The Battle ofthe ad blogs, sponsored by Jewelboxing and pixiesdiscs got pretty heated. Ambush attacks and all! Now that the dust has settled, I can show you what went on.
What's an award without a little controversy?
I'm not to type to play with my cards hidden (I truly suck at poker), I'll show you what the logs revealed.
Yes, as some suspected, and many alerted me to, a few people were cheating best they could.
Let's not assume that it was on the blog-owners suggestion, it might just have been overzelous fans. Okay? I'd hate it if people got mad at each other for this. Though yes I know, in love and (blog)wars.... ;)
First let me apologise for buying a shoddy script that did not do as advertised. (EDIT: "As advertised" means that the script should not have allowed for more than one vote per IP# - it seemed that this only worked when it wanted to. Some people could not vote twice from the same IP#, others could vote as many times as they liked!)
Me of all people should know better than to listen to the sell-spiel. Next year I will build a better mousetrap myself.
1) Some IP-numbers actually has managed to vote more than once on the same question, up to 75 times actually, it will be reduced to one vote (per ip# and Q) as announced in the rules. 2) People have been using "anonymizers" (or other IP hiding software) plenty to vote, these votes will be annulled. Read more and I'll show you exactly what I found, screendumps and all.
When I grepped around the log I found disturbing digits like these - The first digit is how many times, the second digits are IP#, and the third which question they voted for. 75 200.157.208.189 question1 61 85.124.228.30 question16 61 200.157.208.189 question2 60 69.181.15.40 question17 55 68.50.189.58 question6 37 66.159.85.2 question6 35 82.133.89.90 question6 33 213.30.4.138 question1 31 81.308.267.306 question5 31 80.60.157.111 question1 31 213.30.4.138 question2 31 194.65.145.189 question6 30 213.30.4.138 question6 29 209.48.191.29 question6 27 200.207.214.198 question1 18 210.55.192.211 question4 18 210.23.150.11 question4 18 203.62.133.34 question4 etcetera and so on. In plain English it means that someone voted 75 times on question one, someone else voted 31 times on question five. And so on. Plus, there were the anon people - almost 200 votes from no IP at all (that is, people were using anonymizers when voting). Well, that won't do, so I set about removing these one by one. Now, you may compare and contrast - but don't jump to conclusions! Remember the Ameriquest ads! It can very well be a case of offices sharing the same IP# on several computers, and fans "just trying to help".
Category #1 Best international blog. The vote before cleaning up.
The vote after cleanup.
Clear winner despite overzelous voting for a bunch of the contenders here ADVERTKA the Russian ad community at livejournal. Congratulations!
Best Ad-Porn Blog - showing a lot of images
Before:
after:
Brainstorm9 still wins, no suprise there really. Ever notice how one advertising image on Brainstorm9 soon appears all over the web? I have.
Best General Ad Commentary
Before:
after:
Ernie Schenk calls this winning. ;)
Best Ad Commentary not from the United States
after:
Now, the kiwi's and kids from Oz might hate me for this, but it wouldn't have happened had someone not decided to cheat.
The result goes from Campaignbrief (great mag by the way) winning to Adverblog winning after cleaning up.
Adverblog's Martina wins a well deserved victory after many years of blogging away.
Better luck next year down under.
Best Commercial Ad Blog
after:
Ok, clearly some ballot-stuffing going on here too, but it didn't change the outcome. Adrants wins this round.
Best Ad Agency Ad Blog
after:
Wow! Well you know how fiercly ad agencies want to compete, this one was a mess.
After an early lead for Influx Insights other agency blogs suddenly gained on them. Could be a case of ad agencies having the same IP all over that made so many votes in this category come from the same IP#, to the same nominee, so often - which I cleaned up. Still, after all that cleaning IdeaMill goes home with the prize.
Best Planner/Theorists Blog
after:
Well, no difference there, and I bet nobody is suprised, for all your planning wisdom needs check out Russel Davies who wins this year. Ths doesn't mean that the others aren't very interesting blogs too, they are!
Best School Ad Blog
after:
These students haven't learned how to be weasly and cheat yet. ;) At least, not that much - still clear winner is Rm 116! Congrats!
Best Design Discussion Blog
after:
Proof that the most honest people in advertising are the designers? Design Observer, a very enjoyable blog, wins the popular vote in this crowd of very good design blogs, many of which I admire. Kudos.
The community of Design Observer deserves to pat themselves on the back as their comments are often just as interesting as the posts, and their votes secured the win!
Best Typography Blog
after:
No suprise here, the exellent Typographica takes top honor. Personally, I was rooting for Mark Simonson's notebook, but I do love Typographica as well, where there is a bigger crowd so they do deserve the popular vote. And hey, no real cheating going on, it must be a designer thing. ;)
Best Marketing Blog
after:
Being Reasonable has no trouble at all winning top honor here. Congrats!
Best PR Blog
after:
PR people are pretty honest folk too. Who would have thunk it? ;) (I'm kidding amigos!) Aptly named POP! PR wins the popular vote, with BL Ochman Whats Next not too far behind. Applause!
Best Viral Blog
after:
Best Inspiration Blogs
after:
A neck to neck race was going on here that I luved watching, but not all votes were by the rules. :( Still, the outcome didn't change one iota - PFSK wins this round, with the always interesting Creative Post nipping on their heels.
Best Online/Interactive Blogs
after:
Bannerblog beats them all! Australia can be proud. ;)
Best Topical Blogs
after:
The hardest category to compete in as to topics vary so much. There is nothing else quite like the Trademark blog, or as adbusty but not as Stay Free. The winner is Snark Hunting, it too a rare blog breed, with Brand Noise a close second.
