Ideas

How many advertisers would be willing to change their ads? Anything with a company logo is probably going to have strict standards on how that logo is presented, and I know for my companies I'd be a lot more concerned about my logo looking good within the small space of my ad than within the website as a whole. In fact, if the ad clashes with the website colors, it's just that much more noticeable.

I think you're right that website designers would like this and there may be a market for for it, but I think it's more likely that an advertiser would provide several versions of their ad in different color schemes rather than letting you manipulate their ad on the fly to fit the website colors.

What's your business model? Is this a tool/service you intend to sell to existing ad networks? Have you done a market survey to see how much they'd be willing to pay for such a tool?

Advertisers would not have to do anything special. The ads that match your color scheme or fit in the right color theory will be served to your site. There is no manipulation of the color scheme.

Ads that overwhelm your site usually tend to get rejected by users. Studys by Google recommend that ad units should complement your overall site design, not detract from the user experience. They highly recommend creating a custom color palette.

This world be able to check the ads that will match site. Site designers could select based on how they blend, complement, or contrast with the color scheme. The ads don't have to blend if you don't want them to, because color sampling can also make sure that the ads on your site are always high contrast ads and don't blend in.

Choosing the right color palettes can mean the difference between ads your users will notice and will click -- and ads they'll skip right over.

I think its in the best interest of both party's the advertiser and the publisher to select the best format to drive users to click.

As far as business model, I just thought it was a really cool thing to try and do. I know there is a need. Its possible that this could be sold to existing networks or create our own service for ad content. But, for that I would probably consider adding in some of my related ideas for adverts. To offer more of a unique package.

ads would be less effective -

designs would be compromised.

What are you talking about? How would having well targeted ads and quality designed ads compromise anything? It seems like a perfectly effective solution for good design.

The advertiser dose not have to change a thing. There ads stay the same.

I don't understand how the ads stay the same but are modified to match the color scheme. That seems contradictory.

In another thread about branding you said you had a very large manual from McDonalds specifying how their logo should appear and in what context it can be used. Most big companies have exactly the same requirements, right down to the exact shades of each color that can be used in logo images and title text. Any modification of those color schemes would violate their logo use requirements and they would prohibit it. How does your plan reconcile the fact that companies would require most elements of their ad be unchanged and yet your system would change colors to match different themes?

Great idea!

(I'm always having this problem... [that's what you get when you use free hosts] Most of the time I've to change the website colors to make the site look good...)

"I don't understand how the ads stay the same but are modified to match the color scheme. That seems contradictory."
The website owner selects a color range and you could select the setting to have the ad blend, complement, or contrast with those colors.

Image ads that fit your selected color range will then be served to your site. The image ad does not change in any way. It just gets sent to a specific site. Advertisers could also do the same thing. Where they can select the color range that will match there ads best.

For example say: McDonalds wanted there ad to be placed on a complementary sky blue and leafy green color scheme. To advertise there new southwest premium salad.

Ah, I was misunderstanding the main idea. I thought you wanted to modify ad graphics to match different color schemes. All you're proposing is segregating ads by color scheme and allowing users to specify which types of ads they display. That makes most of my comments above irrelevant.

Still not sure what the business plan would be, but certainly a reasonable idea.

I guess the best model would be to create an advertising service in some combined package with other relevant advertising ideas.

very very interesting... 4 stars my friend 4 stars

I understand micco's points about many companies having VERY strict rules about their logos etc, but equally there are many adverts that really COULD have their colours changed without any detrimental effect so I wouldn't rule it out. I guess this will work best if you can somehow break the colour requirements of the ad down into categories - choose one light background colour, a complementary text colour, two bold contrasting colours, etc...

I'd be interested to know whether contrasting or complementary ads get the most clicks - one is annoying but the other is harder to notice!

Perhaps you could market this alongside the sort of website themes and designs that are available everywhere? Buy a green website, get green ads to go with it...

Well, according to Google and other ad marketing research papers. There is a range. Ads that tend to look like well big flashy ads.

Can drive customers away due to ad blindness since people became accustomed to seeing anything flashy as ads. Most people don't want to be "marketed to". Also, if ads overwhelm your sites content users will see see them as visually offensive, tacky, and annoying.

According to Google: "we recommend using colors for your ad text and links that already exist on your site" But, they report that if they blend in to much they can also be effected ad blindness because they are to camouflaged.

It apparently can have a drastic effect if the ads are set to the right color palate. http://adsense.blogs...n-boost-revenue.html

That's really interesting - thanks for the link. It shows that this is an idea with merit.

