#but its an auction with 6 days left. i placed a bid that is So low like im not gonna get it but it comes out as about

[zagreus-eats-your-bread]

Being gay isnt a curse that God or Satan placed upon me. The curse he put on me is being a fan of Doctor Who one edition typo-ridden no reprint paperback novels sold online for anything starting at £55 and stopping Nowhere.

[dracosaurusrex]

Kintsugi: Imperfectly Perfect (Draco x Reader)

“Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold — built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art.”

- Tiffany Ayuda

Summary:In which Y/N teaches a broken Draco Malfoy how to mend himself and embrace the scars that haunt him.

Wordcount: 10.3k

Genre: Angst/Fluff; Postwar AU

Warnings: Descriptions of depression; self-degredation; sexual themes but no smut

A/N: Hi! This is my first time writing a postwar AU. I was always afraid of doing so out of fear that I would mistakenly portray Draco, but I guess this can be a rite of passage in a way aha. With that being said, here’s my attempt! I hope you like it :D Feedback is very much appreciated!!

The sound of an alarm clock breaks the peace that had manifested within the darkness of the room. One eye creaks open, followed by the other, and a body raises itself to greet the day. 

The boy lifts his sheets gently, allowing the cold air to engulf his skin, to wake him, to pull him into the reality of yet another morning. 

The pads of his feet are the next to awaken as he hoists himself out of bed, meeting the frigid floor beneath him. He plods across the expanse of space, only to take notice of his reflection in the mirror.

Draco Malfoy, once boisterous, prideful, loud, and arrogant, had been reduced to a shell. One that lived by drifting through the motions of each passing day. It showed through the dark circles apparent under his eyes, the frown that resided on his lips, and his overall gaunt appearance. The thrill that was once characteristic of his youth had spilled through his cracks, leaving him empty and seemingly unrepairable; and no other perspective of his experience could convince him otherwise. 

The second wizarding war took too much from him so early on. It started with his father, the man he had ardently looked up to, who he desired so much to please. Lucius’s arrest put the young boy on the forefront of the Death Eaters’ activities, placing an unbearable weight on his shoulders. From that point on, it wasn’t long until the mischievous smile left him, only to be replaced with panicked eyes, increased stress levels, and absolutely no peace of mind. The boy had his entire life on a tightrope, constantly pulling strings to survive.

The result of such was the immense realization of guilt pooling from the sights of Hogwarts in shambles, the lifeless bodies of those he was once acquainted with, and the shame of literally walking away from it all. 

Nightmares were also frequent visitors. Besides those that embodied remnants of the war, Draco was almost always confronted by the tauntings of his wrongs: the way he poorly treated others, his stuck-up sense of superiority, the foul slur that he once used so freely--they all haunted him with no end, and all he wanted to do was take everything back. The boy has so often degraded his character since then, describing himself with words such as ‘worthless’, ‘loathsome’, ‘putrid’--the list goes on. He carried his beating heart as though it was dead weight, wanting so desperately to discard the regret that compounded on itself through the years. He was broken, and had no hope of being fixed. 

It was also needless to say that the family dynamic had changed for the Malfoy’s; especially since they often stayed within the confines of the property. Narcissa had been diligent in eradicating the place of all things that harbored any signs of Voldemort’s occupation--opening curtains, tending to her garden, changing up the plans for the interior design. Lucius, on the other hand, often occupied himself in his study, simply abiding by the plans for change that his wife had made. He still invested in his social connections, actively making donations to charities and hospitals that had been established as a result of the war. The act helped shed some light on their image, however any interaction that was to be made with the world outside was done through Draco as representative of the family name.

Fortunately, he managed to keep his mind silent in the mornings. As he walked through the vast hallways he would take note of the way light had poured into the manor, admiring the charm that it brought to its nooks and crannies. The quaint atmosphere that was characteristic of these corridors were peaceful, and managed to calm his thoughts albeit temporarily. 

As soon as he entered the dining room, Narcissa beckoned him to sit with her and his father. 

