article interaction and scrolling

Hi:

There's been some discussion at Collegian about the impact of article length with user behavior. A question of how far do they go.

When we were on the Blox ad server I could get some idea about user behavior on articles by looking at ad stats by position. I recently ran a sponsorship ad through Google Ad Manager for a couple of days which gave me some additional information. At least for the bottom of article utility section.

My first thought was to add some pixel image tracking at the top, middle and bottom article utility sections, but we don't see stats on images in Google analytics.

So now I'm thinking of creating a new ad size in GAM of 300x1 and create sponsorship ads for the top, middle and bottom.

I would then be able to get at least 'the average' ratio of top to middle to bottom of article views.

Is this the wrong thinking on obtaining these metrics? Is there a better approach?

I noticed the post / news release of Telemundo Atlanta using Blox. (Here is the site)

Is there any resource on using different language(s), etc. in Blox? I could not find anything and always assumed it was English-only.

Maps created in article assets (Other > Location) are limited to one location. That's not enough. I want the ability to add at least three map locations. It's a feature that will be used frequently (Crime stories! Economic development stories! Events!), but Town News tells me it's not available in Flex templates. #sadtrombone So I'm asking for your help in making it available. "Like" for more map locations!

We got a question from a potential advertiser who works with visually impaired individuals asking if the ad she purchased would readable with a screen reader.  I didn't see a way to include alt text in the settings in the ad rotator for a regular image ad so I figured I'd better put in a feature request.  I could probably do it by creating an HTML ad and putting a simple img src + alt in there, but that is kind of clunky; a simple field would be great.

All new and existing software and workflows are being examined for 508/504 compliance so we will need this functionality.

When we do alerts through the notifier on the NOW apps, we find that frequently there is not enough space in the headline, and the full summary frequently gives enough information that there is little incentive to click through.

What if ... instead, we eliminated the summary field in the alerts and allowed the headlines to wrap? That way users would see the full headline and we wouldn't have to rewrite them for the alerts.

Hello. How long does it typically takes for a banner served through the Blox Marketplace to start appearing once it is set up? I have ads set to display today and found it can take quite a while -- a few hours in the case of a newsletter ad. Anyone to minimize the time it takes to get an up and running?

We would like to have more social options on Notifier, such as Instagram and Snapchat. Our Young Professional groups says they use these two more than Twitter and Facebook to find their news and/or things to do.

Would this be useful for everybody?

It would be nice to have an alternate email for some users, selectable by the user, for adding to email notifications/subscriptions in the email reach system.

Example:

• User: Az.
• Email address: AlexZander@example.org
• Alternate email address: 1234567890@txt.provider.net
• 
  

Regular email-reach advertising, notifications, lists, etc to the normal email address. Alert-campaign to alternate email.

Email reach Campaigns:

•   Weather Alert : to alternate email
•   Headlines-Daily: to normal email

We would have to define a custom email address field for the user/subscriber accounts or have an alternate email address added to the general user information block.

This gets around some of the costs of SMS (yes, a revenue stream for Townnews) for the smaller companies that cannot afford, or justify the costs of the current pricing scheme for the full-featured SMS alert system from Townnews.

We currently use a system similar to this, independent of Townnews, to send out local school closings as they are announced.  In February, based on the new SMS options for Townnews, we would have spent over $5,400 for these texts alone.  15 schools, over 1000 subscribers, closing for 18 days, notified the morning of, or evening before.  Then we have Weather alerts.  Over 1000 subscribers for the weather alerts as well, 2-3 times a day for a month, which would run us (averaged) over $1,700 for that month alone.  That is not counting the one time setup fee, or using the shortcode option.  So far in March, we have had quite a bit less in the way of these alerts.  We estimate in April the alerts will be done 1 or 2 for the entire month.  That is not counting the other 'less critical' alters we have available, such as school sports, local breaking news, etc.  For us, the new SMS system is not cost effective.  
 

Wm

Hi Folks,

The problem that we are having, is that we must sift through many expired accounts to find accounts who have had their credit cards either decline of become invalid due to expiration dates. Right now, we must go through all the expired accounts, of which most are simply a renewal, to find these.  But this is eating up a lot of time each day and is one of the tasks that my entire staff loathe.  

We need to be able to try to contact these folks from our end to be able to keep their subscription from just expiring or to get them restarted.  If we had a report that would generate any of these customers, we could contact them up to three days in advance of expire when their first renewal payment is attempted and comes through as Declined or Invalid.  This information is already getting listed in the account’s history, so it would seem that it could be something that could be reported. 

Thanks,

Mike

Has there been any thought given to having a time element for how long a block appears on a site?

For example, we have a block on our homepage (as I'm sure everyone does) that displays any stories with the "Breaking" flag attached. However, if we have such a story that we want to draw attention to as breaking news, we only want it to be considered "breaking" for a short period of time, maybe a few hours.

What would be really helpful is if we could have the "breaking news" block appear for a designated period of time instead of having to go back into BLOX or TCMS and removing the "Breaking" flag from the article asset to get the block to go away. It would just take away a little bit of the manual intervention that is currently necessary.

Thanks.

Dave

Here's a funny thing that I just found out in regards to Firebase (Notifier) and Google Maps. Let me know if I'm doing something wrong...

Firebase Spark plan (free) requires no billing account to work.

Google Maps API (free) does require a billing account to work.

What happens to my Firebase project if I add or remove billing accounts for that project in the Google Cloud Console?

If a billing account is added to a project in the Google Cloud Console, the same project will automatically be upgraded to the Firebase Blaze plan if that project is currently on the Spark or Flame plan.
In contrast, if an existing active billing account is removed from a project in the Google Cloud Console, that project will be downgraded to the Firebase Spark plan.

https://firebase.google.com/support/faq/

Any ideas on how to get around this? Right now I had to remove our billing account, so while notifier works, our Maps are coming up blank. I don't want to have to make two separate accounts.

Feature Suggestion: Maybe this exists already and I've just not been able to find it, but would it be possible to track analytics for each article asset, so we can see page views for each article, not just the most popular ones? Thank you!

I'm considering removing Flickr from the social accounts area on the User Profile page. It has changed a lot, been sold to SmugMug, getting rid of 1 TB of free storage, etc. We have very little use of it currently in user accounts.

Is it important to anyone - maybe photographers? - who would still want it?

Join us on March 14th @ 10:30 AM CDT

Introducing BLOX Notifier: A new way to manage social and push notifications

At our March customer webinar, Christine Masters, director of product management at TownNews, will introduce BLOX Notifier—an all-new BLOX CMS application that makes keeping users informed with Facebook, Twitter, BLOX Now App, email, and desktop notifications quicker and easier than ever.

Topics will include:

• An overview of the new BLOX Notifier application
• Using BLOX Notifier to create, schedule, and distribute messages and notifications
• Streamlining your publishing workflow with automated trigger rulesets
• . . . and much more!

Ready to get started? Join us on March 14th at 10:30 AM CDT.

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