Thanks Mark. We would be happy to contribute financially if you were going ahead with something like that. You can email me at djudah@herbeire.ie if you would like to discuss it further.

Noted Thanks.

I'm guessing TechJoomla's Social Ads would be a good fit once they release a version that works with EasySocial. I've used it on a number of projects ... great extension:

http://techjoomla.com/socialads.html?view=xml

Hi Justin,

I know about them but no so sure of them as a company. I fine their support poor and had a bad experience with Invitex.

Thanks David,

I don't recall using their support but good to know.

I think they are pretty good to be honest and if you guys have any problems with them, let me know and I will drop them a line or two

Sounds good. Thanks Mark!

Hi Mark,

Do you know if they are planning integration with EasySocial? if so, do they have some kind of time frame? I presume they will be dependant on 1.3 to come out for the 'Tag Custom Field' to further enhance user data.

Just went to their 'demo' area for Social Ads and it will not let me try anything after logging in. It is such a worry when a site demo is not working. I am sorry but I do not have a good feeling about them. Maybe i am spoilt with Stackideas service but the gap between the two companies is worryingly large.

If I recall correctly, they are integrating Social Ads with EasySocial but perhaps let me get someone here

Hello Everyone !

Let me shed some light on various Areas.

A. SocialAds Easy Social Integration
Yes SocialAds is doing a EasySocial Integration . In fact it is fully functional with the Alpha of EasySocial we are using currently that has changes needed. So this will be released as soon as the EasySocial release that we have dependencies on is released. Additional features with 1.3 & ahead will be continuously integrated with upcoming versions of SocialAds to bring righter integration.

B. Demo Issues..
Sorry guys the demo refresh system is down. We will get it up in a day & you should be able to check it. I will post an update here once done..

C. Support Issues with Invitex
@David I am sorry if you had issues with our Support ! Usually our customers are pretty happy with support.. However i would love to work with you to find the gap & bridge the issues you had with Invitex. Please email me direct on parth.lawate@techjoomla.com & i will see that any issues you have are sorted out. We are big fans of StackIdeas & if you find we are falling behind on support, we will do our best to get our act cleaned up !

We are always striving to improve our products & our support & all the feedback is always welcome.

Thanks for updating Parth We hope that all the support issues will be sorted out and it's probably just some misunderstanding I guess. Looking forward for better partnerships in the near future

If there were a Joomla support Leaderboard plugin we would surely see Stack Ideas is on top However, I am also a satisfied Techjoomla customer using a number of their products that integrate with ES. I'm pleased with both the quality of their products and responsiveness to customer support queries made via the "Support Ticket" link off their user menu.

Hello,

If i may comment on social ads .. here are some of the comments

unfortunately most advertising components still bound to work in module positions which is not the greatest method anymore specially most of our websites are responsive now .. look at how facebook and twitter use promoted posts/tweets which comes not on the sides .. it comes within and between content. this has so many advantages

1- the chances for users to see the ads are much higher ( customers will be happier to know their ads are actually are seen)
2- the sides are no longer filled with ads
3- works better with responsive designs where in mobiles you don't have sides and displaying the ads at top is annoying


I really think social ads and other components need to look at better solutions and adapt to the change. Promoted ads is the way to go now

Regards,

Thanks for sharing Muhanad

Hey Muhanad !

Thanks for your comments ! Can you tell us more on how Promoted Ads could be used ? Besides the activity stream position of course ..

Good points Muhanad.

Hi Parth,

if you mean locations by "how they can be used" then this needs to be really thought of, for example you can't have those ads appear in a module position withtin the stream, then we are going to go back to the same problem which is a specific place for ads where people tend to get used to and eventually ignore. I'm not sure how facebook/twitter does it smartly

the same logic will be applied to easyblog ( ads between blog posts ) and easydiscuss ( ads between discussions ) and so on for the rest of other components ..

yes the development will be a bit harder since you now need to work around different joomla components but i really feel that banners on the side of a website is not as effective as before. simply because companies will now ask you now "oh what happens to my banner in mobile view" and you wouldn't tell them oh the banner will show up in the bottom!


you have good relations with stackideas who now have a social package (easysocial, easyblog and easydiscuss) you can start brainstorming with your team and stackideas on how to come up with an intelligent system that promote ads to the correct target audience without getting them to really hate it.

i love how facebook does the promoted groups (pages) and you can actually use that as well since easysocial has groups..