“Draco, darling, come have some breakfast.” Without much response, he obeys, taking the spot across from her. She placed his favorites on a platter, and observed him as he nibbled on the food in front of him. After several minutes of silence, she pulled an ivory-colored envelope from the pocket of her robe and slid it to him. With food still mounted on his utensils, the boy glanced at the gold details that embellished its corners.

“We’ve been invited to an art gala hosted by the Ministry. The details are inside.” She said.

“I’ll be sure to be in attendance, mother.” He confirmed before resuming his breakfast. The woman casted a worried look at him before turning to Lucius. Things could never go back to the way they once were.

--

The art gala was held on a Saturday evening, and Draco found himself standing in front of a finely decorated building. An air of aristocracy and luxury loomed within the environment--it was an energy that he had been surrounded by all his life. Large columns aligned its front. A red carpet stemming from the entrance had been rolled out, sweeping along a flight of stairs. Familiar faces of esteemed socialites were seen making their way up the steps. Banners had been hung, indicating the gala and a live auction as highlights of the day’s events. 

His only job was to engage in civilized conversation, connect with other high-standing figures, and expand the family network. Simply put, he was there to look pretty.

The feeling of dread overcame him at the thought of immersing himself in socialization. With a begrudging sigh, he straightened his back, briefly smoothened out his suit, and adjusted his cufflinks before trudging up the stairs. Eyes tracked his every step. Despite his emotional wellbeing, the boy still managed to clean up well, creating a facade to those around him. He didn’t bask in the glory, though. He knew he was handsome, he knew he was wealthy, but looks and money were no longer sufficient enough to help him tend to the emptiness he felt on the inside.

The gala itself didn’t begin until 6:00 PM, which was in an hour. Therefore, in hopes to kill time, Draco aimlessly walked through the art displayed for the auction to be held later that night. He carefully observed the numerous crafts with great scrutiny. Paintings were created with much detail--many of them embodying styles from the varying art periods. Sculptures paying great detail to the human body littered the main floor. Hand-crafted furniture were set on display as well, showcasing elaborate ornaments and designs. Mother would like these. He thought. He continued plodding across the exhibit, typically stopping for a mere minute for every submission before walking away. 

It was when he took sight of a humble set of ceramics that he actually stopped to stare. The collection consisted of bowls and pots ranging from small to medium sizes. However, what caught his attention were the traces of gold that coursed through their shapes. They took the form of cracks, which looked too beautiful, too flawless to be such--he couldn’t comprehend them ever being broken at all.

“Do you like them?” A light voice startles him from his thoughts. Standing next to him is a bright-eyed girl whose face he vaguely remembers.

“Y/N Y/L/N? What are you doing here?” He dismisses her question and looks at her with disbelief laced through his voice. The girl was in Ravenclaw when they were still in Hogwarts. Due to the difference in houses and friend groups, there was rarely any interaction between them. Nevertheless, he’s heard countless praises for her artistic talent even as a student, therefore reserved a tinge of respect for her reputation.

“Draco Malfoy! It’s been such a long time!” She beams at him. A breathy laugh escapes him as a polite smile settles on his lips.

“Definitely has been. Were you eyeing this set as well?” He glanced back at the ceramics, contemplating on bidding for them in the auction. The sight of them evoked a warm, admirable energy within him, as though they called for his presence.

“Heavens, no. I actually made them.” Y/N took notice of the way he glanced at them, and shyly rubbed the back of her neck. The boy turned to her with eyes widened in awe of her brilliance—the smile of politeness immediately transitioning to one of sincerity.

“You made these? They’re beautiful!” The comment brought heat to her cheeks. 

“Draco, please. You flatter me so.” 

“I’ll be taking these home without a doubt.” He reassures her. In the moment that he says so, he immediately takes notice of her appearance. Her hair was slicked into a low bun. Her makeup gave her a pleasant dewy look. Gold accessories accentuates her deep emerald evening gown, which only emphasizes her curves as it flows down her body. He couldn’t recall her ever being attractive when they were students—she had always been clad in blue. But, tonight proved that green was definitely her color.