It also supports my point (and I've never used google ads on a site so didn't know it was possible to adapt their style) that there are many ads that CAN be changed to fit a website without detriment.

nice concept

I've seen some pretty lame google adsense colour schemes in my time.

i think your target market would be mainly new bloggers, or really anybody who has recently opened a adsense account or similar advert program.

once again nice idea

Hey, this is a good concept. I am sure many people will like it. You just need to find out what will be the best revenue model.
What about making the blogger that will be using your service to pay with his actual advertisement space? So (lets say), for every 99 ads matched by your site, the blogger will let You to place your own ad on his site.

nice UI...

changing an ad's colors so that it matches the website? i dont really understand that concept, wouldnt that mean you notice the ad less? maybe m missing something,,,

"changing an ad's colors so that it matches the website? i dont really understand that concept, wouldnt that mean you notice the ad less? maybe m missing something,"

* The ads colors are not changed, they simply are matched up with websites to match the appropriate color palate.
* Its not trying to hide ads at all. It lets website owners and advertisers get matched with color palate's that blend, complement, or contrast with there ads. Customized color palates have been proven time and again to positively improve site look and marketing performance. Increasing click through rates.
As proven prior accomplishments in text ads: http://adsense.blogs...n-boost-revenue.html

[QUOTE]saying the designs do not change doesnt seem correct if the point is to change the color.[/QUOTE]
Here is an example:
Site with a pastel color scheme wants ads that look good with there design. So, they select pastel colors. This makes it so image ads all ready with light pastel colors get served to the site. So, the ads existing color will fit the design just fine.

[QUOTE] color is a big deal hen designing. to have it change according to each webste would be to take it out of the deisigners hand.[/QUOTE]
The image ads ads existing colors never change. For example if you have a red ad for Big Red gum. It will stay that color the colors are not changed. Keeping with there design. No image ads are altered.

There are lost of case study's done on advertising. As noted before having them blend, complement or contrast improves performance. It is recommended to improve your click through rates.
http://adsense.blogs...r-ads-beautiful.html

This sounds like a realy good idea.
much points from the netherlands :-)

What is the business model?

Well, we could sell it off instances of it, much like the way Cambrian House sells there platform to Vencorps. That or we could follow the other traditional business model as any internet advertising service; sell adverts to clients.

How about selling the service to ad agencies who could offer it to / use it with their clients' websites?

Yes, that will be a possibility. As mentioned before in the above post "we could sell it off instances of it, much like the way Cambrian House sells there platform to Vencorps" Which, could in fact be an effective business model.

I use this site a lot:

http://www.colorcombos.com/

and this one:

http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

I think you are a bit confused as to what this service is. Its not intended as a color picker.

Its intended to match up ads and serve them up to sites with select color schemes. That's the part that has never been done by anyone. Just the color scanning is the trivial part about this idea.

Are ads supposed to blend in?

There are supposed to blend to a point, many study's show very positive results for ads that blend in over ads that stick out like a sore thumb. This service is not going to be camouflaging the ads, users will notice them. But, it does insure good style and design control. Which in turn keeps users on your site and continue clicking your ads.

whats the difference on free codes using html or css around for cutomizing url/profile?

I image adverts at this time you get very little control over, right now there is way to do this. Also, again this is not a color picker. I pretty sure you are confusing customizing your site with HTML/HEX Color Codes. With actually having control to maintain the image of the ads.

So, lets say you customize a site right now with a red color scheme. Since you don't have this type of control right now whenever your site is served ads they will be of all types of other design styles that will make your site look ugly and detract from your site. I know a lot of website admins right now that only use text ads because image ads ruin there design.

This idea insures ads meet your design style settings.

nice videos!

I'm not convinced there is enough substance to this concept to be able to guarantee or predict a revenue stream. It's a nice "idea" as such but it's not a standalone business concept. As such, I think you'd be quite quickly copied.

As, I said before I agree. That there will probably need to be more add-on groupings to form a real offering package. For this to work as a service. But, I find the idea very notable and worth exploring. Since, this idea could have a lot of value in combination with simple traditional advertising elements.

good idea. smart advertisers who understand the "attention wars" will be less interested in preserving their logo/ad color and more interested in meshing in with the user's focus. 5 stars!

Yes, agree that it's worth exploring. Maybe as a filter for photoshop or something along those lines.

"preserving their logo/ad color" It still preserves there logo and ad color completely. The ad image stays the same, there is no alteration of the image.

It simply sends the ads to the best location possible to stay within the design standards.

Kevin, I see exactly what you are getting at. It did take me a while, but I get it. I don't know how you intend to go about deploying it but I have a possible solution, at least to garner some industry feedback. Gather some analytics on who exactly the major players are in this space. Then choose a vehicle(.ppt, or mpeg, or whatever) to show them the aesthetic gains made by adjusting non-essential cosmetics vs. the inferred loss of a logo's intrinsic value. There will be no opposition. Hand pick a group of ad's on sites that really take away from the site's aesthetic value, alter them via photoshop or whatever to suit the site's appearance and present them with dramatic before and afters along side a more refined nversion of he intellectual material which you have outlined here. Don't worry about trademarking or IP infringement, they will be pleased to see it. Better yet, target specific agencies with the ads that they distribute. Even if this isn't your preferred way of making the impact you desire, it will certainly create positive buzz for your concepts effectiveness as an emerging marketing device. The ends tend to justify the means. Good Luck.

"non-essential cosmetics vs. the inferred loss of a logo's intrinsic value."
There is no change to the ads at all, no alteration, no logo changes, no color changes, etc... The ads don't change, it just changes what sites they are placed on.

i like this idea a lot....as an advertiser of ads, both text and graphics, I am very concerned about how well they fit in with my theme, look and overall appeal. I don't want my users thinking I am just a big iBillBoard. Also, users are more likely to click through when they are less aware of the "ad" nature of the ad.

I think this has potential.

Great Idea.

Congratulations!

Cathleen