US import a huge amount from us. Socially we have more in common with the US than the big landmass on our other side.

The idea of bundling every other country together is even more bizarre when you consider the huge variety that includes and the amount of distance between them.

As regions go it seems extremely half-hearted and unbalanced.