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Snap.com’s Snap Shares Helps Web Site, Blog Operators Earn Extra Money through Using Snap Shots
ad:tech New York 2007, New York, NY – November 5, 2007 – In conjunction with the Snap Ad Network, a new program that allows advertisers to deliver content with associated context-based ads to millions of Snap Shots™ users, Snap.com today announced Snap Shares, a new way for Web site operators and bloggers to make money using Snap Shots, the most popular Web site enhancement in the world. Currently, nearly 2,000,000 site owners and bloggers use Snap Shots to deliver a more compelling user experience; such sites include TechCrunch, Guy Kawasaki, Xanga.com, Wordpress, LiveJournal, et al. When mousing over a hyperlink, a small SnapShot window reveals content from the linked site formatted according to the content type, such as a video player from a YouTube link, a brief summary from a Wikipedia link, etc. Currently, Snap Shots are used about 15 million times daily and have been translated into 43 languages by volunteers. Snap Shares adds a new money-making dimension to Snap Shots by allowing Web site owners and bloggers to increase their inventory with context-based ads at the bottom of each Snap Shot. Joining the SnapShares program is easy.
To register for Snap Shares or view a demo, visit http://www.snap.com For Related Information and Graphics…
About Snap.comSnap.com provides new ways for Web site owners and bloggers to enhance the content and for marketers to reach new audiences, as well as help millions of people worldwide enjoy a better Web surfing experience. Its core product –Snap Shots – is used over 15 million times per day and has been translated into 43 languages by fans around the world. Snap.com is a network company of Idealab, a creator and operator of technology businesses, with additional funding from Mayfield Fund. Snap.com is based in Pasadena, CA. Snap Technologies, Snap.com, and Snap Shots are trademarks or registered trademarks of Snap Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2007 All rights reserved. |
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- ©2006 Perfect Market Technologies. All rights reserved.
Great improvements but I get site validation errors, site loads to slow and had to remove.
Kina: If you can provide more detail — maybe even re-install the Snap Shots code on the page(s) in question — we may be able to help you troubleshoot…
I do so appreciate that you warned us about the advent of the adverts. I've chosen to keep my site ad-free. I use it to explain, not "advertise" my own product and service, and do not want distracting competition.
For awhile Snap Shots looked cool, but it has become annoying, even without ads, and with ads, it's going to be as disgusting as the other leading pop-up server that appears when your mouse inadvertently moves over key words.
I know — the world is about advertising, but dang! I hate all this garbage!
So, thanks again for the warning. I just removed your code, and honor the fact that you didn't blind side me.
I hear you Sue, and I agree. It seems that advertising is creeping into the sites and pages we used to love, with all the clatter, flashes and now sounds, to encourage us to buy, buy, buy. I have no appreciation for advertising forced upon my friends or me. I had just joined Snap Shots, having had them recommended to me as a great source for photos.
It doesn't look as if I will be using this site now. And I will be removing it from my list of favorites. How sad.
Unfortunatelly, we have decided to remove snapshots from our web project www.hristianstvo.ru and all its 20 international versions. We did not plan to put advertizing on our pages, especially ads that we can not control.
It seems that there is no control on ads because the available settings have non effect; I plan to remove snapshots shortly.
@ savvysue, Catmoves, Ivan & brag,
Sorry to hear that you are thinking about / already have disabled Snap Shots on your sites. This of course is your choice and we respect it.
Best Regards,
–
Erik
Hello Erik,
I have to agree with brag: after registering, importing my settings and going back through the settings within my account, the new script code behaves erratically. Sometimes the SnapShots feature charity advertising, which I selected, but sometimes they feature Google AdSense keywords. Sometimes a search bar appears, and sometimes it doesn't. (I don't want a search bar to show, and have my advanced settings set to "Only Display Preview Shots.") Sometimes the logo graphic I uploaded appears; sometimes it doesn't. Even when reverting to the old longer script code, I have to refresh the page several times (which I can't expect my visitors to do) in order for SnapShots to function the way it did before registering.
I signed up for SnapShots at the end of September in anticipation of
adding it to a new design of my website, which is currently in
progress. (With 850 pages, it takes me several months to recode and
upload a new design.) At this point I'm looking at backtracking and removing the Snap Shots code from my new design before I upload it.
