Everything now goes on the front page, and the topics have been slimmed down.

Hey kids. I’m doing a bit of spring cleaning that hopefully will help people be less confused with all the choices, choices when they attempt to post something. Simplifying step#1 – everything now goes on the front page (well, except adforum posts). This is partly to make the full enchilada feed carry everything we post (it only carries front page posts), and partly to show new visitors that indeed there’s new stuff here all the time.

This makes our little ‘sections’ in the left hand menu work a little better too. Want only the ‘blog’ type news and gossip? Adland it is then. Want to check if your commercial, radio ad or poster/ambient has hit the site yet? Well there you go. And even though I admit I don’t post many Badlanders these days, Badland also carries recently banned ads news.

Our odd little collection of topics had grown far too organic and strange, we even had names like “marquis de sad” just because Alex thought it was funny at some point. This doesn’t make much sense when you are posting something though, so we’ve slimmed it down to the following (for ‘story’ posts): Ad awards and meetups, marrying ‘awards’ and ‘networking/datespecific’, ad gossip, Adland exclusive merging ‘scoop’ with our interviews and spotlights on, adrants, advertising jokes – anything funny can go here. Advertising news – this one ate a bunch of other badly named topics, it might make sense to sort it into subtopics such as PR, or copywriting down the line – but right now we need a catch all term and this is it. announcement – a place where you announce stuff like mergers and new jobs. contest & games – sometimes it’s our competition, other times it’s a game somewhere else we want you to see. Marketing mishaps, yeah when things go wrong. Viral or youtube embedded films and other types of virals. Web & Banners, new developments on the web is advertising too.

You probably won’t be posting in the following topics, Press clipping about Adland, is our scrap book of Adland’s 15 megabytes of fame. Site news about Adland is where I bore y’all with posts like this. And reviews superbowl bonanza changed it’s name to superbowl commercials reviews & news because that is what it is.

I’m also still working on making it possible for adgrunts to upload their own work for automagick postings – just like the one step mp3 upload and post of Radio ads that even my mother managed to figure out how to use (though that says nothing has she’s had a computer-related career, heh).

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Removing comments only feed.

I’ve removed the comments only RSS feed, as it confused the hell out of automagick scraper do-dahs such as Technorati and Snap. Since nobody was really using it anyway, I don’t think it will be missed. If I’m wrong correct me under this post. (Do y’all miss the ability to get RSS feeds of your comments, the comments under each post and so on that we used to have? )

I’ve also removed the cute green search box to direct more attention to the block that lets you search commercials only and news posts with images and so on, since that’s a more “targeted” search people seem to be overlooking. When you have a hard time finding a commercial, go straight to commercials only search, makes it so much easier.

Our feed for the whole of Adland is here and not anywhere else. Please update your feed readers.

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No brownie point upgrades at the moment.

Turns out that the brownie point upgrade option is bust, as Tahrialah alerted me to it. Been trying to fix it all morning but can’t find & fix the problem. Removing the option for now then, as I’ve heard more complaints than cheers for that upgrading feature anyway. I’ll give it another look when I have more time to spend on fixing it.

Cheers. and if you wish to cheer or complain about this option you’d be much better off doing it on the site, like here, than in an email to my bulging inbox.

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Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

Have you been seeing these little things in the footer of emails recently too?

P     Please consider the environment before printing this email.

Here’s the thing though, I haven’t printed an email since 1997. So I have another question for you email-green-peeps. What type of electricity do you use? Are your computers on at all times? Is your companies server hosted in the cheapest possible colocation space, where you’re probably using un-eco friendly electricity 24/7 all year, or have you found a green alternative? Adland is hosted at memset, a carbon neutral company, because – duh – I actually think about these things and worry about my carbon footprint which includes worrying about this servers impact on our environment. I guess what I’m saying is, next time you sent one of those silly little things out in your email, consider what that email travels through. Being green isn’t only about saving paper.

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Browse adgrunts by title – find future colleagues, friends and fans.

