Ask YC: I just quit Microsoft to work on this product full-time. What's your brutal feedback?

Interesting idea - I like the fact that you don't mess with a sites design in order to serve ads. That said I think that your success will largely depend on the clickthrough rate - which is what customers pay for at the end of the day. And in this respect you might have a disadvantage, since visitors don't see your ads before they hover over an empty area.

Also you should watch out for your brand - there have been many examples of obnoxious ad models that tend to turn people off. A good way to nurture the brand is to serve relevant ads, and in this regard of course you have a formidable competitor in Google.

The reason Google is doing so well is exactly because they are non-obtrusive and relevent.

I would work hard with the non-obtrusivenss, and think about how you can serve up relevant ads. The last one is of course extremely difficult for a startup because you need a lot of data, a lot of customers and somebody with a good knack of algorithms.

But all the best of luck :-)

Just thoughts off the top of my head....

First, I think it's important to note that empty space in a design does have a purpose, and putting ads in it can detract from the design. If the ad clashes, it's extremely jarring from a design perspective. Several of the design articles posted here recently make note of the importance of whitespace.

Second, I tested showing ads on news.ycombinator.com, and it partially covered the login link with an ad. I'm using Firefox 2 on Linux.

I really like the idea. Seems to make adding adds very simple. The demo is really cool.

Your largest benefit is that you make it easier to put up adds. Your UI should reflect that. There are too many words on your site. I didn't read any of them and I won't until there are ridiculously few to read.

Also, put that awesome demo as the front page. The front page needs to draw them in. Just say "Put in your blog to see what it'd look like with emptyspace adds" and then a submit box.

I love the site design. Although I think the idea of any ad that just pops up like those do are very annoying. From your demo though they don't seem so. If you can get some ads for various games, let me know and I will sign up. I am launching a game review site soon and the only way I can put ads on the site without ruining the design is in the margins.

You seem to be getting a lot of technical and user oriented feedback, so I won't bother you with even more of this. From a marketing standpoint however, I feel I can provide some advice.

The benefit of your service is the unique compromise between site design and monetization. The current solution (adsense et all) detracts from the design of the site and is an unfortunate compromise that site admins must make in order to be profitable. Your product gives me, and all prospective customers a beautiful site without ugly ads carved out of the site's design. Quite simply, we can have our cake and eat it too, or translated: we can have a beautiful site and still run ads.

Most of the literature on your site refers to running ads in the "emtpy space" on a prospective user's site. It took me about 5-10 minutes to figure out the true value of the site, the "Hey! Now I know what this could do for me!" and I come from a more technical background. Other bloggers and site owners may barely have a working knowledge of their site, and to them, I would think that the message they would perceive is "Fill up all the empty space in your website!" which hides your true value.

"Have your cake and eat it too!" - I think stressing this point in your site's literature will serve you much better than "Monetize your website's empty space"

I'm the only founder... so far ;P. I'd love your honestly brutal feedback about the website, the product, the idea, or anything else you have to say. I have come to respect this forum and and I'd really like to hear your thoughts.

Also for all you hackers on freenode that would like to have a discussion, but can't be bothered with HTML forms, I've set up an IRC channel to discuss: #emptyspaceads (my nick is arooni).

Best startup I've seen on here in a while. The ads didn't show up for me in Firefox 3 on Linux but they worked in Opera.

Also, do you have any publishers yet?

How is this different from other ad systems? My first impression is something along the lines of "I have adsense, what's different about this?".

It was a little bit slow loading this:

http://www.emptyspaceads.com/websites/preview_url?website%5B...

But 'try it with my web page' is definitely a compelling feature!

I like it. The idea has some good potential. Odd timing, I just read this on Mashable. Looks like a potential competitor with a slightly different take:

http://mashable.com/2008/02/07/adcamo/

I like the site and concept. My 2cents: Some of the graphics need tweeked - like the go button and the hot callout bubble are a little cheesy. I am guessing the ad creator/publisher will be able to choose the border color - so I won't go there. Will the advertisers be able to create Flash ads? I agree with mixmax; I think the ads should be relevant to the content of the site. I noticed that your the only founder; since you know what your doing from a programming point of view, I'd look for a co-founder who has a design background. Once again I like what you are doing.

Your demo app with my blog had some disturbing results. The google ads that normally appear were covered over by one of your ads AS WELL AS a second ad that would appear when my mouse was in the empty space.

I like the idea of empty space ads, you have a good service, but I won't deploy it on my sites if you are going to be overwriting parts of my page. Lets hope this was some ill-advised feature of the demo, and not actually production system behavior...

Screenshot: http://mirwin.net/images/emptyspacead.png

I don't have Flash, so I can't use your demo, but I think I get the gist of it anyway. I'm wary of the placement options other than "fixed". I have no tolerance for ads that do anything to cause my eyes to jump away from text -- this generally includes moving around the page or changing color balance from one animation frame to the next. Whenever I see one, I'll hit the back button and never come back. Most people have more patience with this sort of thing than I do, but I'd still urge caution.

Hey arooni - there are some places within the "close" icon that aren't active (clicks are registered as ad clicks). Also, there's lots of flicker on your demo page (win xp / ff 2.0.0.11). Actually, it looks like your demo page is still under development, there are some other problems with it. Also, your photo on the "team" page is really dark.

Good idea. I don't like the name; can you emphasize "clean" rather than "empty" or something? cleanads.com was my first idea.

