The Ad Bard Network was conceived because I have a need for relevant, non-obnoxious advertisements on my website, KernelTrap.org. I have maintained KernelTrap for many years, as a hobby in my spare time, and as a way to stay involved in the open source world. I enjoy this hobby, but it requires a lot of time and commitment keeping the website updated every day. I've long dreamed of finding a way to make a little income to help justify the time I invest into my hobby.
Displaying advertisements on KernelTrap has a lot of potential for earning income, but I failed to find an advertising network that was compatible with my beliefs and requirements. I need an ad network that won't flood my website with animated gifs, flash videos and pop-ups. I want to know exactly what information is being collected about my readers. I want to earn a fair share of the profits, and to know how much the advertising network is making off my website. I want to be fully in control of what types of ads and what specific ads appear on my website. And the ads need to load extremely quickly, not slowing down my web pages or loading scripts within scripts within scripts.
The Ad Bard Network has grown out of these needs, already exceeding my own requirements and becoming a viable and useful fund raising mechanism for all free and open source projects and websites.
What's in it for Drupal.org
The Ad Bard Network is offering 80% of the price-per-click each time an advertisement is clicked on Drupal.org. As the network grows and evolves, and our algorithms improve, this translates into greater and greater earnings for the Drupal project. Our bid-based pricing structure is designed to attract many new advertisers, and to ensure that Ad Bard members stay in complete control of their earnings. The Drupal Association won't have to do anything to benefit from this ongoing effort, other than enabling our ads on the Drupal.org web pages. The Ad Bard Network does not and never will require exclusivity, so you can continue to display ads from any other non-exclusive network at the same time.
Another benefit for the Drupal Association is that the Ad Bard Network itself is a Drupal-based project, founded by a consulting company that is focused on Drupal's performance and scalability. Advertisements are served with the Drupal Ad module running on an installation of Drupal. The Ad Bard Network fully plans to become a Drupal performance and scalability showcase website, serving advertisements and earning money for thousands of open-source projects around the world. The Ad Bard Network provides Drupal.org a way to profit from its own technology.
The Ad Bard Network will actively find relevant advertisers for Drupal.org. We are also responsible for enhancing the algorithms used to improve the click-through rates and continuously increase Drupal.org's earnings.
Finally, as a long time Drupal contributors, users, and supporters, we will be extremely responsive to any requests made by the Drupal Association. All of your feedback and feature requests will be taken very seriously and given our full attention. As a new and evolving project, there are countless features planned for the Ad Bard Network. By becoming a participant, the Drupal Association will be in a position to strongly influence the priorities for these upcoming features.
What's in it for free and open source software
The Ad Bard Network stands out as being built on free and open source software, and on free and open source principles. All the information that we collect about your website and your visitors is fully available for your review. All the algorithms we use to decide whether or not to credit you for an advertisement click, and all the optimizations we make to serve advertisements quickly and efficiently are available under the GPL for public scrutiny. Every advertisement click on your website is reported to you in real time, along with complete details about how much you are earning, and how much the network is earning from your participation.
By offering 80% of the profits to member websites, the Ad Bard Network provides a viable funding source for countless open source projects without requiring them to ignore their own principles. The Ad Bard Network will become the obvious online advertising choice for all free and open source projects, attracting quality and relevant advertisements for our members. We aim to provide a convenient channel of communication, encouraging businesses to essentially donate to free and open source projects while still getting something in return.
What's in it for the Ad Bard Network
The Ad Bard Network is an evolving open source project. We are currently focused on attracting additional member websites to grow the number of daily advertisement impressions we serve, an essential step toward attracting quality advertisers. Drupal.org is an extremely active and visible website whose participation will greatly improve the Ad Bard Network's visibility. Many other websites will follow Drupal.org's lead, and as our network grows, everyone benefits, attracting more advertisers and better advertising prices. Furthermore, we would be honored to be given a chance to earn some income for the Drupal project.
The 20% of the profits that go to the Ad Bard Network pays not only for the necessary infrastructure, it is also being reinvested into the technology, with the continued aim of improving earnings for all of our members.
From the original goal to make a little money with a hobby website, the Ad Bard Network has grown into much more. Participation by Drupal.org would be a massive milestone for this project, helping to assure our success at earning money for an ever growing number of open-source oriented projects, Drupal.org included.
Technology notes
We have optimized our infrastructure to serve advertisements extremely quickly, without slowing down your website. When you join our network, we provide you with small, cache-able JavaScripts that you install on all pages that you wish to display FOSS-oriented advertisements. The first time someone visits your web pages, the JavaScript is quickly loaded from a worldwide Content Delivery Network (CDN). On subsequent page views by the same visitor, the JavaScript is reloaded from their local web browser cache. The simple script sets up a small IFrame, allowing the rest of your web page to continue loading.
While the rest of your page is loading, within the IFrame another JavaScript is executed directly from the Ad Bard Network to select an appropriate image for your website based on your custom configuration. This server-side process happens directly in RAM utilizing memcached to ensure optimal performance. Finally, the selected advertisement image is loaded through our worldwide CDN partner, assuring that the actual image is quickly downloaded from a caching server that is in close physical proximity to each of your visitors. All of this happens in milliseconds.