Still, SnapShots is such a wonderful feature - I was very pleased with the prospect of offering a "sneak peek" of a site and additional information to my visitors before they clicked - I'm hoping to hear from customer service, whom I've written to with these same concerns with a "fix" before I'm ready to upload (in about a week), or perhaps you can address them here?
Thanks for your time and efforts.
Susan :)
@SkellieSue: Snap Shares is a program for "sharing Snap Shots impressions". Your share of the impressions (what you select in your Snap Shots Account) will in other words display in a mix of other ads displayed by Snap.
E.g. If you configured your Snap Shares settings to display AdSense, you will see AdSense units with both your own pub-ID and Snap's pub-ID. The best way to tell what is what is to monitor your AdSense account and see what clicks are attributed to your pub-ID.
At all times, Snap is trying to serve as contextually relevant ads as possible. This explains the search box and suggested searches which sometimes appear when we have no ads that we deem relevant enough for the link in question.
Also, please make sure to read 'An Introduction to Snap Shares', available under the 'Snap Shares'-tab in your Snap Shots Account.
If your logo is not displaying consistently, we may be looking at a bug. Would you mind sending me a URL where I can see Snap Shots in action on your site? If you would rather not display the URL here, in public, you can send it to customerservice@snap.com with "ATT: ERIK" in the subject line.
Hope this helps.
–
Erik
Hi Erik - Thanks for your response. :) Obviously I did not fully grok the "share" aspect of SnapShares. ;) I don't have any pages with SnapShots uploaded at the moment; I had added them to a redesign which is still in progress. Now though, I've made a less than whole-hearted decision to remove them. I'm just one of those who likes to have complete control over the content of ads which appear on my site - relevant or not - primarily because a large portion of my visitors are middle-school aged children.
Thanks for so much your time and help.
Susan :)
How can I track the snap ads income? are you planning to implement Adsense channel support?
@fili: We are currently investigating how to allow publishers to specify an AdSense channel. However, it is too early to tell when this feature will be available. Stay tuned.
Hello
I specified my Adsense publisher account but from what I see from the page's source, the publisher account used for displaying the ads is another one.
In practice, you are going to get clicks from my site and in return you give me Snap preview. I understand it. But why you ask me for my adsense publisher ID if you don't use it?
@cleoni: Please read my reply to SkellieSue above. — If you selected AdSense for your Snap Shares and entered your pub-id, it will be part of the rotation on your site. Makes sense?
I have to to say I love snap shots, but I really, really hate this new snapshares "functionality". Its slow to load and is very spam like. I dont want to increase the footprint size of snapshots beyond the preview image. You guys had this right the first time!
I understand the need to monetize snapshot views, but I'd prefer to pay a subscription for clean snapshot previews than have this spammy banner add on every pop up.
I've also found that on some browsers on some computers the snapshots work, and on some browsers on other computers it doesnt. My main PC using Firefox (latest version) it doesnt work. On my laptop using same browser, it works fine.
Im gonna leave it for a week. And if then will decide whether to totally just remove this application.
Eric Joiner
www.freightdawg.com
@ejoiner2: I can appreciate your situation. Is this just about the slightly larger footprint or is it about "more ads"?
Its about the ability to remove the ads and have the functionality that existed previously. I don't want ads in my snapshot pop ups. I'd be prepared to pay for that functionality if you had a "pro" edition etc that allowed me to pay for the ability to remove the ads.
In the meantime, you probably ought to redo the front end of your website. It shows a snapshot pop up sans advertisements. Which is not what you get now.
Anyway, I've removed snapshots from my site until some other alternative comes up.
Best regards
how can i snap ad
not sure what you are asking about here…
First off I don't recall being asked for any information about my Google Adsense accounts. OK it might have been done automagically, but any links from the snapshot adverts have a different referral number than mine so who really knows who's benefitting from my ads? As I can't track any snap shots income I can't confirm whether or not it's me.
Secondly, for someone already wondering whether my site had too much advertising I know that this is an advertising step too far.
For both reasons, Bye Bye snap shots.
