Tiny-banner-ads archive

Discussion forum: http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001pno

The archived banners:

Here's the (current) deal:

I will add your tiny banner to this archive page if you submit it in the following HTML form:

<a href="http://www.robotwisdom.com/">
<img src="http://www.robotwisdom.com/img4/rw.gif"
width=175 height=24 border=0 alt="[robotwisdom ad]"></a>

I will rotate it onto my weblog page if it satisfies enough of these non-absolute requirements:

- it's charming
- it's visually lowkey
- it's text only
- the background is white or light colored
- its text changes from time to time
- NO animations
- no images
- nothing offensive to my readers

My readers have expressed a strong distaste for these, tiny as they are, so it's critical that people make them visually QUIET.

Tiny fonts help a lot.

Older formulations (not necessary still applicable)

These banner ads may or may not be currently in rotation on the Robot Wisdom Weblog. By archiving them here I can check if they've changed, and rotate good ones back in. (Good = attractive, informative. Bad = just a site name) If you get rotated out, change your image to make it more useful-- I'll check these archived copies from time to time to see who's making the effort.

If you submit a free banner and you don't want others to use it (eg because of bandwidth limits), please mention that. Otherwise, assume these are all up for grabs.

Here's where the idea comes from: http://www.egroups.com/group/weblogs/427.html

- Low-key small banners work fine for the Hunger Site.
- Most webloggers would have no problem putting a row of 'em at the top of their log.
- It would be easiest for us, though, if the sponsor (eg epinions) served their own images.
- This would allow them to customize the message, especially if the visitor already has their cookie.
- Since they know their members' interests they can say, "New epinion on Tom Wolfe" in a simple plain font, and get huge targetted response.

Epinions.com decided to pass on the idea but I still want to try the experiment, so for a limited time, I'm offering free banner ads under these conditions:

- 24 pixels high, 175 wide
- you send me the HTML including an img on your server (with height and width specified!) and the link to your site
- text only, any colors, no animations
- nothing offensive or I'll publicly blacklist you-- the point is to be creative and attract intelligent readers, not to be obnoxious and repel them
- I'll run them as long as I like, depending on how much demand there is and how agreeable I find them.

Here's an example of what I'm offering:
And here's the HTML (with generic alt-text):

<a href="http://www.robotwisdom.com/"><img src="http://www.robotwisdom.com/img4/rw.gif" width=175 height=24 border=1 alt="[robotwisdom ad]"></a>

(You can change your own text any time you think of something better-- like if you've got a hot article linked.)

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