I didn't get into deep thinking about how this might all work, but if you oneday to consider it, I'm willing to research this for you, ask some expert in online advertising and help you out:)


Regards,

Hi Muhanad,

In fact it should not be a major issue to show Ads in between activity stream listings.. The next version of SocialAds will have Responsive Ads btw..

Infact one easy way is to have the ability render modules after each post/activity stream item.. This can be done pretty easily with a layout override.. I think i had seen a site that was using SocialAds like that..

Twitter has a pretty good explanation of their "Promoted Tweets" and how they work. What that article doesn't mention explicitly but must certainly be the case is the use of 1) analysis of users prior status, search, followers, following in order to determine, for some types of promoted tweets, the appropriate recipients for these promoted tweets and 2) analysis of the users profile. It's also clear that this type of advertising must be done carefully so you don't spoil the well.

I bet there would be some high-value approaches that could incorporate the ability for ES site owners to create and read the customizable member profiles as a way to get granular, actionable targeting data "who would be most likely to be interested in this promoted message?"

Even more valuable would be a means to share awareness of member location information when users access ES from their mobile.

Hey, @Parthe, have some aptitude for that?

Hi Eileen !

Actually with SocialAds 'Targeting Plugins' Its possible to build targeting based on virtually any aspect.. Standard out of the box demographic targeting will be coming with the next Socialads & Easy Social version.. And that's pretty cool in itself..

But if you want to do some really cool high tech stuff, Targeting Plugins are the way to go.. You can do any kind of analysis in the plugin & target by that.. Stuff like Target to Users have More than X friends having more than Y Posts on their Activity stream. Or Show to Users who are friends with X etc.. Practically anything in your database or even external APIs..
Yes it will take some development.. but it will allow you to do some really cool stuff..

We had built one for a client that checked their Past buying behavior on the site in Quick2Cart & the Site subscription system if i recall it right.. And it would let advertisers target users who had spent between X & Y $ on the site.. It had a lot of custom site specific stuff.. so we never released it.. But things like that can be done..

Parth Lawate wrote:

Hi Muhanad,

In fact it should not be a major issue to show Ads in between activity stream listings.. The next version of SocialAds will have Responsive Ads btw..

Infact one easy way is to have the ability render modules after each post/activity stream item.. This can be done pretty easily with a layout override.. I think i had seen a site that was using SocialAds like that..

what do you mean by responsive ads? you mean the module will adapt to screen size only?

Can you explain further what you mean by rendering modules after posts ?

Regards,

@Muhanad,

Yes Responsive Ads means that the Modules & the images & Ads inside will adapt to screen size ..

Typically extensions like EasyBlog for instance ( Mark correct me if i am wrong) Will have a 'OnAfterPostDisplay' trigger Or you can override the Layout of the blog to user Joomla's Load Module position rendering to render any Module there.. This needs a tiny bit of development..

Once you do this, you can create a new Zone in SocialAds & publish that module in the position.. This position will show after every post & SocialAds will be able to show Ads via the same..

Just some ideas Parth, in EasySocial we have a trigger for preparing activity stream. You don't really need to override layouts to add these adds, just attach your own stream item "html codes" of the content to stream items

@Parthe thank you for the information, I hadn't read your product information and didn't know about "Targeting Plugins". It will be interesting to see what develops when combining capabilities such as that in SocialAds (including access/integration with external APIs) with a newly created ES app that could offer promoted posts. That is really where niche social can win against the walled garden known as Facebook.

BTW, in looking over your posts I see you've just released a JGive Beta, one of your products that we use, that adds EasySocial mapping field support for Auto-filling donation forms. Way to go and build "best practice" ES support for your customers. Clearly you guys are committed to supporting ES in your products.

Another theory of placement could still use a module position. (Muhanad is probably thinking "no way man"). What if there was a module position on ES that was placed inside the stream and could be controlled through an option to show X number of posts down. In addition to this we could have another option near by that allowed you to set the ad limit (could be infinite) and the number of posts down before displaying another ad. I know, radical idea. But in theory it would work.

I personally don't have much use for this, but I see how I might need it in the future and certainly know that other users of ES would benefit from this.

Hey Everyone.. An update you will love !

SocialAds 3.0 with EasySocial Support is here ! Know more about it here : http://techjoomla.com/socialads/maximizing-your-advertising-real-estate-with-socialads-3-0.html
You can see the demo here : http://demos.techjoomla.com/easysocial/

P.S. Sorry for the cross posting on 3-4 posts ! There were more than one about SocilalAds !

Hi Parth,

Thanks for the sharing