Advertising on Ask Leo!

Advertise on the web site.
Advertise in the weekly newsletter.

People come to Ask Leo! to solve problems. While there are many technically experienced readers, the majority are using Ask Leo! and the newsletter as a means to solve problems, learn about technology and understand what they can do with it. It's a highly targeted audience.

It's a perfect opportunity to present your solutions to readers looking for answers.

Advertising on the Ask Leo! Web Site

Advertising on the Ask Leo! web site is a unique opportunity to target exactly the consumer who'll be interested in exactly the product or service you're offering. How? By picking exactly those Ask Leo! articles that you know your potential customers will be reading.

Ad Placement Options

Ask Leo! is currently getting nearly 1,000,000 visits and over 1,600,000 page views every month. These are people looking for answers... answers that your product or service might well be able to provide.

Positioning

On each article page there are two ad spots available:

Primary: the upper left, typically "above the fold", around which the article text wraps.
Secondary: the lower right, most commonly the newsletter subscription box at the beginning of the article comments.

Each adblock is currently a maximum of 336 by 280 pixels. (See mechanical information below.)

CPM Advertising

Primary (above the fold) $10/1000 impressions
Secondary $2.50/1000 impressions

Ads can be targeted to only a specific article, a specific category or can appear site-wide.

CPM ads are served "over time", so each campaign includes a date range - ads are distributed roughly equally over the period selected. Any "left over" impressions are distributed over an equivalent rate after the campaign's original end date.

10% discount for commitments of 500,000 impressions or more.

Exclusive Advertising

Ad space purchased by time, in one month increments, gets you exclusive ownership of that ad spot for that time period. All impressions to all visitors to that placement are yours.

Ads can be targeted to a specific article or an entire category of articles.

Ad Buy	Position	Per Month
Full Category	Primary	$250
	Secondary	$70
Individual Article	Primary	$75
	Secondary	$15

10% discount for commitments of 3 months or more. Based on average traffic, these numbers correspond roughly to the CPM numbers above, but often represent a significant savings for popular articles and categories. (Please also note placement is of course subject to availability.)

Order Now!

Choose CPM or Exclusive.
Choose your targeting:
- Pick an article - find the article or articles on Ask Leo! that you know your potential customers will be reading for the most targeted advertising possible.
- Pick a category - find the category of articles on Ask Leo! that are best suited to your product or service, and advertise in all articles within that category with a single purchase for greatest value.
- Pick 'em all! - of course you can spread your message across all of Ask Leo! (CPM only.)
Choose the number of impressions you want to purchase (CPM program only).
Choose the date range you want your advertising campaign to run.
Email leo <at> pugetsoundsoftware.com to book your spot.

Order Now! Spots are available on a first-paid, first-reserved basis. Email leo <at> pugetsoundsoftware.com to book your spot, or ask your question.

Mechanical & Technical

Ads are accepted in three formats. In order of preference they are:

An image of up to 336x280 maximum dimensions, in any of the common graphics formats rendered by browsers. Images can be hosted on Ask Leo!, or on your own server. (The later can be used for your own impression tracking.) In addition to the image, a destination URL must be provided for user clicks.

Example:

You can see this ad in place "above the fold" on this article: Web site spam: what can I do about it? You may need to refresh a time or two, since it alternates with the following example.
HTML which will render into no more than 336x280 pixels. This gives you maximum flexibility to use multiple images, create multiple links, or create a simple textual ad with your own look and feel.

Yes you may deliver video ads. Flash based videos are recommended for maximum cross-platform compatibility. Audio must not auto-start.

Because of user browser and/or system settings, there's of course actually no guarantee that HTML text will render into the specific size - Google's Adsense suffers from this problem as well. To be clear, though, this does works well for the vast majority of users and browsers.

A simple example:

<div style="width: 336px; height: 280px;">
 
 
MovableType Tips 
 
Tips, ticks and techniques to make Movable Type dance to your tune. 
 
<a href="http://www.MTTips.com">www.MTTips.com</a> 
 
As seen on Ask Leo!
</div>

Result:

MovableType Tips

Tips, ticks and techniques to make Movable Type dance to your tune.

www.MTTips.com

As seen on Ask Leo!

You can see this ad in place "above the fold" on this article: Web site spam: what can I do about it? You may need to refresh a time or two, since it alternates with the preceding example.
Plain Text which we'll format to look "appropriate" in an appropriately sized adblock space. This is the simplest to provide, but will probably not perform as well compared to the preceding options if those are tailored to your own needs, product identity or other requirements.

