Thank you for your interest in joining the Ad Bard Network, the only advertising network designed specifically for developers, architects, users and influencers in the free software community.
The new Ad Bard Network will be launching in May of 2009. At this time, we are accepting applications from users interested in Beta testing our advertising network, displaying ethical, FLOSS-appropriate advertisements on their websites.
Join the BETA Ad Bard Network today.
The network has been redesigned under the guidance of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), offering an even greater focus on the importance of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). The FSF will continue to take an advisory role in the network.
Based on this guidance from the FSF, to participate in the Ad Bard Network:
- Your website must in some way pertain to FLOSS. Our network is dedicated only to websites that are FLOSS-relevant and advertisers that are FLOSS-appropriate.
- Your website must exclusively display Ad Bard advertisements. We no longer allow other advertisements to be displayed along side Ad Bard advertisements. This is to ensure that there are no FLOSS-inappropriate advertisements displayed on your web pages, and to make the network more attractive to advertisers. (If you have multiple subdomains in which each is a unique website, it is allowed to display Ad Bard advertisements on only a subset of all your subdomains.)
- All members will have a chance to vote for or against advertisements for 36 hours after the order is placed. At least 50% of the received votes must be positive for the advertisement to be accepted. Higher traffic websites will have a proportionally greater vote than lower traffic websites.
- Only one Ad Bard Network advertisement can be displayed on a page at a time. Ad Bard Network advertisements will be comprised of both 1 image (120 pixels wide by 90 pixels tall) and up to 80 characters of text.
- Instead of trying to sell many inexpensive advertisement, we will instead focus on selling fewer more expensive advertisements. The network will only sell 25 standard advertisements each month. The network will also sell around 5 exclusive daily advertisements each month. Exclusive daily advertisements will be displayed on all pages of all member websites for an entire 24 hour period. Standard monthly advertisements will be displayed in rotation on all websites on all days for which no exclusive daily advertisement has been sold.
- Members will earn a % of the profits made from selling advertisements on the network. Actual member earnings will be calculated based on how many advertisements were displayed on your website and how many times the advertisements were clicked on your website. As the network grows, the cost of advertising on the network will also grow, and thus so will member earnings. The actual algorithms used will be publicly available for feedback and suggestions, and will evolve as necessary to ensure that payments are fairly distributed.
