The AskJack web site "lives and breaths" only because of revenue generated through on screen advertising.

AskJack's primary source of context adverts is Google Adwords and Mirago PPC search results displayed using the AskJack Research Tool: www.askjack.co.uk/search/london+nightclubs a very quick way to get filtered search results and further research options.

Results from in-depth research and development by 32 Corners Ltd (owners of AJ) carried out during the last year, has revealed a certain distaste for "in-your-face" advertisements and a certain blindness to text ads by a significant percentage of visitors. The evidence for this can be calculated through failing revenues and less time being spent on information pages.

A survey of fifty regular Internet users found that these are three most hated forms of online advertising:

• Floating ad layers that mask the important page information and require a click to close the ad. Often this will trigger a "pop-under" new web page to open in the background.
• Pop-under or pop-over pages opening as new browser windows.
• Animated banners flashing at a frequency rate that could cause headaches or epileptic fits.

Making Money Online Can be Hard Work for Ardvarks

Most people contact in the survey didn't seem to mind some advertising being displayed in a web page, providing it didn't overwhelm the content and was at least relevant to the information being presented.

Blinkx.com, the online video search engine has a PPC program similar to the contextual ad system used by Adsense Video. Blinkx claim to be able to deliver ads that match video content in a non intrusive way. It is up-to the web site owner to make sure videos that any displayed videos are actually relevant to page content.

This article aims to explore the way Blikx ads actually work, the set-up process and ways to make additional revenue.

Snipped From the Blinkx Ad-Hoc Welcome Page

Make money every time you share a video on your blog, website or social networking profile. Sound good to you? It's easy to do! Our clever technology matches relevant, in-video text ads to any video. Whenever someone clicks on an ad in your video, you make half the cash!

The signup process was very quick. All that's required at the initial stage is a Pay Pal account email address and then you're ready to go!

After logging into my new account Blinkx suggested this video to use as a starting point to learning how the account works and various ad features that can be tweaked.

Joomla Issues and Work Around

There is an excellent Mambot called MosSnippet that can be downloaded for free which, inserts snippets of code that normally would cause code errors in standard Joomla pages. This is probably one of the best little enhancements to the Joomla core program and well worth adding to your Mambot list.

MosSnippet 1.01 is a plugin (mambot) to insert text, html or php code in content. Now you don't have to worry about the wysiwig editor sabotaging your precious code!

You can create up to 30 snippets using the fields to the right. You insert the snippets in content by referring to the number or an optional name. When processed, the tags will be replaced with the snippet in question. Text and html code will be inserted unaltered, while php code will be interpreted. © 2006-2007 by Martin Larsen - all rights reserved

http://www.kreacom.dk/mambots/mossnippet.html

What is the blinkx AdHoc widget?

The blinkx AdHoc widget allows regular online users to add advertising to videos they embed online. When viewers watch the videos, they are shown the ads. If the ads are clicked on, the user is diverted to a URL of the advertiser's choice and the advertiser's budget is depleted by a single cost-per-click charge. Thanks to AdHoc's targeting, widget users only get relevant, useful ads, and advertisers only have to pay when their ad actually delivers a user.

You can find out more about the blinkx AdHoc widget in this FAQ.

Getting a Video to Embed

Sourcing a video to use in the Ad-Hoc program is not at all straight forward. First of all, Blinkx advises users to "go to a video sharing site and get the embed code".

I went to myspace.com and searched through the available videos for "Malta", as I'm visiting the Island in March and I already have an article published about Malta in the AJ web site... the search returned some good hits with one about diving in Malta being the best in my opinion.

This is were the problems started.

Myspace.com provided direct links to the video, but only when it's hosted on their web site.

The Ad-Hoc program requires some embed code to modify and insert their/your ads.

There is a work around, but you have to join myspace.com - find a video - click the add-to-blog button and then scrape out the embed code.

This is an example for the Malta Dive Video provided by myspace for insertion into a blog page hosted by them (you have to pick it out from a maze of other code):

<object enableJSURL="false" enableHREF="false" saveEmbedTags="true" allowScriptAccess="never" allownetworking="internal" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="never" allownetworking="internal" height="386" width="480" data="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="never" />
<param name="allowNetworking" value="all" />
<param name="movie" value="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf" />
<param name="flashvars" value="m=4637260&v=2&type=video" />
</object>

I then copied the code over to the Ad-Hoc program and this made some new embed code that, with a bit of luck will carry some form of advertising that I will eventually get paid for.

The whole process is a little clunky and I now have ANOTHER blog this time setup with Myspace. However, the problems with that outfit will have to be reported in another article.

Anyway, the Malta Dive Video is now showing HERE... why not give it a go?

Time will tell, but I find the Adsense Video Ads to be much easier to setup and maintain.

OK, my next step is to find a few videos and embed them in a content page, probably a destination article.

More later...