We’ve been unable to access the service for more than 24 hours and from some conversations this morning, it appears that the service has been down for a longer period of time. It seems that even more than a year ago many Spottt publishers were wondering if anyone was still using the service.

Most of the ads we saw running in the Spottt network looked pretty amateur and would probably never run on larger blogs. The interesting thing about the Spottt code is that if you have Javascript, it degrades nicely and nothing is displayed. If you aren’t running Javascript, you always see the same Spottt house ad but clicking takes you to a blank page.

Let’s hope that the doggie is just taking an extended rest.

Entrecard

Yesterday Entrecard announced that they are deleting the accounts effective July 1st for those users who are running "quick drop pages." Entrecard explains, "Quick drop pages are single pages with your Entrecard widget, made to load quickly and display your widget and not much else. Many quick drop pages have just a widget, and maybe an ad or some other type of widget." Here’s an example of a quick drop page.

Quick drop pages devalue our network as a whole, by motivating members to drop on the same, quick loading pages, en masse to gain credits quickly and efficiently. The company says they have a way to detect all Quick Drop pages and will purge all from the system.

The other company offering a similar service is Spottt. We reviewed Spottt on their launch and noted that they have a cute doggg for their mascot.  Whenever I see Spottt banners, the first load seems to have a Crunchgear ad every time. Subsequent loads offer other banners before returning to the Crunchgear ad. This was one of the concerns I raised on my initial review — the ability for one (or a small set) publisher to control the initial ad on the majority of sites in the Spottt network. It looks like Entrecard deals with this by allowing publishers to control which ad slots they "buy".

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.

Spottt

• It’s linkexchange.com for 2007
• they have a cute fake dog as their mascot
• 1-1 for swap, they will incur all costs for the first year
• this is owned by adbrite
• Blog and Myspace compatible

Clickable

• announces a relationship with adbrite – hrm
• and launches public beta
• johnathan miller joins board of directors
• 30 employees in nyc
• jason wanted this company in the list
• lots of ajax – its a reporting tool for using google adwords, yahoo advertising and now adbrite
• they talk about threats to spending on ads

GotStatus

• as good as google analytics is – it only runs on the browser
• I have to tell you – I am completely lost in this demo – I am sorry. No further notes on this demo will be provided. :(

PubMatic

• make more money from your blog or web site
• i saw a demo of this last week and was very impressed overall – needs some touchups on the corners, but it has potential
• What pubmatic does is simple – you can merge in your various online ad networks (google, yahoo, valueclick, blue lithium) and it decides which ads to show in which locations based on the best paying ad network
• they can also change color combos on the fly to maximize
• 106% increase for one site and a 90% increase for sportsvite

ZocDoc

• it’s like 1800dentists for the web
• they have 2% of dentists in the system
• they show a search of upper west side of manhattan but the results are all upper east side!
• has dentist ratings but charges dentists to list – conflict of interest?

Expert Panel Discussion

• Reolef – i like clickable and pubmatic, the challenge for clickable is there is a lot of competition
• Guy – I like Spott, it was the only one I could truly understand, I like it as a blogger because I understand the pain you are solving
• Esther – I don’t get Spott’s business model – I would go with clickable –