5 ms·

I built what I believe to be the most sane way to "advertise" something: Let people buy directly from an image. This solves the problem of people not interest

I built what I believe to be the most sane way to "advertise" something: Let people buy directly from an image. This solves the problem of people not interested in the content, because of its unobtrusive nature -- if they don't hover over an item within the image, it's as if the "advertisement" isn't there. Check out my demo (desktop only) at http://www.worldlifestyle.com/testpost http://www.worldlifestyle.com/testpost My website which you can sign up for the (free) beta at: http://pleenq.com http://pleenq.com

skykooler 10y ago
It also looks like a lot of extra work per image to set up all the regions.
- bazillion 10y ago
  It's extra work, but is more contextual. You could, for instance, link to wikipedia articles, imdb articles (for actors) etc. and not just link to ad content. Really what it does is help define what is inside an image.
  - protomikron 10y ago
    Although I despise ads, I have to admit your tech is nice. Do you do automatic image segmentation, or are these images "hand-labeled" (I can not imagine that would scale)? If it's automatic - is it calculated server-side or client-side?
    - bazillion 10y ago
      They're hand-labeled. In the future, I'm sure I'll be hiring a bunch of Google people to build the "automatic" part.
- jasonlotito 10y ago
  Not a lot of extra work when compared to the amount of work that goes into existing advertising campaigns.
- AJ007 10y ago
  This should be something that will improve over time with machine learning and can already be done right now.
jameskegel 10y ago
Stunning, I'll admit, but this can't be an easy or lightweight solution to implement, I'd imagine. Kudos either way, there aren't too many things that immediately made me lean toward the screen like that.
- bazillion 10y ago
  Thanks! It's not lightweight -- the average script include I have right now is around 280k. I'm going to be able to reduce it in the next few months to around 150k, I believe. Once downloaded, the processing of it itself is not too intensive.
  - jameskegel 10y ago
    Thank you for taking a moment to respond; if I can get another question in, can you tell me a bit about how this scales with, say 10 or 40 images on a page as far as filesize goes? 150k in the context of modern web pages is not too far off from being realistic as an ad solution, depending on how many pictures it takes to reach the tipping point of page load time.
    - bazillion 10y ago
      I have a test page that does 1000 images with 2-4 PLEENQs on each image, and performance is good with an 8-gig of ram mac mini and an iPhone 5 (my test platform for the mobile version). I do about 10 million impressions a day, and the request to the server is a pretty consistent ~200ms, along with an async load that won't affect overall page load.
      - jameskegel 10y ago
        That's not exactly answering the question I was asking, regarding file size.
        bazillion 10y ago
        Oh, I read that as performance on the page for some reason. File size is exactly the same regardless of how many images/PLEENQs.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
After allowing 23 scripts in NoScript, I still don't see anything but a mix of static and animated images. That's not typical in either number of scripts (huge) or brokenness. Attention-grabbing content but execution needs work. The "How It Works" on second link is well-done where I can see exactly what it's supposed to do. The feature itself is nice.
- bazillion 10y ago
  Please try going to https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/ https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover... and tell me if that first image shows up with hovers for you.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    On that one, I got a Pintrest symbol in upper right corner of the first, two images I tested after allowing a single script with main, site's, domain name in it. Clicking them created a popup asking for login info or something. I'm not a Pintrest user. Was that the intended behavior?
JohnJamesRambo 10y ago
I clicked your link and wanted to hate what you did, but I have to say I really like it.
- bazillion 10y ago
  Best comment I think I've ever gotten on it, thanks!
philliphaydon 10y ago
This is very similar (but far better done) to something I did about 8 years ago for a client while I was working in Australia. The idea was they had a photo of a bedroom and they could draw on top of the image to isolate items in the room that could be purchased. What I wrote was very very basic, but what you've done is far more impressive and awesome. Edit: This is something I wouldn't block (from what I currently see) unless it attempted to know everything about me. Damn tracking.
- bazillion 10y ago
  Thanks a lot for that! I think that's one of the core underpinnings -- advertising that brings a benefit, and therefore shouldn't be blocked with an ad-blocker. Hopefully, this is the direction advertising goes towards.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tiles 10y ago
I'm not seeing anything. Hovering over images doesn't work for me on any browser; what should I be trying?
- napworth 10y ago
  Disable your adblocker.
  - wmeredith 10y ago
    I'm having the same issue. My add blocker is turned off and I don't see anything when hovering over the images on that blog post.
    - napworth 10y ago
      Can confirm. Does not work on Chrome.
      - ryankennedyio 10y ago
        Works fine on chrome/OSX for me. Make sure you went to the right page (hangover things, not the girl doing yoga) Really, really great idea. This would be an absolutely fantastic addition to something like instagram.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bazillion 10y ago
  The publisher just disabled the tag on the page. Please go to: https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/ https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover...
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    Not bad! Unlike the hundred "link every keyword on a page to a tenuously related product" scripts out there, this actually adds value to the page, highlighting and identifying items in the photo on hover.
mandlar 10y ago
I don't know what I'm looking for in the demo. I turned off adblock and have hovered over the images but I'm not seeing anything. Maybe I have another plugin interfering. I'm using Chrome. The pleenq website demos the idea well though.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bazillion 10y ago
  Unfortunately, the publisher disabled the PLEENQ tag on that page (probably because of unknown lot of traffic to a test post!). Here's a better link: https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/ https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover...
  - avalaunch 10y ago
    I'm not seeing anything, but I'm on mobile. Does it only work on desktop? That seems like a pretty big deterrent to using it if so.
downandout 10y ago
FYI it appears to do nothing on an iPad, since there is no concept of "hovering". Haven't tested on a phone either, which could be a problem with the high tablet/mobile penetration these days.
- bazillion 10y ago
  I have it disabled for all mobile/touch type platforms. The demo will only work on desktop, unfortunately. I'll be enabling the mobile version(s) of the plugin, once I finish testing them out and creating a way for each website to choose which functionality type it wants to use on its page.
  - downandout 10y ago
    I'll definitely be watching for updates. The best ideas for increasing revenue on websites are usually a marriage of coding and real-world analysis of user intent and actions. This is a great example of that.
dingo_bat 10y ago
I feel kind of stupid but your demo link just shows me a blog about different workouts and it just shows regular images and gifs with no hover effects. Is it supposed to work on chrome? Edit: same behavior on edge.
- bazillion 10y ago
  Try going to https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/ https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover... -- the publisher disabled the PLEENQ script tag on the worldlifestyle demo page.
bazillion 10y ago
Oops guys! It looks like the publisher temporarily removed the PLEENQ script tag from that page. Go to https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/ https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover... for a better example. This is actually a real client's page, and shows how some websites use PLEENQ.
- russell_h 10y ago
  Neat. One suggestion: intuitively I felt like I needed to click on the popovers instead of on the underlying image. Permitting the user to move the mouse over the popover and click that as well might increase effectiveness for those who haven't seen this before.
  - bazillion 10y ago
    Great idea! I've been incorporating different styles of UI features that the website owner can enable/disable at will, so I'll add this one to them.
- noobermin 10y ago
  Given the approx. 90M people complaining about your original link, can you not edit your OP? Btw, it looks pretty cool.
  - bazillion 10y ago
    It doesn't allow me to edit my original post, unfortunately. I guess too much time has passed since I posted it.
    - pyre 10y ago
      You can only edit for ~2 hours after you post.
- andreygrehov 10y ago
  That's pretty cool. How do you detect product edges?
flanbiscuit 10y ago
interesting! my friend wanted to do something almost exactly like this but over video. They got a working prototype for it too.
pmlnr 10y ago
External JS dependency? It will be in all adblock databases in no time. Do this with HTML <map> and CSS :hover inline and it will bypass them; it would also make it work on nearly any browser.
rokhayakebe 10y ago
Buggy but very very very awesome.

