System updates, 1 of a few
Written on March 24th, 2009 by phirate
Ok, over the next 24 hours we’re going to be bringing online a number of the foundation pieces of the new ad system. It is important to note: this will not enable paid ads, it is the new advert delivery system that is capable of paid ads, but no paid ads will be going out on the network until we have done further updates, all of which will be clearly announced. At this stage, there is only one widely user-visible change:
1. If your widget is not currently running an EC user ad (ie, a regular ad that you’ve approved as normal), then instead of running your own card, it will display a generic “this is an entrecard widget” with a click-through to Entrecard.
This is actually a long-requested “feature”, but the main reason we’re doing it is because it was the least-harmful way we could come up with to ensure that the alternate-ad part of the software was working nicely under load.
In addition, there are two other situations you may encounter – hopefully rarely:
1. When a widget loads, the card-space may display a spinner for 5 seconds or so. This should be very rare, and basically means the advert management system hasn’t seen a request for this card recently and needs to ask the main database about it. The spinner will go away when the system has the information. In rare situations a mis-configuration of the widget by the site owner may mean nothing is displayed at all after a minute. Please be patient with us while we deal with situations like that and don’t bury the poor support guys 
2. On a rare occasion, clicking on a card to go to the site may fail and give you a note from Entrecard saying that we couldn’t find the link. This should be extremely rare, can you can probably resolve it by hitting your back button to go back to the site you came from and hitting reload. It basically means you loaded the ad before we did a reset on the advert system and then you clicked afterwards – just unlucky.
A side-effect of the code we’re adding to manage the paid ads is that we will have, in database, a track of the impressions each spot and each advert does. On a per-spot basis it is our current intention to keep this information completely private, however we welcome discussion on this issue (ie, we will not show impressions on your public profile, nor will we show impressions on a spot advert. We could optionally offer you a checkbox where you can say “Share my impressions publically”, I don’t know if there is any demand for this.).
We appreciate your patience. I am confident that the new system will result in many more benefits than those we’re immediately deploying, we hope to be able to use it to provide new campaign options for EC users in the future, as well as better tracking.
March 24th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
sweet…can’t wait
March 24th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Sounds good. I can’t wait until the rest of the updates roll out.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I’m buckling my seat belt and getting ready for the exciting ride!
Bring it on!
March 24th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I am sorry, I am going to have to bid farewell to the Entrecard community. I am a today.com blogger and they announced this afternoon that we have to pull out of Entrecard within two weeks. I have found a lot of good blogs through this community and wiill miss it. Good luck with this new system and I am sure that you will all have a good time with it – I will miss being a part of it.
March 24th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
@Mike: yeah we saw that announcement. It’s frustrating because we’re (now) actually quite happy to today.com blogs run without paid ads at all, but that wasn’t our initial position and negotiations were a bit like sheep passing in the night.
We’re trying to recover the situation but I personally have the feeling today.com have decided they don’t really want EC widgets on there anyway, and their post was right in that we are, technically, an ad network and they feel a bit weird about making an exception for us..
We’re still trying but I suspect the decision may have already been made at their end :/
March 24th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Ow gosh, that’s sad to hear Mike. Goodbye…
As for me, I will continue to support Entrecard as long as it won’t affect my blog and other affiliations.
Snow
http://dearbloggery.com
March 24th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
I’m also excited and can’t wait!
Wishing us all the best!
March 24th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Just waiting for the Final Results…
March 24th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
[...] There are a few other technical upgrades which are detailed here. [...]
March 24th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
That the one that says Entrecard Application Server Failed? Can’t say I like the design much
March 24th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Sounds good, thanks for all the work! Looking forward to seeing how this pans out. My Entrecard is still above the fold and eager for new adverts.
March 24th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
can’t wait to see the dry run!
March 24th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
@flit: haha, no, sorry we ran into a few issues – not unexpected trying to deal with such a diverse set of conditions – and it took a bit to nail them down. Currently most cards should be working nicely. For the current part of the test the new system is delivering the 200 and 250px wide widgets, the old system is delivering the 127s. If you’re getting annoyed at any of the testing, you can switch to the 127 temporarily until we’re sorted. Things should be mostly ok now, just got a glitch with a few cards which have some odd characters in the title.
March 25th, 2009 at 5:45 am
can’t wait it:-) it would be nice for all
March 25th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Just wanted to wish you luck and patience (and the same to all my entrecard friends).
March 25th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Looking forward to EC’s next chapter. You guys better not to forget to remove Sezwho as they’re gonna stop working by March 31.
March 25th, 2009 at 8:31 am
I’m ready for the wild ride too. As for the impression data it would be nice to display it on our stat page, for our eyes only. I think it would be great to know how many impressions each of my paid ads are providing me. They are after all PAID ads now that ec’s are worth real money, right?
March 25th, 2009 at 9:02 am
must be exciting to have something new
March 25th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Is this affecting the click-thru count today? I’m currently running my EC on 5 other blogs and all are showing 0 click thrus. I know this is not correct and not normal.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:07 am
i checked my blog just now and there is supposed to be an ad there as in my dashboard but what appears is the entrecard widget as mentioned in item 1 here. why is it so?
March 25th, 2009 at 9:30 am
oh it’s ok now, the ad now appears
March 25th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I too am a Today.com blogger who dislikes the fact Entrecard has to part ways with Today. I plan on staying connected and need to set up a new blog somewhere else to post the Entrecard Widget. I am open to suggestions as Today.com has made only one, take down the widget. Any help with setting up another blog somewhere would be greatly appreciated.
March 25th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Regarding clickthroughs, we’re recording them in a separate area of the system now and I haven’t linked them through, your clicks are safe but not appearing where they should. I’m going to get that sorted shortly, sorry about that.
For those interested, you can see a live chart of the new ad delivery network at:
http://entrecard.com/static/apn_chart.html
March 25th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Nice to see this improvements. And they are working. Thanks
March 26th, 2009 at 8:43 am
I don’t have a today.com blog but was sorry to hear about that as well. I’m trying to make sure I have all those blogs I dropped on regulary that are on that network saved so I can continue to enjoy them off EC.
I did move my widget a little higher, but hope that doesn’t increase the hit & run traffic. Regardless, ready to go!
March 26th, 2009 at 9:03 am
I hope the click throughs become visible soon, I like to know if an ad was successful before I place a repeat ad. Thanks!
March 26th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Looking forward to seeing what sort of stats are recorded, and it would be useful if we could grant people access to data on a one-by-one basis.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Roll it out…looking forward to the new ad platform and how it will work. Thanks for the update!
March 26th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
I agree about not seeing the click through stats. It is important to see them to know how well an ad is doing.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
OK, this is helpful to understand. Waiting to see how this works out.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Hmm… I’m guessing this is why I’ve been having issues. I usually do most of my drops from work, but suddenly Entrecard does not play nice with the network on my computer. In fact, the widgets don’t load at all on the pages. It’s as if they’re not there at all! I’ll stick with Entrecard as long as I can, but my home computer just doesn’t handle dropping well at all.
March 27th, 2009 at 12:02 am
I can’t wait for the changes too. I hope everything runs smoothly.
When are the paid ads going to start? And when can we start selling our credits for cash?
Thanks in advance.
March 27th, 2009 at 1:30 am
Nice change we welcome it but lets see that happens when it is actually implemented,
thanks
anisha
March 27th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Thanks for keeping us posted, Graham. Sounds like everything is progressing smoothly and that plenty of backend testing will ensure that everything gets off to a smooth start.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:22 am
Good to see updates. Thumbs up for new stuff!