I was talking to Lotta last night over a few super huge Chezk beers about this super cute owl tray that she’s made (and sells, I’m so getting one it’s adorable), and it suddenly hit me – why can’t we browse adgrunts by their titles? I mean, in order to find Lottas page with that tray, you first need to find her. So I got cracking, and now there’s a rigid horrible-oh-no-don’t-box-me-in-please drop-down menu where you can choose a title that suits. Note the word “can”, you don’t have to. But is a good way that allows other adgrunts here to find you and by extension, your homepage (if listed) by title.
Actor
Photographer
Illustrator
Art Director (etc and so on)

You’ll find this drop-down menu under the tab “personal” in your account. To make things a little more rigid, the titles are genderless, “actor” instead of both actor and actress.

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Random poll: I need your input on BANNER AD SUPPORT dear adgrunts

Heya, adgrunts.

It used to be that y’all hated banner as more than life itself. You told me so more than thrice.
It used to be pretty cool to just log in and not see them. It used to be that everyone reckoned it was a good idea to support a service with a coin or three to help it survive.

Now I wonder if things haven’t changed. Would you think it was cool to watch ads (as in, the collected commercials of the 42000 strong commercial archive) for FREE, if only there was a twenty second ad that you didn’t ask for, that you had to watch before it? And a bunch-a ads around it? Like, banners everywhere! Some even blinking? . How about if you could pay to get away from that mess and meet the serene ad-free advertising archive that you meet today when upgrading, not even a single text-ad bugging you? Would that be cool, sortof like an opt-out option?

The only reason I’m asking is because traffic and want clearly needs me to upgrade on the servers and bandwidth, but if we can’t figure out a way to pay for this together. Well, it sadly won’t happen. I’d much prefer to make things happen, man.

So I’d REALLY like to know what adgrunts think today about it. I’m guessing peoples minds might have changed but I’m not sure.

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Add radio ads with one single simple upload.

Hello adgrunts.

The whole idea of adland has always been that adgrunts themselves should be able to add their own work. This requires things to be dead simple and very automatic, so I’ve been working on that and can now unveil the super-easy way to add radio ads. All you need to do is title it, choose what type of ad it is, add credits and then upload the mp3, wav or mid file your radio ad is in and presto, the rest is taken care of automagically for you. 🙂 Please give it a go!

Brownie points now earned for voting.

Because we’d like you adgrunts to vote, so that we get a good idea of what should end up on the “best” and “worst” lists at the end of the year, all adgrunts now earn one brownie point for each vote. (Voting is so easy, and in theory you could earn over fourtythousand if you took a voting walk through the archives).

So go ahead and make your vote count both for you and for all of us. See a great ad, rate it five hearts. See a bad one, give it just one.

Ip# migration propagation etcetera

So hi kids, Adland the commercial-archive.com has migrated from our old IP to a new one since we’ve actually physically migrated from the Thames Valley Hosting centre, hosted by memset to a new superior facility in Fareham, also hosted by memset.

Here’s something people don’t think about when it comes to servers and websites, but are they environmentally friendly? Ours actually, is. Yes indeed. Or rather as environmentally friendly as something that eats electricity 24/7 can be, buy choosing where they get this electricity from wisely.

Anyway, we moved a few weeks back and now I just migrated the IP numbers. If you noticed any sudden glitch that would have been me messing with things. My bad. It may take 24 hours for the new IP#’s to propagate.

Now, pardon me while I dash off to yet another meeting. (and this is why I’ve posted nothing else today, sorry I’ll get right on that whole “cloning myself” project. ta-ta!)

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Fedex – I love your ads but you suck.

Gaaaaaawd, Fedex sucks. Somewhere in Europe someone decided to use Fedex to send us their reel(s), which is great and normally we simply get a package (usually by post rather than fedex), open it, convert it and post the films on the sites. Ta-dah!

When we moved our office, we moved to a place where the door to the street is locked (not uncommon), thus Fedex needs to either a) call us, b) know the code for the door or c) hang the package on the door (which is not done for obvious reasons). So, back then we went through the trouble of faxing, mailing and handing over a copy of a paper that gave our authorization to call us (!!) when any fedex package arrives so that we may step the five steps out of the office here and open the dang door for Fedex. Seriously, the door is exactly five steps away from where I sit. They don’t even knock!

I don’t know what Fedex did with these copies of our authorization, but they seem to have promptly lost it as I just got a text message (proving that they indeed have my number still) saying they’ve tried to deliver a package and I must call to tell them when they can come with it. Dudes, how about right now?

