NYT Firefox Campaign Raises $250,000

ScytheBlade1 writes "The Firefox full-page NYT ad campaign finished off today with an impressive $250,000 over 10 days. Impressive to say the least, and it goes to show just how much momentum Firefox has."

Congrats Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

And congrats and not being vulnerable to the latest IT URL spoofing flaw [netcraft.com]. That one's so easy even a kid can do it.

Another related article

[Anonymous Coward]

On the guy that came up with the idea [redherring.com], Rob Davis.

10 days, 10,000 names, $250,000

[helfen]

Notice that they were preparing for about 2,500 donors in 10 days at first. And at the end of the 10th day we have a donors from over 80 countries. Quite amazing.

Re:Congrats Firefox

[antifoidulus]

Oddly enough(ok so I'm bored), in the ancient Mac version of IE, that exploit doesn't work.....

Re:Congrats Firefox

[shish]

You can spoof the URL using onmouseover in any browser, what is the big deal?

This doesn't use onmouseover; it still works with scripting turned off entirely

Re:Whoah!

[ControlFreal]

A full-page ad in the NYT costs between $75k and $120k, depending on the page, and when it will be shown. The Firefox team have not chosen a particular day for the ad, but rather a time-window of ~10 days in which it will be shown once. This is cheaper.

I don't know where the rest of the money will go now. There are tentative plans, however, to raise similar campains in other countries if the ad proves to be a success. Maybe some of the excess money can be used for that.

It doesn't all go to the ad

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't remember, the original campaign was for 2500 people in 10 days (so we'll assume they'd raise about a quarter of the money ~$62,500) and even then they said not all of the money would go to the ad but to fund additional publicity for the launch. If we assume the ad costs the same, you see they probably have $200,000+ for other publicity... or a big slush fund.

See

[Tracer_Bullet82]

http://www.nytadvertising.com/was/displayads/pages /contentDisplayAds/0,1024,,00.html?l1Id=6&l2Id=115 0/ [nytadvertising.com]

Re:How about a campaign..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a very real bug, but it's sporadic. I have two computers here, one with XP and one with 2K. I copied the profile from XP to 2K. The XP one shows the bug, but the 2K one doesn't. It's part a Gecko bug, but it's also part bad HTML.

Do you live under a rock?

[tommck]

The New York Times is probably the most widely distributed newspaper in the world!

It's not just advertising in New York, Jeez!

Kids these days!

Re:This is fantastic news.

[slaad]

Not that New York is the only place on earth I'd want to advertise FireFox

The NY Times sees national distribution. It's one of the most read papers in the country. I know that someplace on spreadfirefox.com there is a faq that explains this and also mentions that they they may advertise in other areas (ie europe) in the future as well, and I'd love to link to it but it seems to have been hit by the slashdot effect already... :) And you're right, you can still contribute. They probably raised a lot more money than they need for the advertisement here. The extra just goes to helping out in other areas. You can always donate [mozilla.org] straight money, or like you said, buy a shirt. You can also contribute by spreading the word about firefox, posting flyers [spreadfirefox.com], and of course by using it.

Re:There is no big deal

[osmethnee]

Actually, I'll expand on that...

Having the status-bar and the link-target disagree is a non-event (and has been ever since 99% of people enabled javascript in their browser.)

A major event would be where the address bar and dislayed-url differ. That is not the case here.

Re:How about a campaign..

[shish]

The bug is like so (or I may be talking about a different bug, I'm not quite sure...): The page is loaded, the layout set in stone, and then any images that weren't quite ready get drawn on top. The problem is when the images that get drawn in the last stage are larger or smaller than expected, and they don't affect the layout. Hence images used for padding (a Very Bad Idea to begin with) sometimes mess up the layout if they don't load fast enough.

Re:Seems a shame to waste it on a newspaper ad

[Southpaw018]

It says in the redherring article referenced from SFX that the ad will be just under $50k. The rest will go straight back to Moz. Go Firefox!

Re:Seems a shame to waste it on a newspaper ad

[smoking2000]

That kind of money could be better used to finance developement.

They will, according to the interview with Rob Davis at redherring.com [redherring.com]:

To date, close to 10,000 people have funneled almost $250,000 through Mr. Davis' campaign into the Mozilla Foundation, the Mountain View, California, non-profit organization that is developing Firefox.

The ad will cost just under $50,000, and the left-over cash will be plowed back into the Mozilla Foundation.

Re:Whoah!

[ricotest]

Acocording to this article [redherring.com], the advert costs only $50,000. We already know that The Mozilla Foundation are getting discounts because of the time window, and also because of their non-profit status.

Re:How about a campaign..

[Val314]

FYI: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21752 7

Where did the internet go?

[yonatanh]

Yeah, just yesterday my sister asked me why I don't have the internet on my computer I replied to her by blatantly asking, "What the fuck are you talking about?" Of course her reply was where did that Internet Explorer icon go. Just to show you how IE is dominating the damn browser market, people don't even know there is other software that can be used to visit websites (other than AOL users).

Re:I havn't heard of this up until now...

[wdd1040]

Yes, you can always make a donation at their donation page [spreadfirefox.com].

