Firefox New York Times Ad, Soon

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."

Too commercial?

[trilks]

They have to pay $130,000 if the ad is "too commercial"? How is that determined? And isn't a non-profit a non-profit, no matter what kind of ads they run?

Expect NYT sales to surge...

[GillBates0]

on that day by atleast a few thousand. Yet another instance of open source promoting business.

10,000 names??

[bazmail]

will there be any room left for branding and/or blurb?

Re:Instead of names

[Anonymous Coward]

That is actually a really nice idea, and a clever way to promote open source.
It would perhaps be better to have the source code in the advert, but the idea remains that they are free to do that kind of thing, as only open software can.

'Rendering' time is such a lame excuse

[Anonymous Coward]

This amount of time is ludicrous in this day and age. I'm not even trying to troll but I sure suspect they are using a mac or linux for their design needs. I highly doubt the entire print ad is being 'rendered' out of a 3d app. I think you are using the term rendered way too liberally. I think the correct term is pig-slow machine coupled with crap software. Get a box with 3 gig of ram and dual xeon hyperthreading cpus with a meg of cache each. Then tell me it takes 15 minutes. And yes, I am a professionally-employed graphic artist so I know what I'm talking about.

Re:Firefox Hurting Linux

[jvagner]

I think you're talking about corporate and intranet applications. I haven't used Windows or IE in years, and I can't think of one useful site I am unable to use because I surf exclusively in Mozilla/Firefox.

Marketshare would assume a commercial site; even my bank lets me use Firefox. .. Ah: I can think of one site that won't let me shop with Firefox -- Pitney Bowes (see sig). But I can complete my payments over the phone or through the mail, so it hasn't stopped me from using their service.

Timing

[telstar]

I'm curious about the timing of the ad. The last two weeks of the year are when most corporate executives take vacations ... meaning they may not keep up with news in the Times ... meaning if the goal is to convince these guys to use Firefox in their corporations, they may miss the target market entirely. I suppose you could make the case that these same guys now have more time to sit on a beach and read the Times, but has any thought been put into the timing of this thing?

Exposure

[zerosignal]

I wonder if the amount of press coverage they've had about the ad will give them more exposure than the ad itself.

I can already see how this will turn out

[suso]

10,000 names on a page are so many that practically none of them will be readable and it will create confusion by people reading the add wondering why there is soo much background in a full page add.

Re:I wonder...

[lilmouse]

<incenced response>You fool! It's not supposed to be a religious tablet!</incenced response>

Seriously, it's supposed to be like all advertising - getting the name out so that people are aware of it. People like the neighbors of a friend of mine, whose computer is soooooo slow because of adware, but didn't know there was an alternative to IE. If they see an ad like this, then a year from now, they might mention it to a friend "Oh, yeah, there's an alternative to IE....fire...something..." and the friend might find it. But the name is out there, and it will spread. Slowly, but it will spread. (Until it reaches critical mass, after which it will really take off!)

--LWM

Re:Firefox Hurting Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, gaming. It's pretty painful not to be able to play most games in Linux. We have more of our share than first person shooters, though. :) Also, if it weren't for the video card on my laptop, I'd be playing NWN.

I may soon inherit another PC and am seriously contemplating keeping it Windows-based for games and some web dev. As for a general advantage, Windows still has a better software-install system. You run it, it installs, you're happy. With Linux, sure you've got various package managers but it's still a hunt for compatibility. Of course you can do what firefox does and install it in ~/ -- which I'm not too fond of.

I prefer and use linux on my main PC...but occasionally have to borrow a Win32 machine to open stuff and access some windows-only cruft.

i don't get this.

[jimmyp9999]

I don't understand why Firefox is blowing 50K to put an ad in the NYT. A single ad is not going to cause anyone to adopt the browser - it is well known that ads take a lot of impressions to get someone to get action on it.

As a "thank you" to the community it is pretty weak as well. It thanks only the NYT bottom line.

A well-hyped $50K 1.0 launch party would be a better way to generate press and motivate people to switch to the browser. It would get far wider coverage than a single page in one edition of the NYT.

Re:Too commercial?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Not sure why the price tag is an issue since according to reports, they took in better than $250,000. Wonder where all that moo-lah is collecting interest?

Re:Firefox Hurting Linux

[RealAlaskan]

I can think of one site that won't let me shop with Firefox -- Pitney Bowes

Look into Neopost, Hasler and Postalia (now Francotype?). The secret is to switch from one to another every few years, so that you are always getting their low, introductory rates. If you're using the small, one-piece machines, that's eminently practical.

Man just run it already

[jayhawk88]

...and go with a "And Many, Many Others" tag at the end of the listing or something like that.