skykooler 10y ago

It also looks like a lot of extra work per image to set up all the regions.

bazillion 10y ago
It's extra work, but is more contextual. You could, for instance, link to wikipedia articles, imdb articles (for actors) etc. and not just link to ad content. Really what it does is help define what is inside an image.
- protomikron 10y ago
  Although I despise ads, I have to admit your tech is nice. Do you do automatic image segmentation, or are these images "hand-labeled" (I can not imagine that would scale)? If it's automatic - is it calculated server-side or client-side?
  - bazillion 10y ago
    They're hand-labeled. In the future, I'm sure I'll be hiring a bunch of Google people to build the "automatic" part.
jasonlotito 10y ago
Not a lot of extra work when compared to the amount of work that goes into existing advertising campaigns.
AJ007 10y ago
This should be something that will improve over time with machine learning and can already be done right now.

jameskegel 10y ago

Stunning, I'll admit, but this can't be an easy or lightweight solution to implement, I'd imagine. Kudos either way, there aren't too many things that immediately made me lean toward the screen like that.

bazillion 10y ago
Thanks! It's not lightweight -- the average script include I have right now is around 280k. I'm going to be able to reduce it in the next few months to around 150k, I believe. Once downloaded, the processing of it itself is not too intensive.
- jameskegel 10y ago
  Thank you for taking a moment to respond; if I can get another question in, can you tell me a bit about how this scales with, say 10 or 40 images on a page as far as filesize goes? 150k in the context of modern web pages is not too far off from being realistic as an ad solution, depending on how many pictures it takes to reach the tipping point of page load time.
  - bazillion 10y ago
    I have a test page that does 1000 images with 2-4 PLEENQs on each image, and performance is good with an 8-gig of ram mac mini and an iPhone 5 (my test platform for the mobile version). I do about 10 million impressions a day, and the request to the server is a pretty consistent ~200ms, along with an async load that won't affect overall page load.
    - jameskegel 10y ago
      That's not exactly answering the question I was asking, regarding file size.
      - bazillion 10y ago
        Oh, I read that as performance on the page for some reason. File size is exactly the same regardless of how many images/PLEENQs.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

After allowing 23 scripts in NoScript, I still don't see anything but a mix of static and animated images. That's not typical in either number of scripts (huge) or brokenness. Attention-grabbing content but execution needs work. The "How It Works" on second link is well-done where I can see exactly what it's supposed to do. The feature itself is nice.

bazillion 10y ago
Please try going to https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/ https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover... and tell me if that first image shows up with hovers for you.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  On that one, I got a Pintrest symbol in upper right corner of the first, two images I tested after allowing a single script with main, site's, domain name in it. Clicking them created a popup asking for login info or something. I'm not a Pintrest user. Was that the intended behavior?

