web advertising

[Huh]

hey guys,

I have been following the National TV advertising campaign. I think it is a great idea, although now that Farscape is on only one night a week, and late at that, it doesn't seem as effective.

just wanted to present the following idea. Would it be effective to put together an internet ad? I have no idea what it would cost. But i know I would click on an interesting ad that pops up while surfing before I would be able to schedule my 12 AM sunday time slot.

I always check the news websites, CNN.com and abcnews.com. I would think something along those lines would generate a lot of traffic and information about the cause. Plus, given the reserve of graphic and internet skills at our disposal, you guys could put together a kick-ass website that may draw some people in to watch the show.

Let me know what you think.

[waltersgirl]

welcome to the board, Huh. ;)

we haven't gone the pop-up ad route because most folks consider them maddening, and we don't want to lose a potential fan/fighter/viewer that way. we have done the banner ads for websites though. have you checked out our graphics forum? there's *loads* of stuff there.

you can find several banners done by various staff members here at:
http://keepfarscape.com/banners.here.html

also, while we actually think this website is pretty kick-ass, we are in the process of doing a redesign. the site is currently in beta testing with the programmers/coders/design gurus.

[Huh]

Hi,

It doesn't have to be a pop-up ad. CNN.com allows banners and other sort of advertisements.

I was thinking about two different strategies. One is a promotion of the savefarscape campaign. And I agree that this website is kick-ass in that regard.

The other is to draw surfers into the farscape fold. I did not start watching farscape until about a month ago, and I doubt I would have ever seen it or gotten drawn into it if it did not come on every night. Now that is over, so i don't think there will be many converts generated by the 12 AM midnight slot. So a banner on CNN.com (or some equally well-surfed site) could provide a lot of traffic to an interesting site sponsered by us that may draw viewers in to watch on Sundays or even to rent the videos. For example, a simple ad that is interesting to everyone (not just FS fans) that transfers people to a site with an online Farscape comic or interactive video game. Give them something free to view that would make them come back and wonder what Farscape is all about. Post specs for building your own DRD. I don't know, I am not an advertising person and I don't know the legal issues involved.

People really do click on those ads. And there is a potential to reach far more people and get the show and campaign out there through such a venture. I just feel that people will click on a link before they can manage to remember that a show they never saw before comes on Sundays at midnight and they really need to schedule that in. Assuming that it is cheap enough, would it be worth a shot?

[uisceboo]

Huh,

First of all, there are a few parody cartoons of Farscape around, most notably In Other News -- artists do this on thier own, not as a function of this website. We, meaning the Save Farscape.com website, are not licenced to use the Farscape name and characters for telling stories -- The Jim Henson Company owns the rights to the Farscape story, and surely want to tell the story themselves.

As Waltersgirl said, we do have an active banner ad program (you can see some of the graphics in the graphics section). It's not large -- most people are not aware that most of the banners you see on sites are paid ads, and costs tens of thousands of dollars, which we do not have to spend to that purpose. Long ago we priced these ads out, and have determined they are not a viable method of reaching people, because they cost far too much. We also priced out subway ads, mall ads, ads on taxicabs, on cell phones -- again, the cost is beyond our means.

However, Save Farscape and fans have run TV ads, movie theatre ads, have an 800 number (used at conventions and in other strategic situations to reach offline fans). We have placed print ads from local classifieds to Hollywood Reporter, have a large presence at conventions, ran a radio ad program, and are a sponsored listing on Google. At one time, we even had an illuminated sign over the highway in San Antonio, Texas (which generated a story in a TX newspaper, additional press)! We have actually been a news story on CNN more than five times, a fact that staggered the Farscape cast and crew. We had our own presence, as press (the DocuDot team), at the Saturn Awards in May, right along with news agencies, magazines and TV networks. :eek: We are WAY out there -- you probably, as a newcomer, are not aware of what we have done so far.

Have you checked out the entire Save Farscape site? There is much more to it than the Campaign Strategizing topics on the message board -- go back to the front page at either www.savefarscape.com or www.watchfarscape.com and check out some of the links. There is a special section in the "New To The Campaign" topic that gives an overview of what we have done so far; this might interest you.

As for "kick-ass" -- the registered users for this site doubled in the last five months. Most businesses would do anything for that kind of growth -- that is really kicking eema! Again, you are new here, so you wouldn't know that yet -- you had to be here to see it. :)

Finally, please understand that drawing fans to the site is indeed critically important, but the main thrust of the Save Farscape campaign is to draw awareness to Farscape and build the audience as a whole.

My view: given a choice between getting a fan to come to this site and getting a fan to rent, buy or borrow a Farscape tape or DVD, I want the latter. I know that they will like what they see, and in most cases, they will find us when they start searching for more Farscape.

Welcome to the campaign! :kitty:

[Huh]

Hey uisceboo,

it was just an idea. i personally was not thinking about promoting this site per se, but farscape in general. I am assuming that the new viewership for farscape will drastically decrease with the sunday time slot. So I guess i am wondering what can be done about this.

Like i said i am not an advertiser. I assumed that advertising on a website would be cheaper than a commercial on a network.

If anyone has some ideas or comments about this please share. I personally am taking the lack of reruns as a bad sign. What do you guys think?

By the way, maybe i am reading into the responses too much, but I just want to say that I think everything that has been done thus far in this campaign has surpassed expectations. And I do think this website is "kick-ass" for those who are fans of farscape. Any inference otherwise from my posting is me not including enough detail.

[Dominar of Action]

(((Huh))) Don't worry. All's good :)

I hear you about FS's visibility being pretty minimal on TV right now -- but I wouldn't take that as a sign of anything other than Skiffy's desire to bury it and wish we would all go away. But then, we already knew Sci Fi wasn't going to do anything to help the show, so their schedule change shouldn't have been a surprise. :grr:

However, I can imagine (in my unprofessional opinion :) ) that we'll see another strip of reruns at some point. After all, Skiffy has hours of programming to fill and they've already paid for the reruns. They've got only a bit more than a year left to use them, from what I understand.

So, if you're really interested in doing this, why not go ahead and contact cnn.com and/or some of the other suggested sites to get their pricing info. You can then present it to the CS forum and if people are interested, plans can begin to be made to have the ducks in a row to get it done when the reruns start up again.

Of course, as has been said, all this takes $$$. So the idea will have to compete with other ideas for advertising out there now -- check out the national TV advertising thread posted near the top of the CS forum.

Oh, and BTW ... WELCOME!!
:bounce:

[RustySlinky]

Hey Huh,

Here's the eency-weency part regarding initiative that hasn't been said yet about how things sometimes appear to get done around here-

Advice and analysis is good of course, if you've still got an idea so high up your mivonks that you're dying to champion through yourself come hell or high water-

God forbid naysayers here that get in your way !!!
and if it starts looking good, you'll find others pitching-in too

[blue]

Huh, you might want to take a look at this thread about organizing banner ads on the web--its always good to start with a look at what has been done before--some of the research on costs etc. have already been explored as well--and you might want to hook up with some of the people who were actively involved to discuss what might be done next:
http://www.watchfarscape.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5665