“You look lovely, by the way.” He complimented as his eyes glossed over her. She bit her lip in response to the butterflies that formed in her stomach.

“You always had a way with words didn’t you, Malfoy?” The melodic laugh that she produced, in turn, caused his heart to skip a beat.

“I admit I was a prat, but I’m not joking around this time.” The girl let out another giggle before placing her hand on his shoulder and giving it a quick squeeze. 

“I think you look rather dashing yourself. Unfortunately, though, I have to get going. I’ll see you around?” 

“It would be my pleasure.” Draco watches Y/N’s figure as she walks away. Before she goes any further, she looks over her shoulder and says, “Good luck with the auction!” 

With a small wave and smile, the boy is left in a lighter state.

The gala came and went with Draco thoroughly exhausted from the copious amounts of socialization. Questions regarding connections to his father were asked, business cards were exchanged, and flattery and compliment was a common occurrence amongst these interactions. Nevertheless, the boy’s energy especially drained from the intensity of the auction that occurred towards the end of the night. All the art pieces were valuable and beautiful, however it was only then that he realized that he wasn’t the only one drawn to Y/N’s work. Competition for the highest bid was at an all-time high as number paddles were desperately raised for every price announced. His heart clambered in his chest as the thought of keeping the ceramics seemingly slipped from his grasp. 

“Highest bid for 80,000 galleons! Do we have any takers?” The auctioneer announces. Draco waits for a second to see that no one has raised their paddles. Within the next, he lifts his own confidently. 

“We have a bidder for 80,000 galleons! Do we have any more bidders? No?” At this point, adrenaline coursed through his veins, beads of sweat had formed and fell, and the grip on his paddle tightened, leaving marks on his hand.

The auctioneer proceeds to announce the final countdown, “Final bid for 80,000 galleons! 1, 2, 3, sold to Draco Malfoy!” Relief overcame him while congratulatory praises were given by those nearby. He catches Y/N’s gaze from afar, and throws her a wink, signifying the resolution for the chaotic night.

--

As attendees began to file out of the building, the boy waited in the hall to collect his reward, filling out the form that confirmed the amount he had to pay. With his attention drawn to the slip, he fails to notice Y/N’s presence beside him. She looks over his shoulder, eyes widening at the amount before looking away to suppress the smile that threatens to form on her lips. She never really gave much monetary value to her art before; each one was produced as a product of passion and love. However, the expression that it first brought to Draco’s face, in addition to the amount of effort he put in to attain them, reassures that her work will be well taken care of. She momentarily stares at his broad shoulders before gaining the courage to speak.

“Congratulations!” She says, startling him once again. He takes a second to collect his breath before looking up at her.

“Do you plan on giving me a heart attack, Y/L/N, or is it in your nature to be overly enthusiastic?” The shameless smirk she has on her face, prompts him to release a chuckle. He stands up straight as soon as he signs the piece of paper, engaging his line of vision with hers.

“The way you respond is not my fault, Malfoy.” She answers, playfully shoving her index finger towards his shoulder. He grabs her wrist, and the warmth from his hands, accompanied by the flirtatious gleam in his eyes, prompts her to cast the same expression. She shoots him a coy smile before he releases her from his grasp.

“Would you like to accompany me to the front?” He asks.

“That’d be lovely.” The pair approaches the stage where the volunteers greet them both. They present his items upon confirmation, and proceed to wrap each bowl individually. He lifts one of the unwrapped pieces to his eyes, examining the gold details.

“How’d you manage to pull this off?” He asks, impressed by her craftsmanship.

“It’s a technique called ‘kintsugi’. I learned it while living in Japan for a while after the war,” She says, reaching her hand out for it. He gives it to her.

“You know, these pieces were never supposed to be auctioned off in this gala,” She explains as she delicately traces the lines, “They were so damaged. You can even consider them to be broken beyond repair,” Draco observes as she lifts it to her eye level.

“But obviously, when pieced back together��with all their cracks emphasized by the gold—they have much more value and beauty,” Y/N gives it back to Draco, and he takes it gingerly.

