Spottt – Hey, At Least They Have A Cute Dog

Yesterday Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington had the exclusive on the public launch of Spottt. We initially reported on Spottt (yes, there are 3 T’s) at the Techcrunch40 event last September. The company moved into private beta at that time.

Spottt is a LinkExchange clone from back in the day, except that it’s using 125 pixel "blog" ads vs. the 468 pixel ads that LinkExchange used and Spottt works on the popular social networking sites. Anyone remember the horrible ads that always appeared on LinkExchange? Well they are back baby! You can see some examples below.

When I first read Arrington’s review, and saw the Spottt banner inside their sponsor area (top right), it made me think of another linkexchange clone that’s been live a couple months called Entrecard. Entrecard is a barter system working on credits that apparently is easy to game. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s popular with the money-making and search engine optimization bloggers. I don’t think Entrecard takes any of the impressions like Spottt does.

Here’s how Spottt works: You load up a banner into the Spottt system, and then load the (bloated) code that I’ve displayed below. Then your banner will be shown around the Internet on other sites using the Spottt code. On your site, you too will show banners for other sites and half of the time (50%), you display "house" ads, those being ones that Spottt runs. Small note, Spottt didn’t even give me 30 minutes from the time I entered an ad to when they declined me for not having the code on the page – gee whiz guys, it might take more than 30 minutes to push out to a site!

The concept is freaking brilliant – since Spottt is part of the Adbrite family, they can just inject ads all over the Internet and on Facebook/Myspace. So while you might get a view here and a view there, the little doggie is making the big cash, don’t let the pup fool you. Not only does Spottt take 50% of the ads displayed, they also jam a "Spottt-Free Link Exchange" tag below the ad. Had you signed up with AdBrite, you would have realized the income. Instead you get a view(s) instead of the cash which stays with Adbrite.

I am not sure if TC got a special code from Spottt, but the terms are clear – no editing of the code is permitted. Currently the code on TC doesn’t display the "tag" below the ad. On all of the other sites I checked today, they all are running the tag. I’d just remove the tag if I was running it as well – if one takes it off, all should.

Some commenters on TC are also suggesting that they are only displaying TC ads which makes sense given the girth of the TC network. Spottt needs a way to hold back/throttle impressions as they sign more massive displaying sites, otherwise the small sites will give up on the program quick. And the small sites are what Spottt needs.

One of the biggest issues is what appears to be poor targeting. I checked 5 tech sites (including tc) using the Spottt service and on all of the sites the ads aren’t displaying the correct category. If the categorization is correct, then why I am seeing ads for "The Seduction Bible" in the tech category?

The next issue is ad selection. I select a category, let’s use food as an example. I am McDonalds, do I want to show an ad for Burger King or Wendy’s? I think not. But there is no way to filter out competitors.

Lastly, and while not mentioned in the initial review, here is what could possibly be the biggest issue for Spottt (and their potential expansion): the code is bloated. Maybe we can get a response from Spottt about why this isn’t one simple line of Javascript. Because the way it’s setup here, anytime Spottt wants to make a system change, it’s going to require every publisher to update their site and will be a mess. Here is the entire block of code that is required to run Spottt:

<style> table.spottt_tb, table.spottt_tb tr, table.spottt_tb td, table.spottt_tb a, table.spottt_tb tr a img { margin:0; padding:0; border:none; background:none; position:static; text-decoration:none; display:block; width:125px; vertical-align:top;} .spottt_thumb, .spottt_thumb img, .spottt_thumb a, .spottt_thumb td { height:125px; } .spottt_label, .spottt_label img, .spottt_label a, .spottt_label td { height:21px;}</style><table cellspacing="0px" class="spottt_tb" id="sp_code_table_5cdrtr498eg40cgo"><tr class="spottt_thumb"><td><a href="http://click.spottt.com/sp_click_5cdrtr498eg40cgo.php" mce_href="http://click.spottt.com/sp_click_5cdrtr498eg40cgo.php"><img src="http://view.spottt.com/sp_image_5cdrtr498eg40cgo.jpg" mce_src="http://view.spottt.com/sp_image_5cdrtr498eg40cgo.jpg" border="0"/></a></td></tr><tr class="spottt_label"><td><a href="http://home.spottt.com/sp_index_5cdrtr498eg40cgo.php" mce_href="http://home.spottt.com/sp_index_5cdrtr498eg40cgo.php" ><img src="http://view.spottt.com/sp_label_5cdrtr218eg40cgo.jpg" mce_src="http://view.spottt.com/sp_label_5cdrtr218eg40cgo.jpg" border="0"/></a></td></tr></table>

In summary, Spottt still isn’t ready for primetime. It’s a great way for Spottt to earn revenue but there are just too many issues and code that prevents me from wanting to use the system or recommending it for others to use. If they can fix the issues mentioned above and the many more there are, maybe it could be a valuable product.

Hey, at least they have a cute dog as their company icon. The stuffed dog will certainly be worth something when this thing is on eBay. It can go next to my Kozmo stickers and my Webvan magnet.