Firefox New York Times Ad, Soon 389
An anonymous reader submits "CNet has an update on the status of the New York Times Firefox ad. According to the article, the delays are largely because of the decision to go with 10,000 names rather than the original 2500. The amount of content means each change to the ad requires 15 minutes of rendering. They also must be careful in crafting the ad, so that stay on the advocacy side of things. As a non-profit, they can still qualify for the under $50,000 rate, but if the ad is too commercial, they would need to pay the $130,000+ business rate. They say they're close to finishing, and the ad should run by mid-December, or at the latest, by Christmas. Firefox is also close to 10,000,000 downloads in the first month of release."
If they mention using Firefox... (Score:5, Informative)
Just because they're a non-profit doesn't make them a good cause. If they advocate using more standard compliant browsers rather than just Firefox or Mozilla browers they're more likely to qualify as an advocacy group rather than commercial entity. But based on the promotional drive I don't see how they can not mention Firefox directly.
Joseph Elwell.
15 minutes? (Score:3, Informative)
What're they using, a PII-400???
Re:Expect NYT sales to surge... (Score:3, Informative)
Generally the wholesale price of a newspaper just barely covers the cost of paper, ink, and distribution. Advertisers (like the firefox project) cover the costs of content and infrastructure -- newsgathering, layout, printing plants, plus a healthy profit margin for the publisher.
Re:15 minutes? (Score:1, Informative)
1. Your company is not the New York Times, and I doubt you have the imaging technology they do.
and
2. Calling 10,000 names from a database, justifying evenly, rendering down to postcript for a newspaper sized sheet and having room for the standard logo/disclaimer will certainly take at least 15 minutes in a professional environment (god knows I've spent enough time waiting around in Crystal Reports).
Re:Power of the masses (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why now? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Too commercial? (Score:3, Informative)
The Times' is just trying to give charitable organizations a break on price, and their criteria seems to be very subjective. If it were set in stone they wouldn't have misused phrases like 'non-profit'.
Re:It's completely the opposite. (Score:2, Informative)
--
http://www.ontographics.com/ [ontographics.com]
Re:i don't get this. (Score:5, Informative)
1. The ad itself has already gotten $50K worth of coverage across the internet.
2. Firefox is not spending any money. People donated over $250,000 to Firefox because they wanted their name in an ad. So they spent the $50K on the ad, as promised, and held onto $200K for other ad campaigns.
As a "thank you" to the community it is pretty weak as well. It thanks only the NYT bottom line.
This was never offered as a thank you to the community. This ad was paid for by the community. Why would we thank ourselves? This ad is meant, pure and simple, as a way to get NYT readers to wonder how in the hell a program can be so good that it got 10,000 people to donate money to advertise it.
It has already worked, and it hasn't even run in the fucking paper yet!
A well-hyped $50K 1.0 launch party would be a better way to generate press and motivate people to switch to the browser.
This is why you are posting to slashdot instead of handling marketing for any products.
It would get far wider coverage than a single page in one edition of the NYT.
You mean like multiple postings on slashdot, CNET, and other highly trafficked internet sites? Oh wait... that's what has happened with this ad campaign.
Re:I can already see how this will turn out (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too commercial? (Score:4, Informative)
Rob
Re:I can already see how this will turn out (Score:2, Informative)
Rob Davis
Re:Press Resolution (Score:1, Informative)
Of course other things affect legibility
I would think that something in the neighborhood of 3 point type would still be legible
Re:Firefox Hurting Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Whoa, thanks for the info! World of Warcraft is fully supported, and Shattered Galaxy and FF XI may work! I may be able to switch to Linux after all!
Re:Power of the masses (Score:2, Informative)
Ad already ran in Germany (Score:5, Informative)
Now, quite a lot of people tried to post this on Slashdot, but for some reason, these stories seem to have been rejected wholesale. I fail to see the reasoning behind this: Being U.S. centered is one thing, trying to supress the first example of an ad that the world has been holding its breath for quite another. It would be nice if the editors forced themselves to give a reason when they rejected postings or at least created a section where people can look at them.
Re:Timing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Power of the masses (Score:3, Informative)
No it isn't.
I still use Opera in Win&Linux on fast&slow machines for three big reasons:
The only thing I use FireFox for is web development and viewing flash and other embedded media (w/ the MPlayer plugin [sourceforge.net]).
Re:I can already see how this will turn out (Score:2, Informative)
Chris
Re:10,000 names?? (Score:5, Informative)
The ad is 13" x 21" [nytadvertising.com]. The font I'm using is Univers 67 Bold Condensed for the names. They're set at 4.5pt/4.6pt, tracking set to -25. I have enough room for 1.75" of white space on the page.
Since I'm designing it, I didn't do exactly what you would do, but you've got the right idea.
Chris
FFDeploy (Score:4, Informative)
http://firefox.dbltree.com/