If they're the kind of people giving money to an open source browser project, I doubt they're going to raise much of a fuss if their name doesn't get specifically mentioned.

Re:Exposure

[arvindn]

You mean like the Apple 1984 ad [wikipedia.org]. I think there's a serious chance that something like that might happen.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:name branding?

[hackstraw]

I personally believe that the Firefox name kinda sucks for "normal" users. We all know what it is, but "Internet Explorer" is fairly descriptive. Albeit not creative, like most of Microsoft's product names, but easy to remember and intuitive.

I have a public account on my Mac for my friends and they could not figure out which thingy "got them on the internet". I created an alias for Camino, a Mac native port of Mozilla, on the desktop named "Internet", and the problem went away.

Re:Power of the masses

[Bluetrust25]

While Opera has some interesting features like mouse gestures, it's really hard to imagine that anyone who's spent any amount of time using both would actually prefer Opera. I spent years using Opera as my main browser. I even purchased it.

When Firefox came along though, it won me over. It simply doesn't crash like Opera does.

Norway

[Earlybird]

In related news, this poster is appearing all over Oslo, Norway [spreadfirefox.com]. Spotting it the other day was one of those unwordly moments where you're seeing a little-known niche thing becoming mainstream. Then yesterday I had a meeting with the IT manager at a government agency; those guys have always been Internet Explorer users, and now Firefox was running on the guy's desktop. The fact that Firefox is actively competing with IE now is going to be good for the Internet.

One ad is useless

[DogDude]

I can tell ya', one ad is a waste of money, unless it's absolutely shocking and controversial. Why? People are bombarded by ads every day. I have advertising salesmen who tell me not to bother with one ad because studies show that people in this day and age need to see a marketing message, I believe, more than 10 times before they actually remember it, or it sinks in. Honestly, I wouldn't ever remember it. This is more of a PR stunt, actually, but really, for anybody not in the circle of super geeks, they won't know what in the hell it is, and they won't remember. Hence, this will be a big waste of money.

Re:Too commercial?

[91degrees]

It's probably determined more or less as they see fit.

The NYT is ultimately only responsible to its owners. They can decide Disney is a non-profit entity if they so choose, or decide that a company that rich can afford to pay double. There's no need for checks and balances. If the advertisers feel hard done by, they go to a competitor.

Re:Timing

[john_uy]

firefox is not enterprise friendly. there is even no msi installer to be deployed in the corporate intranet (official from mozilla.) there is no available group policy object for firefox that can be integrated with active directory. so they have not yet thought of actually deploying it in big corporate environments.

Re:Firefox Hurting Linux

[pipingguy]

Doesn't the latest XP service pack disable popups in IE by default? From what I've read, popups are the most profitable methods of advertising as well as being the most annoying. In order to block other advertisements with FF the user has to act independently with extension installs and most people probably won't bother

Re:Too commercial?

[Doctor Crumb]

since they're actually a non-profit, they have to follow rules about how it can be spent. The extra money raised will probably go towards other advertising, or bug bounties, or any of the other worthwhile uses that help make firefox a better browser. They've already shown that they can find creative ways to spend their money; I imagine they will continue to do so.

Re:10,000 names??

[factoryjoe]

I originally wanted to get the ad out to the community for review, but there were a number of complicating factors... and now that we're almost ready, I think that it actually works to our advantage to make it a surprise. I've had a lot of eyes from the immediate Mozilla family look it over (mostly the core developers and the good folks at SilverOrange) and we think that the ad stands up well and will be well-received by the community.

In the interest of process and history, I'd love to post all the revisions that the ad has gone through so far once it runs, starting with my initial sketches to the final piece... Excellent idea! Thanks!

Re:10,000 names??

[sweede]

I have to ask, what file format are you using to create the file that takes 15 minutes to render a single page?

I would assume you would be using standard postscript or PDF, but nothing we do at work (i work in prepress) takes more than 15 minutes to render (even an 8 page imposition) except for DSC 2.0 files. They can take 15 minutes for a 8x10.5 to an hour or more to render even a single 19x30 poster.

Re:Checks and balances?

[cheekyboy]

Microsoft will probably spend $9billion to buy 51% share in NYT, then refuse the adds.

Put it in EUROS or GOLD

[cheekyboy]

If they put 250k in euros now, then when the $$$ goes down, they can transfer back and make even more of a profit.

At the least hedge it by putting 30% in USA gold certificates at kitco.com and 30% in Euro banks, and 30% in USA cash funds earning SFA.

Re:10,000 names??

[factoryjoe]

Well, I was able to get an Adobe Engineer (thanks Dave!) on IM today and he showed me the error of my ways... Apparently Illustrator CS introduced a hidden feature known as the "Opacity Mask" which solved add my problems... Rendering time is now neglible... NYTimes here we come!