With such short timers perhaps the time has come to consider adding script that does not count down, but rather it ..

WAITS FOR THE PAGE TO LOAD !!!

Now build me a TCNTE scrpit with that in it and I will be first in the queue to change my scripts.

The only thing that matters to me when I advertise is where do I get the best results. Timers can be 1 second as long as I am getting sign ups. Lately that has been IloveHits, PromoLotto, TrafficPunk, TopTierTraffic, TrafficDynamite and FreeTrafficLotto.

Rich Morris

I believe that the surf timer is a feature of the exchange based platform for one reason and one reason only:

To force enough time to allow a pageload. Nothing more.

Back in the day on old modems and with long ass pages it was 30 seconds, then 20, and now the accepted standard is 10.

The move to 6 is simply the evolution of broadband and the utilization of splash/squeeze pages.
Those advertisers who do not load in 6sec or less need to rethink the medium they are advertising on and the presentation they give. Chances are if they are not utilizing pages that work in 6sec they are getting shitty results anyhow, regardless of the timer at any exchange.

It is on the advertiser to utilize a message that is effective in the medium, not on the service provider to force look time. The provider needs to allow for a reasonable pageload and nothing more. the ad needs to make people stop.

With the introduction of tabbed surfing and the base ADDness of the human species, most people have music, games, email, etc on the go anyhow. … that long timer, if you didnt catch attention … just counts down in the background anyway.

With all that said, there is a problem with going smaller.

Percieved Value

On that front, I think that rather than selling the timer, just ignore it. Don’t mention your timers, sell on other features.
If you do have to sell on the timer, sell the fact that people can get 10 credits a minute, the people looking for the timer stats will eat that up.

Long story short timers do not matter, and as pageloads get faster they will get smaller. Eventually we will have no timers… not autos, you’ll still need to click, but the countdown wont matter.
Mind ya I think that’s a long way off, and goes hand in hand with my dream of instant internet.

Ian Bakewell
http://www.easysurfexchange.com

Jon –
glad to see you bring up the subject of timers again. It is true from yours and comments of others, hardly no one views your site for the length of the timer anyway! You’ve got 1-2 seconds to GRAB someone’s attention or they are gone – myself included.

Regarding not having pages load within the span of surf timer, that advertiser is not paying attention! You better be using fast loading pages with ONE attention getter aka ONE message & ONE call to action else you’re wasting your time and credits!

I think TE owners should post contest winnings on a blog – send out news no more than 2 times a week – if you have something to say!. Stop filling my inbox w/so many emails! I can subscribe by RSS feed to your blog & get updated news anytime I want. Let the users decide when to retrieve the news! You post worthy content – the users will come.

Keep up the good work Jon!

Thanks,,,George Culp

There is also the response time of the server and load time of the site on a particular script. One example is Hitsafari, the load times very depending on the website. The surf bar timer is 10 seconds but in reality the time it takes from surf to surf can very from 15 to 30 seconds. In fact when I surf it even though I am only surfing 6 sites at a time the surf bar (about 50% of the time) is not ready for user input so I pass it up until next round. This could be the fact that hitsafari is really drawing a lot of surfing these days. I put up with this timer aberation because I get my best results from surfing this traffic exchange. This is not the only exchange that has this timer problem, The host can adjust the CPU % a program gets on a shared sever and this can really slow response time. Some hosts are charging for a single user server even though they have more users on the server due to dual core tech. servers. The idea here is one CPU processor per user. However this is not the same as two servers. In practical application the results very but never quite reach the productivity of separate servers. This is a bit technical but as they use the same bus paths at some point there is a degrade in productivity under full load. What this all means is that if such a set up is used with heavy user programs on the same server the webmaster finds himself in the position of balancing CPU percentage.
Thanks,
warren

If I am advertising I want the longest timer I can get.

In both cases I am fine with a 10 second timer. Even with a 10 second timer sometimes a page is still loading when the 10 seconds are up and I am on DSL. With 6 seconds everyone would have to have a fast loading page or be dead in the water.

Thanks
Bo Tipton
The Ornery Marketer