Ad Bard (http://adbard.net/) is a new project, a FLOSS-focused online advertising network partnered with the FSF (http://www.fsf.org/news/ad-bard) in an advisory role.
They only accept FLOSS projects and have a simplified flat fee structure for advertisers. Member sites earn through clicks. They claim nearly 5 million monthly impressions (http://adbard.net/adbard/websites) on sites of interest to free software developers. It will likely be a very efficient way to raise our profile with developers. I had heard yesterday that they were offering a limited number of free December insertions in their network. This morning they have very graciously offered to run a Sugar Labs banner free of cost from December 8th (Sugar on a Stick launch date) through the end of the month! To meet the deadline though, we have to provide the banner as soon as possible in the next 48 hours. They have a review system with a 72-hour all-members vote (weighted by impressions) before running any ad on their network. A sample ad can be viewed on their FAQ page (http://adbard.net/faq). Technical info is: 120x90 pixels, graphics, up to 80 characters of text, no animation, PNG or JPEG or static GIF (no Flash), link to direct to. Proposed brief: horizontal USB key beauty shot over Sugar on a Stick logo in Blueberry color, text underneath: "Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry downloadable now. Try it with a child today!" That's 75 chars using this CLI one-liner: $ echo 'Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry downloadable now. Try it with a child today!' | wc -m I have prepared a 120x36 px PNG from Philippe Cantinau's beauty shots session (attached). This is from an actual photo of one of the sticks from the first run (same stick as in the 4-stick beauty shot). Color combo is variant 8 but note that the printers hadn't done a great color/alignment job given the rush at the time, so it may be preferable to place a clean logo over the stick body. I feel a different color than the blue combo will work best, because our visual identity is to vary the combos, Blueberry is not the main branding message ("sugar" is), and a blueberry colored stick might get people to think we distribute sticks which is not the case. But, a blueberry logo'd stick might indeed be preferable? Because of the Academy 4:3 layout, we may need to break up the Sugar on a Stick logo like the stacked SL logo version, with "sugar" larger on its own line and "on a stick" smaller underneath. Alternatively, "on a" on a line and "stick" on a line, in that case we could probably keep the same point size as "sugar". For the link, we have a choice between the homepage (where we will have a What's New callout by Tuesday with Christian's help), or the Sugar on a Stick page (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick). I'm on the fence, but leaning towards the homepage link - many first-time visitors should probably learn more about Sugar and Sugar Labs first? What do you think? Who can step up to get this together quickly? thanks Sean
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