Would anyone be willing to share what ad size(s) you are using for for your email newsletters?

Under the Zen templates we used the two-column layout with "Wide Skyscrapper" (160x600) ads and they worked well. However replicating that under Flex with responsive sizing just looks awful.

As seen here: http://www.galvnews.com/newsletters/headlines/

We'd like to switch back to what was the Town News Flex default one-column layout for our newsletters, but now we're not sure on the optimal size to use for the ads.

Any links, thoughts or details appreciated.

Thanks,

Kevin

I need to be able to refresh ads on our site. We use DFP and in Flex I am unable to add the var slot1. how do I add: var slot1 in flex?
Sample code:

 <script>

   googletag.cmd.push(function() {

    // Define the ad slot
    var slot1 = googletag.defineSlot("/6355419/Travel", [728, 90], "leaderboard").
     setTargeting("test", "refresh").
     addService(googletag.pubads());

   // Start ad fetching
   googletag.enableServices();
   googletag.display("leaderboard");

   // Set timer to refresh slot every 30 seconds
   setInterval(function(){googletag.pubads().refresh([slot1]);}, 30000);
   });

 </script> 

We've just noticed a problem that appears to have been happening for a while now.

In our business column we bold names of people and businesses. Everything looks good in print (TotalCMS) but online the spacing around these bolded words is missing.

Is anyone else seeing this issue on their sites?

Hey community people!

The marketing team may be posting this somewhere else as well (and I didn't ask them ahead of time before posting this, so hopefully it's OK - if not, uh, sorry guys!), but I just want to make sure you folks on the community board saw this because this stuff is really getting great results.

Firstly, have you seen the integrated Native Advertising stuff? It's really easy to set up, and we've already seen it getting surprisingly good results. I would highly recommend just trying it out on one or two sections, and see how you do. We have been surprised so far, and it is a nice way to include another revenue-generating spot without adding a banner ad.

Some of the "native ads" are from decent publishers as well. Check out my test site right now, for example (which prompted me to write this post, in fact):

It is just a new property group called Native Advertising that is available in several of our blocks. More info: https://help.bloxcms.com/knowledge-base/applications/editorial/assets/faq/article_6d3353b8-08f3-11e7-b1fe-278a427431ce.html

Also, wanted to make sure you saw the new blog post which talks our our iQ programmatic ad program. A fourth of our iQ sites are making more money in the program than their TownNews.com monthly bill! So instead of paying us each month, we send THEM a check! How cool is that?

https://www.townnews365.com/news_room/townnews-com-iq-delivers-big-programmatic-gains-for-news-media/article_c6ffe7e6-13cd-11e7-b31e-1b18dcb42dd9.html

Anyway, let me know if you have any questions!

It takes four clicks from the time a user hits our e-edition section front (http://www.herald-dispatch.com/eedition/) until he is actually viewing an e-edition page.

Our request is to reduce the number of steps.

1) What problem(s) does this idea solve?

We have our e-edition locked down to subscribers only, and they must log in each day to access the e-edition. Four clicks is a bit much to get to where they are going. If the "Sign Up or Log In" screen could be replaced with the appropriate text-fields for logins or sign-up instead of the buttons, it would reduce the number of clicks.

Fewer clicks to log in would improve user experience.

Subscribers would use it every day.

Employees also must have logins to access the e-edition, so it would help us, as well.

We're starting to use SoundCite in articles on our site. It would be great to see an option in the editor to create clips directly from within Blox rather than going to their site all the time to create the proper code. It would be awesome if we could highlight the text we want to use SoundCite on and have Blox auto-generate the <span> code around it with the parameters we choose.

BLOX is a great system for cleanly and simply delivering articles to the public. But sometimes I want to crank the "Feature' knob up to 11. For example, when I have time for our magazine(from the time it's sent to the printer to the time it goes online) to really enhance the web version to mimic a 'feature-y' style. But I have to do this in HTML, which I can do, but it's time consuming. What would be awesome would be a way easily select certain paragraphs to place in a colored box and select the font color.

Would anyone else use a feature like this?

Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:

http://www.goldenislesmagazine.com/features/hives-honey/article_edb5e43e-f9d9-11e6-9797-eb114eef4194.html

http://www.goldenislesmagazine.com/features/on-the-hunt/article_5b84ccfe-f9d6-11e6-a09f-6bfc1155b328.html

http://www.goldenislesmagazine.com/features/hgtv-s-dream-home-offers-ways-to-get-artistic-with/article_ec91dee6-c6ee-11e6-a647-9788557d7e3d.html

When I try and export/batch export images from BLOX, I get a funky '.bpm' file. What is a .bpm file and how do I open it? Can anyone share some info?

An advertiser wants to serve an ad with geo targeting. They want certain zip codes. If we specify a zip code with no proximity will it ONLY serve ads in that zip code or do we have to put a proximity? I'm afraid if we are required to put a proximity we run the risk of serving ads in another zip code.

In the event that BLOX goes down, is there a way to export our Editorial Assets so that we can keep a backup on our local computers?? Also, what is a .bmp file and how does one open it?

I’m looking for help sorting out block sorting rules…

We can use the standard “ASSET | Main Index | Dynamic Section & Children” block for the example here, but it applies to all asset blocks equally.

The problem we’re trying to fix is that when we update an existing article asset and check the “This update is important” box it doesn’t float the story to the top of the block. It remains buried under articles with more recent Start Times.

We should be able to fix this with the block sorting rules but have run into a wrinkle. It seems like a bug to me, but might be intended behavior.

The current sorting of our blocks is as follows:
Start date (descending)
Display priority (highest first)
Start date/time (newest first)

What I assumed would get the behavior we are after is:
Update time (newest first)
Start date/time (newest first)
Display priority (highest first)

However it appears that the “Update time” being referenced in the sort logic is the internal “Last modify time” and not the public “Updated:” time. This means that if we fix a small typo in a story it would bump the article to the top of the list even though nothing of substance was really changed.

The fix would appear to be making the “Update time” sort rule reference the “This update is important” checkbox and public display time whenever a site has the “Manually declare important updates” option enabled. The current behavior would be fine for sites without the “Manually declare important updates” option since then every internal edit results a change in the Updated: time displayed on the public site.

We basically want our block sorting to be based on the public “Posted: Wednesday, April 22, 2015 8:13 pm | Updated: 10:09 am, Thu Apr 23, 2015” text that readers see displayed on an asset.

Please let me know if I need to elaborate more or explain in more detail.

We're using the Infinity Scroll feature now that it supports the sidebar. We also like the fact that we can put ads in this section as well. But this is where we're seeing some issues from a user enjoyment/experience standpoint.

Currently, it injects an ad every 2 headlines. This results in the user being bombarded with ads, sometimes the same one over and over again (if only one ad in the position.) As much as we like visitors seeing ads, too many and they will turn adblock on and we lose out.

Solution: Allow us to change the amount of headlines between ads. This is the same as the option for when to show ads in a gallery setting. We can set it to show every 3 headlines, 5 headlines, 10 headlines, or any whole integer that is put in on the back-end.

Other thoughts: The ability to choose between different ad sizes would be nice as well. Having a "leaderboard" style ad between headlines would also give it a nice look and not take up a lot of space.

I would like to see in the syndication panel if a story asset has been locked at a specific time before I add the story using the curated news. It's frustrating to add a story and then find that they have the time locked and it won't allow me to adapt it to my needs.

We created a custom block to display the front page of a print article, which we'd like to redirect to a different dedicated site. How do we create the hyperlink, so that the image is clickable??

Premise: Advertisers love it when they are featured or mentioned in a business article. LOVE IT.

Problem: Those same advertisers hate it when their competitors' ads appear in or near an article they are in (see above). HATE IT.

Solution: Enable exclusionary keyword targeting that we can apply to ads for competing businesses.

Example: If the words "Century 21" appear in a piece of content, then do not serve ads for "Re/Max". In this case, we would apply the exclusion target on the Re/Max ad. The reverse would be applied to the Century 21 ad.