So I call Fedex, and find out that they have “tried to deliver three times” to us already, no notes have been left on the door so there was no indication that they had (else I would have called fedex, of course) and that the package might be going back to its sender (who it is is still unknown to me) unless they can arrange a drop-off tomorrow. Sure you can drop it off tomorrow, you could in fact have dropped it off on the previous three tries had you phoned the number as per the authorization forms instructions that I’ve given Fedex. The woman at Fedex customer care said that they have no trace of such an authorization, or she can’t see it. I sarcastically said “well, if you keep loosing those forms maybe I should instruct people to not use Fedex when sending packages to us.” She replied: “Maybe you should.”

Well okay then. Do not use Fedex when you send packages of tapes to Adland. They simply suck and will not deliver your package overnight or whatever the hell they are charging you for. It is a pure waste of money for you and a constant hassle for me. Happy now, Fedex?

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And Adland is back!

Sorry about the blackout folks, Adland’s server has moved from one physical location to another with the rest of the big machines hosted by Memset last night – and I forgot to put up a post to warn you that we’d be offline during the night (for us). Just as we were getting ready to move, US traffic decided to march on in, so I’m sure a few of you wondered where the heck the site went. No matter what time I’d choose someone would see a blank nothing instead of the site – but at least I had a good nights sleep. 😉

It’s Sunday, which means I’m cleaning.

I’ve done six loads of laundry, scrubbed the bathroom sparkling clean, tried to redecorate the bedroom with awesome gold wallpaper and now I’m re-indexing the website. So if you can’t find anything at all using the image search, the commercials only search or the default site search right now, it’s because the site has had it’s memory erased by me.

It’ll gradually re-remember everything over the next hour as it spiders itself. Meanwhile google search might help – or just browse the topics. Sorry about the inconvenience guys, and could you move your feet a little? I need to vacuum there. *huuuuooooooooooooooooooom-CLANK-Pitz-uuuuuuuuuuuuuoooooom* Shoot, was that an earring?

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PR people don’t read the sites they submit to. Lets try this anyway.

Ok, I’m going to say this one more time. Pay attention all ye people who send in your work to Adland the commercial archive, the worlds oldest advertising blog with the world largest super bowl ad archive. If you want your stuff here there are two things you should know.
#1 – You must email hostmaster funkyATsign ad-rag.com directly. That is, do not BCC or add the adress in a CC. The “To:” line must have our adress in it or your mail is going straight to the spam folder. Got that? It’s really easy actually, create a mail put our adress in the “to” line, and send it off. Anything else is wrong and we’re bored with wasting our times emailing each on of you personally who make this mistake.
#2. Do not send us a youtube link – send us your film. We did not get over 40,000 quicktime ads in our archive by linking youtube, genius. If you want to upload and post your ads yourself, create an account and contact us so we’ll give you that permission.

For more info read our Submit work page. Thank you.

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Re-ordering the Super Bowl commercials in the archive – by your vote!

Hey kids. Since we’re gearing up to watch yet another super bowl only for the commercials, I thought I’d do a little re-arranging in our 35 years of super bowl commercials namely making the ads sort by highest voted first.

You can now see the “best of” according to logged in adgrunts on each year. For example, this is the 2005 superbowl commercials, the 2002 superbowl commercials and the 1969 superbowl commercials listed by highest vote first.

Of course, this is also a sneaky way for me to get you guys to vote a little. ;9 Since some years – for example 2000 superbowl commercials, 1997 superbowl commercials and 1994 superbowl commercials have very few votes so one single vote can still make all the difference. Won’t you make sure that your favorites are on top? 🙂

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Top ten most common mistakes PR agencies do when sending us press releases.

Sometimes I wonder, how do some PR agencies get paid for being so… Well, lets face it, bad. No no, I’m not saying that all of you PRgrunts are terrible, we have some good connections with some of you and looks forward to your mails. But some others are really lost. Here’s a list of the most common mistakes – perhaps some PR newbies might learn from this. If you wish to send things to us, don’t make these mistakes.

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Search currently re-indexing site.

Hey adgrunts. We’ve had issues with corruption in our search table in the database. (English: it don’t work no good). Anyway, to remedy that we’re re-indexing the site. It’ll take a few hours before the latest postings are found via our own search, so you might want to rely on the google search for the time being.

Funny, checking to see what people are looking for right now and I see it’s the “Via Pia” ad. Ever try scrolling down? 😉