“However, It took a long time for it to come out that way. When you examine the piece before its repair, the first thought in mind would be to discard it. After all, why would anyone bother mending a broken bowl?” She meets his eyes once again.

“These cracks would typically be considered flaws, but at the end of the process the piece is still whole—I’m still whole. They mean a lot to me, and helped me heal from the war and all.” Her line of sight drifts towards the end of her statement, yet the boy catches himself appalled by the passion in her voice. He didn’t expect her to speak so openly, yet the words that flowed from her mouth touch him in a way he can’t comprehend. For once he feels a glimmer of hope budding within. For once, inspiration meets him, and he doesn’t want to lose that feeling she effortlessly provided. 

“I’ll make sure to take great care of them.” He says with much sincerity.

He places the piece back onto the table, and turns back to Y/N to see a sweet smile on her lips.

“I have faith you will.” A knowing look is shared between them--one that makes both hearts flutter in longing to see each other again.

“Do you think we can keep in contact? If it’s alright with you that is. I’d like to become more familiar with this art technique.”

“The Slytherin prince wants to keep in contact with me? Consider me wooed.” Draco rolls his eyes and chuckles at the old title. Before he could respond, she speaks again with more seriousness, “I don’t usually accept visitors in my studio, but I’ll make an exception for you. You can come by sometime, if you’d like.” 

A genuine smile appears on his lips for the second time that night. Out of all the individuals he exchanged contacts with, she by far had been his favorite. He ensured to send her an owl to confirm their meeting, hoping to do so some time next week. 

As they part, she turns back one more time, and calls out to him, “Draco,” The sound of his name perks his head upward

“You should smile more. It’s a lovely sight.” Before he could see her face erupt in a blush, she apparates away. With his new belongings in hand and an obvious grin, he too returns to the manor, feeling elated for the first time in a long while.

--

It was nine o’clock by the time Draco apparated home. Narcissa immediately took notice of his change in aura much to her relief.

“How was the gala, dear?” She asks.

“Quite pleasant this time around, if I’m being honest. I won these at an auction.” Draco stated as he props the box on top of a table. His mother approaches him, attention drawn to the objects when he reveals the contents inside.

She gasps, “Oh my stars, they’re beautiful.”

She picks one up delicately. The expression she had on her face was very much identical to the one he sported when he came across them the first time.

“I knew you’d like them. The artist was a fellow classmate of mine at Hogwarts.”

“Oh? Who is it? I would like to see more from this artist.”

“Her name is Y/N Y/L/N. Quite brilliant she is.” Mother’s instinct told Narcissa that this girl had her son taken aback. She saw it through the pleasant expression that graced his facial features, which contrasted greatly to the gloomy air that usually accompanied him. Furthermore, there was a decadent tone in his voice, a sparkle in his eyes, and a slight smile present when her name rolled off his tongue. She decided to probe a little bit more.

“House?”

“Ravenclaw.” He responds.

“Very fitting. The craftsmanship in her work is amazing,” The woman’s eyes marveled at the gold.

“How is she?” She asks. The question catches the boy off guard.

“Pardon?”

“How is she doing? Has she been okay since the war?”

“We didn’t touch upon it too much. Although, she mentioned that creating these has helped her heal.” 

“You mean to say that these were broken at one point?” 

“Precisely. She mended them.” At this point, Narcissa was quite taken by the girl as well. 

“You should invite her over one of these days. I’d love to have a cup of tea with her.” Draco quirked a brow at her.

“You’re not going to ask about her blood status?” 

“I would’ve known she was a pureblood from her last name, but times are changing aren’t they not?” Narcissa flashes a tightlipped smile towards her son, to which he responds with a nod of understanding.

“I’ll be going up then. You can keep that one mother. You seem to take a liking to it.” Draco turns on his heel at the end of his statement, carrying the box of ceramic goods under his arm. He wouldn’t acknowledge that times are changing. However, tonight has been the only instance he had felt his life shifting  —from the way he reunited with Y/N, to the way his mother spoke. It was a step forward to redemption, and he felt a little more willing to see where it would go.