It distracts me more from actual content than integrated ads- the pop-up effect is horrible. Your ads care more about site owners than visitors.

Overall, I really like your idea of using whitespace to serve ads. I'd much rather offer those on my site than other types of ads. I think the over all concept works. If you study animation and motion desing, you realize that a viewer's eye is attracted by motion in an image. So, I think that it's a good idea, to have the slow fade in/fade out on the ads. It's not jarring, and abusive, I like that. Another strength is that the ad fades in beside the user's mouse cursor. So the user's eyes are probably looking at that part of the screen to begin with. Because of that, I suspect that you will continue to have better than average conversion rates. Congrats.

Constructive criticism:

Logo: From a design perspecive, it seems a little cramped between the "pt" in empty and the angle of the thought bubble. I'd like a little more space there, and perhapse angle the balloon a little bit, so it is lower below the "pt" and higher beside the "ds" in "spaceads". Just a thought. I think the logo is a good start, but it could use a little more work.

Company Name: In the design world, the term "white space" is used to describe what you're calling "empty space". If you're going after designers, that might be a plus. I don't know if you've done any domain name searches involving "white space", but at least to me, it would be a clearer explanation of what your company is doing than "empty space".

Front page design: Over all, I like the color scheme. However, the white on orange, "Sign up Now" and "Learn More," buttons are hard to read.

Front page copy: I had a couple of issues. The phrase, "Publishers turn your site's empty space into cash money" is a little problematic for me. The term "Publisher" communicates to me a magazine or book publisher, not a blogger or content creator. Those are your target demographic, I'd make it obvious I'm referring to them on my front page.

Also, the phrase, "cash money" is redundant and bugs me a bit. Copy like that is used in payday loan services or used car sales. It cheapens the service in my mind. I'd think that, "Bloggers. Change your site's blank space into cash." or something along those lines would be stronger copy.

Demo page: I didn't really like the quality of the ads that were served in the demo. It appears that you're using live ads from your ad network. I'd rather see something well designed rather than what comes in randomly off the ad network. I think that you'd get people's attention a bit easier. My first impression when I look at your site, is this: "Wow, looks pretty good." My first impression when I look at the demo ads is: "Huh??? What is that picture of? Oh, it's an ad for a hand bag... I think." The images that I saw on several re-loads were small and pixelated and frankly, I was turned off. I know that you might not have a lot of control over that, because you're only working with one ad affiliate. But for your demo, I'd make a different choice.

Demo page design: Just a simple thing, but my eye was attracted to the bright green in the pie chart first. That's not the most important part of your demo. It was a little distracting for me.

Again, I'm not trying to nit pick. I'm tryin to give what was asked for: an honest critique. Over all, I think that you're well on your way. Good job, and you're off to a great start. Keep it up.

For me your demo had an ad appearing over the content on http://www.guitarsite.com and the ad blinked on and of a few times. Nice idea though especially for those looking to monetize a site without a lot of hassle, as long as the your ads are easy to install.

this is the best startup i've ever seen in an AskYC. Congrats.

I will be looking you up in a few weeks when I launch.

There is a lot of money in that market, good luck

I think the bottom line is us (publishers), use Google ads because we want to be in good terms with whoever is bringing the people, if you work around that you will make it big.

"... I just quit Microsoft to work on this product full-time. What's your brutal feedback? ..."

Show through demonstration. Well thought out, flawlessly executed in an area that will no doubt have the potential to make bucket loads of cash.

But there are a few problems I can think of. The first is the market for adverts is dominated by a giant. But where there is competition there is potential for success. The other problem is images + javascript can be blocked through code [0] and by humans. [1] Those clever lads at google get around this using text. Text fools code blocking and to some extent humans. So the technique you use will be less effective than googles technology. What other technology is behind the advert engine. How for instance does it target individuals?

   Q What do we really need? 

Maybe it's a little bit idealistic but for me I just want to make things that users want [3] and try to make their day a little easier and helping them instead of bombarding them. Reducing the amount of useless information and noise. Linda Stone poses the question(s), "what do we really need, and what do we need to pay attention to". And your system is something I think does not really benefit the consumers full stop. Microsoft thinking at it's best.

  Q What do we need to pay attention to?

I'm sure advertising will be a hit for creators, synthesisers. But is this the right question?

[0] http://noscript.net/ for example ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2250089864/ and humans if http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2250089862/ you see the distinctive shape.

[1] "Is Navigation Useful?", '... users rarely look at logos, mission statements, slogans, or any other elements they consider fluff (in particular, they ignore advertising and anything that looks like an ad) ...' ~ http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000109.html

[2] "Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers" , '100% are consumers, 10% active synthesizers & 1% creators'~ http://www.elatable.com/blog/?p=5

[3] "Linda Stone", 'Continuous partial attention' ~ http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail739.html

The demo failed on my personal site (http://michaelhartl.com/) by trying to serve ads on the left of the page, thereby obscuring ~1/3 of the content.

arooni: Great website, and a good idea IMO. I think most of what came to me was covered in other comments, and this may sound offhand, but I went to see your demo, then hit the back button and saw this "Code corrupted. Insert fresh copy" at the top right hand corner. I am probably nitpicking, but it caught my eye, so I figured I would drop in a comment.

Good luck. Great idea. I might consider it for my app too...

I find it interesting although your current implementation may not be 'sticky' over time. Best of luck :)

Ads appear in my firefox when you enter the Flash applet too, not only on blank space.

i find interesting that your other site phonemyphone.com is not using your own ads

may the force be with you