@nick3216: Please read my reply to SkellieSue above — If you selected AdSense for your Snap Shares and entered your pub-id, it will be part of the rotation on your site.
At some point, every professional, or semi-professional, publisher face the question of how to balance the ad-to-content ratio of the pages on his/her site. If you already have too much advertising on your pages, Snap Shots is not going to help you.
However, since Snap Shots is generating brand new ad inventory, it effectively gives you the option to take away some of the in-page ad units, making the loadstate of your pages cleaner (and lighter!).
Dear Snap Shots,
I regret to inform you that your decision to and implementation of ad placement without the option of disabling it, is forcing us to deactivate your service on our site. Your product was great, but your business model is not working for us. In order to monetize your service, a paid subscription or profit sharing only with users who DO want to display ads on their site might be the better options.
I have noticed a number of other sites that have disabled your service already.
By adding ads and logos, etc. to the bottom of your snapshots, you are making "unatractive" what attracted us to use your service and what made our users excited about your service in the first place.
Please rethink your "new" business model and allow for more flexibility…
Until then, bye bye! We are to look elsewhere.
@Krassy: Sorry to hear that you are disabling Snap Shots on your site. But this is of course your choice and we respect it.
What else could you do? Throw a hissy fit?
I am now working to remove you from all of my own sites
@ Erik Wingren and Snapshots
Hi Erik
I am one of the few people who do like the new functionality, I use snapshots on my linkpages www.startingiseasy.com and we see a growth in our adsense views and earnings.
Question: what is the ratio our own adsense ads are showing. because I see lots of other ads, and not that much adsense. I think if you want to keep your users happy the ratio should be at least 50%. It is the users who provide the ad placement. Maybe it is also good to put the ratio on your site, every user wants to know this kind of information
(today no snapshots on startingiseasy, are you guys offline?)
regards
Leonard
startingiseasy
attuworld.com
@attuworld: We had a temporary system outage this morning lasting for about 2 hours (9-11 AM PST), but everything should be up and running now.
Re: your question. Our goal is to enable publishers to make more money than they currently do with their regular advertising networks. At this time we are unable to disclose the relative sizes of the Snap Shares ratios due to the fact that we are still evaluating different formulas. Hope you understand.
@ Erik
I have added snapshots to our other website, www.attuworld.com
Now it is on that site and startingiseasy.com.
I will monitor the adsense the upcoming days ( Attuworld gets a 100.000 pageviews a day) and see if it works out the way we hope.
Can you tell me how long your evaluation will take? I think it is a good idea, but to be honest I only see other ads appear than our own adsense. I understand you want to make some money with your (very good) product but keep in mind that webowners provide the platform. We bother our visitors with advertising, that is a choice, but it has to do some good otherwise I figure it is better not to place the extra ads.
I am waiting to hear from you when you know what the ratio will be.
Thnx for your product
regards,
leonard
Attuworld
Startingiseasy
I have used snap since February 2007. My users are used to it. Now you thrust your advertising on me. I think that truly sucks, so I chose to run my advertising in snap shares.
And what I get is unmitigated dross and rubbish.
I share your charity adverts, your odd linked searched, and some sort of list of google text adverts that no-one will click.
At last I understand your revenue model. You suck us in, get us to put your code on our sites, and then turn us over with either all your advertising or a share of the rubbish that you advertise and a little of our own adverts. And sites with no advertising now carry your trash.
Hot bricks get dropped. You are now a hot brick. And an invasive hot brick, at that!
I am totally unhappy with your approach and your service. I feel tricked and cheated. What was a good service just went sour.
@timmy: Let me assure you that we here at Snap are not the evil, scheming shysters you make us out to be. We are 30+ people who work hard to develop, maintain and enhance the Snap Shots service that is made available to anyone for free.
I'm sorry to hear that you feel unfairly treated. As you can see in these comments you are not alone, but in the bigger picture, people are responding positively to the new features.
Well, Erik,
You say of yourself: "User Experience Research & Development: I identify, develop, refine and validate design opportunities that are informed and inspired by people's behavior and experience."
You are getting some substantial user experience feedback in this blog. What you probably understand is that people do not normally bother to tell the supplier of a free service that they are going. They just leave.
Based upon reasonably conservative statistics of those who complain versus those who walk, for every person who tells you why they are going, 100 others have already left.