The boy sat on his bed, deep in thought. With moonlight shining upon him, he delicately traced the golden lines that streaked the small bowl in his hands. Then with much hesitation, he rolled up his left sleeve and began tracing the blaring curves of the mark that stained his porcelain skin. Its presence resembled shackles that have been chained to his ankles, and the weight of the memories caused him to grimace. However the budding warmth that had seeped within him soothed the negative sensations. Heart palpitations of regret transformed into those of hope. Furthermore, recollection of the girl’s words rang through his mind. It led him to wonder if piecing himself into something better would ever be a viable reality—a dream so tempting to pursue that he brought himself to his desk to start a letter addressed to her.

--

Y/N awoke to a tapping noise on her window. With heavy-lidded eyes, she peeks through her curtains only to be met by an eagle owl. Its wide orbs stared directly at her, and attached to its beak was an envelope. She recalled the conversation she had with a certain platinum-haired boy from the night before, and immediately jolted upward, pushing the window open to let the animal in.

“Do you belong to Draco, love?” It perches itself on her shoulder, and drops the envelope into her hands. A wax seal presents itself with an ‘M’, confirming her inquiry. She opens it with much carefulness, and pulls out the letter inside.

Y/L/N,

How does this Thursday sound? 5:00?

DM

The girl chuckled at how straight-to-the-point he was, while her mind flitted back to their school days. She had always felt neutral about him. In contrast to popular belief, she didn’t think he was quite bad. Despite the harshness behind his actions, his eyes always maintained an undertone of fear. Upon the revelation that the boy was indeed a death eater, the title itself wasn’t what stirred her. Rather, it was the incomprehensible experience that she could merely picture him going through. She was there when he crossed sides. She was no stranger to the distraught look on his face--fear had overtaken him even in that moment. He might’ve been flawed, but it wasn’t without reason.

A cry from the owl broke her out of thought. “Impatient are we?” It blinked in response. Not wanting to keep the bird waiting any longer, she pulls out a piece of parchment and begins to write a response to the letter. 

Y/N inserted the parchment into an envelope, sealed it, and handed it to the owl only after she gave it a treat. As she watched it take flight from her window sill, she contemplated more on the boy. ‘Kintsugi’ the art of broken pieces and precious scars. As thoughts of him lingered, she began to wonder if how he fared ever since the war had drawn to its close. Before she knew it, she carried along with her work, totally occupied with the image of him in mind.

--

Draco’s heart beat like a drum when he skimmed through the contents of Y/N’s response. The feeling of nervous excitement erupted within his stomach up until the moment he stood on her doorstep. Besides the instances in which he’d gone out for his parents, it had been a long while since he stepped foot outside for himself. He took sight of the sheet of clouds that blanketed the sky, the small plants that were scattered on her porch, and the movement of the curtain as wind blew through her open window. 

Mere seconds of waiting were filled with more self-doubt as he tugged on his left sleeve, clenching his forearm soon after. Not much could be guaranteed from this meeting. For all he knew, this might’ve been a one a time thing. However, such thoughts were casted aside once he was greeted with Y/N’s glowing smile.

“Draco! It’s so nice to see you!” She stepped aside to let him in, “Please come in.”

The boy greets her, and looks around her small space. He indulges in the glimpse of her expressive decor--somehow they represented the life that she had built and created for herself over time. 

“Darling, your jaw is going to fall off,” she chuckled, “Come, the studio is in the back.” The girl gestures at him to follow her, and is met with a small building stationed behind the main house. The image of shelves fills his view upon entering. On them were stacks of cracked ceramic—some in large pieces, others in small. Towards the far corner of the room was a pottery wheel, and opposite from it was a small gas kiln. In the middle was a table space with various tools, brushes, lacquer, and gold. The room was as neat as it could be, much to Draco’s surprise.

“This is me.” Y/N turns around with her arms spread out. She then proceeds to pull a stool out for the boy and urges him to sit. He does so, and she stands in close proximity to him, leaning on the table for support.

“I was actually working on a piece before you came.” The girl points to her current project—a vase whose cracks have already been bound.

