When I set out to test BuySellAds.com and it’s marketplace, I was rather skeptical to say the least. However last night the first ad on this website was sold using BuySellAds.com and I would like to take this opportunity to thank A-List Sopaces- a website designed to promote residential real estate in New York City.

Thank You A-List Spaces!

Yesterday, Google announced that they are testing new ad formats that among other things will include video. This is how they explained:

Text is often useful, but sometimes videos and pictures are a more effective way to receive information. For example, if you want to learn a magic trick, a video showing you how to perform the trick is likely the best result. So over the past few years, we’ve blended videos, images, maps and more into the search results on Google.com.

While I have seen many Google video ads on different websites and blog I have yet to see one of these ads in the search results. But according to Official Google Blog US residents have seen these ads:

AdWords advertisers had an option to create video ad for quiet some times. It would be however difficult for real estate agents to benefit from these video ads in the search results because the longest ad that you can create for your AdWords campaign cannot exceed 120 seconds. Hardly enough time to make a quick video tour of your listing! I am sure however that many creative and innovative real estate agents can use these video ads to promote their real estate business.

Having tried a dozen of different ad managing systems, ranging from WordPress Plugins to Google Ad Manager I am giving BuySellAds.com a spin.

BuySellAds.com is an advertising marketplace for small to medium sized website owners and publishers. Once approved, which takes about 24 hours, you can create adzones for your website or blog and add them to your website by simply copying and pasting code. If you blog or website is powered by WordPress, you may also consider using BuySellAds WordPress Plugin by Thaya Kareeson of Omninoggin.com. I personally have not tried the plugin myself yet, however I am considering using it in the future. The plugin includes ati-adblock measures to prevent AdBlock as well as other similar software from blocking advertisements from Buy Sell Ads.

The user interface on BuySellAds.com is rather straight forward and it took me no more than 20 minutes to create and implements ad zones for this blog. Visit Go Beyond MLS ad listing page on BuySellAds.com to see more details about ads available on this blog. The listing page provides some useful information for potential advertisers, such as Alexa Traffic Rank, Compete Rank, Twitter Subscribers etc.

One of the reasons I have decided to try BuySellAds.com is that they have decent marketplace which is very easy to use by potential advertisers to find and purchase ads on desired websites and blogs.

Should you decide to give BuySellAds.com your payout will be 75%. For example if the cost of your ad is $10 ($10 is the minimum you can price your ads by the way) your pay out will be $7.50. You can choose the payment option to be PayPal, Check or Wire Transfer.

If you have used the BuySellAds.com for your website as well I would love to know your experience with them, so don’t be shy – leave a comment!

UPDATE May13, 2010: Things pertaining to LeapFish.com, their founders and management, along with related startups are no longer of interest to me, therefore no further comments are allowed on this post. There are also more reliable sources out there (such as Better Business Bureau) to help you make an informed decision about LeapFish.

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

Soon after discussing the use of framesets by newly relaunched LeapFish I received a question from dozen of readers and visitors asking me how they can prevent their website from “being framed” by other websites.

To prevent your website from being from being viewable in a frame of another website you can add the piece of the following code just above </head> tag on your website:

Before you do it you need to really be sure it is what you want it. There are many good websites out there that use frames to view your website- StumbleUpon is one of those good sites.

The above code also relies on whether or not your visitors browser is configured to support Javascript, you would be surprise how many users out there do not enable Javascript support on their browsers.

The above Javascript code “forses” user’s browser to open your page in it’s own window. Before my previous post I have never considered using it on my website and still do not think there are any huge benefits from implementing it on yours.

I would like to hear what you have to say. What are the reasons for using the above code? If you don’t recommend to use it – why not?

Of course I would also love to hear about any other way to “kill frames” – please share them in the comments if you know any.

If you are interested to find out more about LeapFish I highly recommend LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau.

UPDATE May13, 2010: Things pertaining to LeapFish.com, their founders and management, along with related startups are no longer of interest to me, therefore no further comments are allowed on this post. There are also more reliable sources out there (such as Better Business Bureau) to help you make an informed decision about LeapFish.

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

Update Nov. 9, 2009: It appears that LeapFish is no longer using framesets on their website.

A mention by US Today, stream of hundreds of Tweets , mentioned by hundreds of blogs, a “cutting edge” video on youtube- LeapFish.com relaunch can certainly be seen as enormous success, except…

The leading technology blogs continue to give LeapFish.com nothing short of a “cold shoulder”.

All the buzz surrounding the relaunch is focused on how sexy and nice looking the new website is, no one seems to be trying to “flip beyond the cover page”.

I would like to write about LeapFish’s implementation of framesets on their pages that may actually spook an unseasoned Internet user into believing that they are visiting unsecured websites.

If you search LeapFish for “Read Write Web” for example, the website returns nice clean results with the most relevant link in number one position:

Considering the average user expectation, most of us would expect to land on http://www.readwriteweb.com/ – it is however not the case with LeapFish. After clicking the the link you end up on a nice lookng LeapFish page which embeds (via frameset) the content from The Read Write Web and the LeapFish bar at the bottom of the page:

While visitors to The Read Write Web may not care at all. Visitors to websites like Amazon can get confused and and may be led to believe that shopping on Amazon and other websites are no longer secure. Let me show you an example of what I mean. The following shot is of my Amazon account page while accessing the website directly (typing http://www.amazon.com into my browser):

The HTTPS as well as the lock icon are the basic signs by which an average internet can identify whether or not website is secure.

Now the screenshot of the same page but via frameset on LeapFish.com:

Both HTTPS and lock icons are missing. And the URL clearly says you are still on LeapFish.com. Even though I consider myself an above average Internet user, before I logged into my Amazon account via the frameset on LeapFish I had to check the code of the page first:

I wanted to know if my Amazon login info is safe with LeapFish. How many users do you think will do that?

Potential Issues With Google?

AdSense users can tell you how tough Google is when it comes to enforcing terms and condition and how easy it is to get banned. Google Search API TOS do not address the use framesets- so if you know if use of framesets allowed please enlighten me:

If you are interested to find out more about LeapFish I highly recommend LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau.