Ad Platform?

[klm127]

Should we include a system for ads in our product?

It would be more coding but would justify our proposal and is the only means to monetize the final project.

We would need, at a minimum:

• Tables in the database to track ads and ad clicks
• A forwarding mechanism in the back end to send clickers to the advertisers page while tracking user clicks.
• A mechanism in the Server for selecting and interpolating ads with other comments that are served to the extension front end
• A way for the front end to display ads.

We could keep it simple. Every ad-purchase could have an account, with a dollar value associated with it. E.g. 0.1¢ could be subtracted from an account whenever an ad is shown and 1¢ could be subtracted whenever an ad is clicked.

We could certainly introduce more features on top of this. I hesitate to sell ads based on domains (e.g. "buy an ad on nytimes.com through comment anywhere!" is probably a bad idea). Instead we could allow advertiser clients to target keywords or demographics. We could track user behavior ( number of ad clicks, types of ad clicked, etc). We could serve specific ads to demographics as we discern them. (E.g user#555 has clicked on ads relating to Hondas in the past, they should now see this Toyota ad.)

I'm asking this now because if we are going to start with at least a basic ad platform, it should probably be included in our Proposal and Requirements documents.

[bedekovich]

I think that if we are going to do any work besides the base project this would be the one to do, as it is the only part of the project that will allow us to gain resources and advance it past the scope of just a senior project.

The only big concern about doing this is acquiring the knowledge to make it happen, I'm not sure about you guy's but I dont have a whole lot of experience in connecting the various parts that would be required for the system to operate ( connecting to bank accounts, getting the advertisement into our site from the 3rd party etc. ). Maybe some of you guy's know where to look to learn more about this stuff but I dont.

Other than figuring out how to actually implement the advertisement system I would definitely like to add this part the base project the most.

[Bkrenz]

While I'm okay with discussing Ads eventually, I feel like that's a final feature thing. At that point, we would need to incorporate, go through legal processes, etc. There's no reason to roll our own advertisement platform. It's decently simple to just integrate Google Ads or one of its competitors, as long as we have an account. I don't even know if adding Ads to a Browser Add-on/Extension conforms to their Terms of Service.