“What’s the process like?” He asks

“It’s much longer than you think. I learned how to do it the traditional way in Japan, and I haven’t deviated from it ever since.” The boy quirks a brow.

“You mean to say that there are faster methods?”

“There are, however it’s the process I appreciate the most I suppose. Mending takes time after all.” Y/N, who had been looking down at her feet, glances up at him to see his brows furrowed inwardly. 

“Don’t you get impatient?” She nods in reminiscence.

“I used to in the past, but all things worth anything take time, right?” They stare at each other for a moment. Draco, who has longed for the feeling of redemption, looked into the pure intent within her eyes. The silence prompts her to slip a small smile at him. 

“How about you, Draco Malfoy? How have you been?” There it was: The question that he could never answer (not truthfully anyway). Despite being in the center of all his thoughts, he hadn’t developed the courage to face them properly. He was stuck in a routine of living that provided a false sense of security. However, the present brought him to the realization that he had never been secure--not with himself.

“Not as good as what people see at face value.” He said simply.

“I never would’ve thought. Although, I suppose it just shows that we can never truly judge others, huh?”

“Yes, definitely.” He allowed his view on her to linger before speaking again.

“I actually wanted to see the way you worked.” It was her turn to quirk a brow at him.

“And why’s that?”

“To see the mending process.” Y/N remained silent as she analyzed the longing look in his eyes. His silvery orbs conveyed volumes of a history that was left unspoken. 

He continued, “I want to believe that broken things can be mended.” The determination in his eyes reminded her of why she began learning kintsugi in the first place. Behind the determination was hope that longed to be born to fruition. 

“I have one condition,” she said. His eyebrows arched in response.

“You can watch me, but you have to do some mending yourself.” She stepped away at the end of her statement and reached for something on her shelves. When she came back, she grabbed the boy’s hand, and placed a small bowl in his palm. It was a simple piece--still intact--taking on a warm, grey sheen. He looked at her with confusion, only to be met with seriousness. 

“Kintsugi begins when something breaks, and it focuses more on the beauty of the process rather than the outcome. That being said, it requires a lot of patience and acceptance.”

“I’m not an artist, Y/N. It won’t be perfect.” The girl takes hold of his other hand, and cups it within hers firmly. 

“It doesn’t have to be, Draco. The process belongs to you. You just have to trust yourself.” She said earnestly with her grip on him tightening. The warmth from her hands emanated through his skin and into his chest. She stood so close now, her head tilted upward to meet the uncertainty on his face. It made him feel vulnerable, but he stared back into her eyes with much resolve. It was an answer as it is.

Y/N gave him a reassuring smile and stepped away from him.

“I want you to drop that bowl. You don’t have to smash it, just let it fall.” Draco shifted his glance and looked at the bowl hesitantly. After a couple of seconds, he releases his hold, and allows the piece to slip from his fingers. His eyes were trained on it as it fell through the air, meeting its fate with a shattering sound. The bowl that was once intact was now in pieces on the floor, eliciting a familiar ache within him. It had split into five--a large one, one medium, and three more that were much smaller that comprised the object's rim.

As he bent down to pick up the pieces, a new wave of ambition overcame him. Each chip was picked up with much mindfulness, with responsibility, with purpose. When he stood up again, he began to perceive them as a reflection of himself, and gently placed them on the workbench.

Y/N, who witnessed the entire scene, smiled when Draco turned to face her. Her lips were pulled up gently, sweetly, and it evoked rosy feelings inside him. The boy eyed her as she went back to the shelf.

“How do you feel?” She asked. Her back was turned to him as she reached for another bowl. 

“Light.” She smiled at the sound of his response. She returned with a teal-colored bowl in hand. Following his previous actions, she dropped it, allowing the sounds of shatters to fill their ears once more.

“What are you doing?” He asks. 

“You think I’m going to make you do this alone?” The girl bends down as she gingerly picks up the chips of ceramic from the floor. She proceeds to clear out the table, leaving only the utensils to be used to start the process. 