Small beer, that. How many of us have bothered to complain here? Half a dozen? Fewer? Let's say five. So five hundred of your webmasters have gone. Even if they control two sites only apiece then that is only 1,000 sites that have kicked your service off.
Why did we deploy it?
Frankly it looked cute, though it was a little rough and ready and a little intrusive.
Why did we turn and bite you?
Ah, that is because you have correctly interpreted our views as considering in your words that you are "evil, scheming shysters". We must be because you have chosen the words and they have not come out of thin air. Somewhere in your psyche they must be rolling around associated with the feelings of users whose comments I assume we have not seen here. I had not chose those words, but, since you verbalise them I feel that you have identified them and associated them with Snap.com
You also say of yourself "My work tends to fall within the realms of User Experience research and development for online/digital media, focusing on User Research, Interaction Design and Brand Strategy." at basho.com.
It interests me that your brand strategy seems to be one of, well, not stealth, for you did announce with some excitement the forthcoming adverts, but nonetheless of force - no ability to simply opt in to the adverts, oh no. We have to lose the cute little popup window instead - then you will doubtless be unsurprised as more webmasters vote with their feet.
I just removed you from all six of my sites that deployed you. I expect that makes one thousand and eight sites, then.
@timmy: Let's try this again. I'm sorry to hear that you feel unfairly treated. As you can see in these comments you are not alone, but in the bigger picture, people are responding positively to the new features.
I expect they are. But you are missing the point.
I never, not once, gave you permission to push your advertising to my sites. The way you implemented this was cavalier, albeit with an excited launch announcement. And you don;t seem to be doing anything other than smiling, nodding and walking quietly away from those who complain to you.
Is this the reputation you want for your brand?
I don`t want anything from you, that is not what I am after. What I want is a simple acknowledgment that you might, just might, have got it wrong.
"In the bigger picture" is interesting and not germane. Would you like some examples of "the bigger picture" that proved to be entirely self deluding? Quite often the vociferous apparent minority proves to be correct.
Of course you do need revenue, and the previous model gave you none, except when you sold (presumably) your service to ask.com, so flogging advertising was an obvious choice, but it is the manner of its introduction that is the real business problem.
I wonder where the words "evil", "scheming", and "shyster" came from. I never said it to you before you introduced it. We have a saying in the UK: "If the cap fits, wear it." I would not have dreamed of making those accusations. I simply complain about the fact that you steamrollered your adverts onto sites, some of which were clearly wholly against advertising in any form.
Nothing is free. Free lunch never appears. But you just are not big enough to do things this way. You just don`t have the clout.
And if you did? If you were as big as Google, Microsoft, Oracle?
The furore would be enormous.
@timmy:
In most cases, permission is granted implicitly by use of service.
In the case of Snap Shots, permission was also granted — explicitly — by you agreeing to the terms and conditions of the service during signup.
Please keep the attempts at psychoanalysis to a minimum in the comments on this blog. If you need to vent, or think I need help understanding what is really happening, please feel free to send me an email.
erik-at-snap-dot-com
Erik,
I was not particularly pleased when I found out that snap shares uses the snap shots as a way of generating revenue for snap.com.
Can you please give webmasters the ability to disable the ads?
The ads are very annoying for our users and each snap is basically stealing valuable ad space form the websites that have snap shots installed.
In the meantime, I discovered the ability to include use your own Google Adsense account. While disabling the ads completely would be my preferred course of action, I’ll go for this option temporarily as a last-ditch effort to keep Snap Shots 16 websites I am a web administrator for.
However, I have a rather serious problem… there is no way of knowing how many of my ads will show and how many snap ads will show.
So that brings me to my second request: can we get a more specific figure of the percentage of our ads will show versus how many snap ads will show?
Thanks.
- Highway
@Highway: If any of your sites represent educational or governmental institutions we can exempt you from the ads, as outlined in the Snap FAQ.
Re: your question. Our goal is to enable publishers to make more money than they currently do with their regular advertising networks. At this time we are unable to disclose the relative sizes of the Snap Shares ratios due to the fact that we are still evaluating different formulas. Hope you understand.
Fine. Good Improvement.