Congratulations to Snark Hunting and all the contenders.
All winners will be notified , and they bring home a tank tee, showing their status as #1 Ad Blog 2006 which I hope to see on them. If you wear it and snap a shot I promise I'll publish it.
But that's not all, they also get the ace Pixies live CD from Pixiesdisc and a funky looking badge for their blog. The most votes overall was clearly won by Advertka, who also gets a 100-pack of jewelboxings from Jewelboxing. Wonder if the whole community will share it? :)
To all the battlers, busted up and bruised, don't be sad if you didn't win top honor this year, there is always the next year.
Categories might change, and the script counting votes most certainly will. See you all again then!
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huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhhh... you said "taint"
(ducks)
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PermalinkBrilliant name! PAT-E-CAKE!
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PermalinkWhat pray tell are "internet condoms"? I'd like to make sure mine is off before next year.
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PermalinkI don't know if anyone here saw this but the battle resultss were just mentioned in Creativity's email alert.
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PermalinkHeya akispicer, I know that the 1 ip = 1 vote deal isn't perfect. I adress this and the reason I choose to use this system anyway at length over at CampaignBrief in this posting. While it sucks a bit for people stuck behind office proxies, it is in the end the most "cheat-proof" system - if one IP# could vote multiple times it would be gamed in notime. I did love to see good old pat-e-cake.fallon.com stop by so often again. ;) Anyway, live and learn, many things will probably change next year, from nominees to categories to the scrip that counts the votes. In the end it was all fun and many blogs cross-pollenated for a while, getting new visitors and sending their own to check out others which was the whole point. ;)
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Permalinkthanx dab. Yeah, weird. I went upstairs at one point during the voting to a PC laptop and it displayed fine. On the mac I viewed through FireFox and Safari and had the same issue. Then I ran CacheoutX on the mac and it fixed it.
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PermalinkFixed that.
Oh and site-mommie here is on a mac all day long building and testing this junk, so it probably wasn't a mac thing..... Hmmmm. Wonder why that happened to you. Maybe your browser never loaded the iframes properly for some reason.....
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Permalink(sorry about that double posting.)
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Permalinkpffht! Clay get back to work! ;)
It's awfully funny how seriously people took this. Guess that's the competitive nature of ad folk coming through...proof as to why there are so many award shows. ;)
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PermalinkDear Dabitch,
Any chance of a detailed breakdown in our category - "International Ad Commentary outside the United States"? I would love to try to find out who voted for us twice or more. We love you down under and thanks for putting on the competition. By the way, is there any Blog badge for Runners Up?
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PermalinkErnie's fans. Tsk, tsk, tsk. ;-p
"So while it isn't foolproof a simple 1 ip = 1 vote takes care of that well known problem right quick."
Not for me. I voted initially for ad-scam, yes George, I was the one) and came back a few days later. No matter what site I accessed the battle from, here, The Spunker, etc., when I got there, it only displayed the top half page graphic. I figured that was the way they knew who voted, by shutting off access to the ballots. Maybe it was a Mac thing too?
Anyway, had to clear my cache/cookies for something else, then discovered the whole site loaded again. I voted again for some different sites that I hadn't noticed before, (and George again
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PermalinkNone of you Fallon-folk have home-computers, handheld computers, laptops or even cellphones with netsurfing abilities? Seems a tad oldfashioned to rely on your office computer alone for all your netsurfing needs.
Just picture how much cheating would go on if one ip# could vote multiple times. People would vote for themselves a thousand times in a day. So while it isn't foolproof a simple 1 ip = 1 vote takes care of that well known problem right quick.
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PermalinkThanks for running this - it was fun and a great way to get some people to my site and some other sites out there in the blogosphere
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Permalinkeh...not to be a whiney-pants, but the first day in, i noticed that most of us at Fallon couldn't even vote on the Battle site as we are all channelled thru the SAME IP ADDRESS. most visitors here got the prompt "you've already voted" when they had never even been to the site. so many of our votes couldn't even get thru, while any that did make it thru seem to have been translated as the same IP address, and not the result of cheating. not that we didn't consider the idea of cheating...and not that we were so close to overtaking Russell Davies, anyway. but still...next year may require a different system to tally the votes. either way, thanks for the nomination, i know we got lots of new eyeballs to our blog and that was worth something!
thnx:aki>
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PermalinkI'd really hate for the overzelous voting to reflect badly on the blog owners who probably had nothing to do with it. From what I could see around the contenders sites, everyone was simply asking visitors to vote for them - and there is nothing wrong with that at all. Wear the badge, make a post, or ten, or hell even give up some ad-space for a "please vote for me" blurb - this is all fair game.
That some people took it upon themselves to vote again and again, and againagain from the same IP# shouldn't taint the blog owners - it might have been overzelous fans, or people simply stuck behind the same IP# in an office, or people unaware that they surfed with such internet condoms on as to not leave their IP in the logs at all (all "uknowns" were annulled). Please don't let things like that taint your opinion of the contending and winning blogs.
Also, there is always next year. :)
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PermalinkThanks, dab, for all this hard work. It was a fun contest and congratulations to all the great blogs out there who took part.
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PermalinkOh and you're right! All those blogs that nipped the winner on the heels should have their own runner-up badge.
I'll go make one right now.
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PermalinkI'll do you one better, check your email I sent you the log.
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