Re:Why NYT?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would add that (besides US-only penetration) NYT has more international penetration than USA Today. Hopefully you haven't forgotten that there are lots of people outside the United States too.

Of course, the fact that they're putting this in NYT instead of, say, Time Magazine indicates that the ads are intended for the US, but I don't think there is a US newspaper better read outside the States than the NYT. Good call.

Re:Congrats Firefox

[cagliost]

You can spoof the URL using onmouseover in any browser, what is the big deal? Not true - in Firefox, you can disallow scripts access to the status bar.

Re:I think this is a step in the wrong direction

[_aa_]

You're right that the money cannot be simply given to the developers as many people donated specifically to have their name associated with this ad. However according to the faq, there is room for some of the money raised beyond the cost of the ad to goto their PR firm, other firefox launch related costs, and then possibly to developers.

Marketing is important when your goal is to profit. In fact it's crucial. But the goal [mozilla.org] of the mozilla foundation is not to profit. That's best left to Netscape.

If your goal is to encourage people to use firefox, then microsoft fixing their browser is about the worst thing that can happen. It would encourage everyone you spent tens of thousands of dollars converting to firefox to switch back. Quickly you decend into a marketing battle, which mozilla simply does not had the funds to fight.

And I am certainly aware of microsoft's campaigns against linux and apache. To my knowledge they have not targeted firefox or mozilla specifically. In my opinion, an ad campaign would make firefox a target.

bogie's quote seems to be speaking from the perspective of someone who's goal is to make money. Mozilla doesn't have any investors they need to answer to, they are next expected to turn a profit (in fact they are forbidden from turning a profit). If firefox has 10,000 users, or 10,000,000 users, mozilla is still a non-profit organization. Mozilla's mandate is not to take down microsoft, and I think that that mentality is actually counter productive to the cause. It's in the public's interest to have a diverse browser market. Competition does spawn innovation.

Don't expect microsoft to embrace competition anytime soon. Even though mozilla is not mandated to encourage competition, I would hope that they would respect that goal. A marketing campaign blasting their competitor is not in the public's interest, development and innovation is.

Re:FeedTheLizard.com

[el-spectre]

Mozilla _IS_ set to ba phased out, by Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.

The original plan was for Phoenix (at the time) to be an internal/testing name, with the gold product being called Mozilla 2. Firefox has good press now, so they're sticking with the name.

Re:Next step: Hire Ellen Feiss for a TV ad

[The-Bus]

For those that forgot who she is, the original Ellen Feiss fansite, EllenFeiss.net [ellenfeiss.net] details her story. Disclaimer: I know the guy who made that site.

In related news, I think it would be worthwhile for Firefox to advertise in the Wall Street Journal or the Economist as well, just because those two publications are read by decision makers in companies. Unfortunately, TV ads will run quite a bit more, but why not a SuperBowl ad? It's not until February. My guess is that it's probably a waste of money. If I were in charge, I would do an ad on The Economist, advertise on NPR (no one there likes businesses anyway), and then gather another round of funding this time from businesses, who can easily give $100-1,000, especially if it is to a non-profit, to have a ridiculous week-long blitz in the Ny Times, Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune.

Re:Do you live under a rock?

[Nexum]

You'll find that we Brits are very much a nation of newspaper lovers. Looking here [wikipedia.org] you can see that although we are but a nation of a mere 55m people, we have the top three newspapers in the world in terms of circulation.

That includes beating "The Times Of India", with a potential readership of over one billion into fourth place.

The New York Times comes in 8th place, with a circulation of 1.11 million.

Re:Do you live under a rock?

[double-oh three]

The International Herald Tribune is owned lock, stock and barrel by the New York Times and they both share a lot of the same articles. So when you see the IHT think NYT.

Re:Hehe

[De Lemming]

From the FAQ [spreadfirefox.com]:

How many names will fit in the ad?

A single full-length column of a newspaper has a few thousand words. Rest assured, we've done our homework. We will be able to accommodate several thousand names in a readable font size and still provide a very attractive and compelling advertisement. We have already mocked up some designs, and we will solicit input from the community about them in the coming weeks.

Re:Do you live under a rock?

[ArsenneLupin]

we have the top three newspapers in the world in terms of circulation.

If you look at that wikipedia page, you'll see that those top "newspapers" are actually tabloids. "The Times Of India" holds still the first place among the serious newspapers with the most readership. "The New York Times" hold place 5, whereas "The Daily Telegraph" (most read serious UK paper) holds only a distant 7...

Re:Do you live under a rock?

[ArsenneLupin]

And yes, the biggest tabloid (and "newspaper" in general) in Europe, by circulation is Germany's Bild-Zeitung [wikipedia.org]. In other news, there are more Windows users than Linux users. Ha!

Re:I think this is a step in the wrong direction

[ptlis]

It's a matter of degrees. Firefox is not perfect; there's alot stuff which it doesn't support yet, the important word being yet; I have every faith that any useful open standard will be embraced and incorporated into FF, whereas IE does a very shoddy job at supporting even old standards (CSS 2 etc) and Microsoft's done nothing to rectify this in many years...