Example: very similar to the HTML results above.

Naturally we cannot assume any responsibility for the performance of your ad - all we can do is deliver it to our site visitors.

Ads are delivered using the open-source ad management platform Openads. This has implications:

Site visitors without Javascript enabled will not see ads. This has been true on Ask Leo! since the beginning, and has had no appreciable impact on impressions. (Ad purchasers will not be charged for these visitors, since there's no impression to record.)
On your request, an account can be established in the ad management interface to allow you to track your ad impressions. Note that at this time click tracking is not provided. If you need to track clicks, you'll want to do that by using a custom destination URL and tracking hits through that.
Purchasing ads for the purposes of SEO and/or incoming link generation is probably a waste. It's an open issue whether search engines actually interpret or otherwise scan Javascript, but the Openads output is sufficiently complex that it's highly unlikely that there's any SEO benefit for advertising on Ask Leo!.

Advertising in Leo's Answers Weekly Email Newsletter

The bottom line: Up to 7 lines of up to 70 characters to 30,000+ readers for less than a half cent per impression.

Ask Leo Readers: Leo's Answers weekly newsletter has:

over 21,000 email subscribers world-wide
nearly 9,000 subscribers getting the newsletter via RSS

Readership continues to grow steadily, and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.

All readers, whether email or RSS, have requested their subscriptions. Email subscription is fully double opt-in, and RSS subscription is entirely by reader choice. The newsletter is wanted, and gets read. The highly reputable Aweber email service provider aggressively removes bouncing addresses, and it's easy for subscribers to leave the list. The result is that Leo's Answers mailing list is very clean and very likely to be opened.

Format: Even though Leo's Answers is presented in HTML, advertising is presented as text only. Unlike flashing graphic ads that everyone's trained themselves to tune out, ads in Leo's Answers, while still distinctive, are designed to flow naturally with the newsletter content. The result? They're much more likely to actually be read.

A single ad runs in each issue, and is up to seven lines of 70 characters each; centered. Here's an example:

*** A Word from our Sponsor

New supercharged jv16 PowerTools 2006 can fix,
repair and tune up your computer!
Dozens of new powerful features, yet still
lightweight and un-bloated.
Special 25% discount for the first 500 buyers:

http://www.macecraft.com/set_discount.php?code=ask-706

Paid Advertisement. Ask Leo about advertising here.

*** The Next Section of the newsletter

You can see it in place in this archived newsletter: Leo's Answers #30 - June 16, 2006.

Cost: Your ad in Leo's Answers is just $100 per week, payable in advance. That's approximately $6/1000 not for a mere banner, but for space to draw in and pre-qualify interested buyers. (Rates are subject to change without notice. All ads subject to review and approval; we reserve the right to reject any ad. We do NOT accept ads for "adult", gaming or tobacco-related content. External links will be run through a redirector, as in the example above. Once ads are booked, they are not refundable.)

Don't forget the web! Every issue of Leo's Answers is archived on-line, on the very popular Ask Leo! web site - and that includes your ad. For as long as the site and archives exist.

Book your Spot: Spots are available on a first-paid, first-reserved basis. Email leo<at>pugetsoundsoftware.com to book your spot, or ask your question.

Some Fine Print

All payment must be made in advance. Paypal preferred.

Once ads are booked, they are not refundable.

All rates and positions are subject to change without notice. In particular, article categorization is under review, and specific articles may be assigned new categories.

Placement is subject to availability. Availability may be impacted both by prior sale and current performance of the default adblock (typically AdSense). Prior sales are non-negotiable - once an advertiser has booked a spot it's booked. Unbooked spots, however, if deemed to be high performing with the current adblock may be made available at a premium rate higher than those quoted above.

While we can provide impression counts and tracking, we do not provide click tracking.

Ask Leo!, Puget Sound Software LLC and Leo A. Notenboom all reserve the right to reject ads for any reason, though typically it's expected that this will apply to ads which are objectionable in some way. Gambling, pornography and other "adult themed" ads will not be accepted.

Ask Leo!, Puget Sound Software LLC and Leo A. Notenboom all reserve the right to modify ads for any reason. Typically it's expected that this will happen as necessary to meet mechanical needs. Advertisers will be notified, typically before the ad begins its run.