JohnJamesRambo 10y ago

I clicked your link and wanted to hate what you did, but I have to say I really like it.

bazillion 10y ago
Best comment I think I've ever gotten on it, thanks!

philliphaydon 10y ago

This is very similar (but far better done) to something I did about 8 years ago for a client while I was working in Australia. The idea was they had a photo of a bedroom and they could draw on top of the image to isolate items in the room that could be purchased. What I wrote was very very basic, but what you've done is far more impressive and awesome. Edit: This is something I wouldn't block (from what I currently see) unless it attempted to know everything about me. Damn tracking.

bazillion 10y ago
Thanks a lot for that! I think that's one of the core underpinnings -- advertising that brings a benefit, and therefore shouldn't be blocked with an ad-blocker. Hopefully, this is the direction advertising goes towards.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tiles 10y ago

I'm not seeing anything. Hovering over images doesn't work for me on any browser; what should I be trying?

napworth 10y ago
Disable your adblocker.
- wmeredith 10y ago
  I'm having the same issue. My add blocker is turned off and I don't see anything when hovering over the images on that blog post.
  - napworth 10y ago
    Can confirm. Does not work on Chrome.
    - ryankennedyio 10y ago
      Works fine on chrome/OSX for me. Make sure you went to the right page (hangover things, not the girl doing yoga) Really, really great idea. This would be an absolutely fantastic addition to something like instagram.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bazillion 10y ago
The publisher just disabled the tag on the page. Please go to: https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/ https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover...
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  Not bad! Unlike the hundred "link every keyword on a page to a tenuously related product" scripts out there, this actually adds value to the page, highlighting and identifying items in the photo on hover.

mandlar 10y ago

I don't know what I'm looking for in the demo. I turned off adblock and have hovered over the images but I'm not seeing anything. Maybe I have another plugin interfering. I'm using Chrome. The pleenq website demos the idea well though.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bazillion 10y ago
Unfortunately, the publisher disabled the PLEENQ tag on that page (probably because of unknown lot of traffic to a test post!). Here's a better link: https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/ https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover...
- avalaunch 10y ago
  I'm not seeing anything, but I'm on mobile. Does it only work on desktop? That seems like a pretty big deterrent to using it if so.

downandout 10y ago

FYI it appears to do nothing on an iPad, since there is no concept of "hovering". Haven't tested on a phone either, which could be a problem with the high tablet/mobile penetration these days.

bazillion 10y ago
I have it disabled for all mobile/touch type platforms. The demo will only work on desktop, unfortunately. I'll be enabling the mobile version(s) of the plugin, once I finish testing them out and creating a way for each website to choose which functionality type it wants to use on its page.
- downandout 10y ago
  I'll definitely be watching for updates. The best ideas for increasing revenue on websites are usually a marriage of coding and real-world analysis of user intent and actions. This is a great example of that.

dingo_bat 10y ago

I feel kind of stupid but your demo link just shows me a blog about different workouts and it just shows regular images and gifs with no hover effects. Is it supposed to work on chrome? Edit: same behavior on edge.

bazillion 10y ago
Try going to https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/ https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover... -- the publisher disabled the PLEENQ script tag on the worldlifestyle demo page.

bazillion 10y ago

Oops guys! It looks like the publisher temporarily removed the PLEENQ script tag from that page. Go to https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangoverkit/ https://www.theskinnyconfidential.com/2016/10/28/thehangover... for a better example. This is actually a real client's page, and shows how some websites use PLEENQ.

russell_h 10y ago
Neat. One suggestion: intuitively I felt like I needed to click on the popovers instead of on the underlying image. Permitting the user to move the mouse over the popover and click that as well might increase effectiveness for those who haven't seen this before.
- bazillion 10y ago
  Great idea! I've been incorporating different styles of UI features that the website owner can enable/disable at will, so I'll add this one to them.
noobermin 10y ago
Given the approx. 90M people complaining about your original link, can you not edit your OP? Btw, it looks pretty cool.
- bazillion 10y ago
  It doesn't allow me to edit my original post, unfortunately. I guess too much time has passed since I posted it.
  - pyre 10y ago
    You can only edit for ~2 hours after you post.
andreygrehov 10y ago
That's pretty cool. How do you detect product edges?

flanbiscuit 10y ago

interesting! my friend wanted to do something almost exactly like this but over video. They got a working prototype for it too.

pmlnr 10y ago

External JS dependency? It will be in all adblock databases in no time. Do this with HTML <map> and CSS :hover inline and it will bypass them; it would also make it work on nearly any browser.

rokhayakebe 10y ago

Buggy but very very very awesome.