“The materials I use are already here, but we’ll be working only with the lacquer for today.” The two set off to organize their pieces, hearts becoming more aware of one another as time passes on. After everything got sorted out, she demonstrated layering a coat of lacquer to the edges. Draco examined the way the smile instantly left her face, only to be replaced with a focused expression. Her eyebrows lowered, lips in a firm line, sights fixed on the ceramic. He also noticed how languid her fingers were in handling each piece with care. 

The solemnity of the sight is broken as she parts her lips to speak again, “Did you know that the lacquer is toxic?” He shakes his head when she spares him a glance momentarily before setting her gaze back onto the chips. “It’s toxic when wet, therefore much care needs to be taken when you lay it on the edges.” She then takes the smaller pieces and proceeds to add lacquer on them as well.

“However,” She continues, “as it dries, it hardens and mends the bowl perfectly.” She attaches the pieces together, and lifts the bowl carefully to show him. The boy stares at her flawless handiwork--the cracks reveal themselves as mere lines, seemingly invisible to the naked eye. 

“Strange, right? A substance that was once toxic is used to mend. When it dries it restores the product to perfection, and loses its toxicity.” Draco simply nods. It was a hard concept for the boy to grasp, but her words tickled a corner of his heart. How could something so bad be used to restore something that was once whole into perfection? He gazes at his own project while Y/N sets hers down carefully.

She passes the materials to him, observing as he gingerly takes the brush in hand. He dips it into the pool of lacquer, raising a glob of it up from the bottle.

“You don’t need too much, just enough so that the brush is covered completely.” She reached out to grab his hand, to demonstrate what she had meant. After realizing their closeness, however, she turned a shade of pink and stepped back. Draco tried his best to hold back his smile, but failed miserably.

“I’m s-sorry.” She stammered. He chuckled at her. 

“Nonsense, I’m all for this form of instruction.” He said teasingly, eliciting a laugh from her.

“Don’t mind me, just concentrate.” She ordered. Silence loomed, but smiles remained on their faces. Draco continued his work, emulating the way she coated her edges. He gripped each chip firmly while his eyes trailed the movement of the brush. Each second spent felt like darkness was being extracted from within, leaving him light and solemn. With much caution, he then pressed them together, and watched as the product adopted its once flawless form. With an approving look, Y/N explained the proceeding steps, immediately noticing the relaxed expression that had settled on his features. Deciding to take a break, the two embark to the main house to relax.

“Since we have to wait a while, is there anything you want to do? To eat?” She asked as they entered the room. The question, however, was left unanswered due to the sighting of a familiar looking uniform. Hung on her wall was a Ravenclaw robe.  

“You still have it?” He asked, pointing to the article of clothing with his chin. She chuckled and pulled it off it’s hanger.

“Yeah. I found it a couple days ago, and thought I’d try it for old times sake.” She slipped it over her shoulders, pulling the boy through a series of flashbacks from his time in Hogwarts. He recalled passing her by the hallways, getting small glimpses of her sketches, even seeing her vibrant personality shine with her friends.

“You know, I always thought you looked better in green.” He said approaching her.

“You think so?” He nodded.

“It’s a shame that we never really talked much. I think we would’ve been good friends.” She said in response.

“You think so?” 

“Well besides the bullying, yes. I don’t think you’re as bad as people portray you to be.” 

“You give me too much credit, Y/L/N.”

“Maybe you deserve a little more credit than you were granted.” This sparked more warmth within the boy. As she ordered food for delivery, Draco took a seat at her table, his gaze locked on her with the robe still propped on her body. His thoughts drifted as he imagined what might’ve happened if he did befriend the girl. How different would he be if he had her for company? How close would he have allowed their friendship to become? His mind began to wander and he ruminated on the what-could-have-beens, most especially the effect that his receiving of the dark mark would have had on her. His fingers flitted to his arm and rubbed the portion of fabric that covered his mark.

Y/N sat across from the boy, immediately noticing his dazed look.

“What’s on your mind?” She inquires. The boy broke off from his thoughts and refocused his attention to her.

“Just thinking about the past.”

“What of it?” She asked. He looked at her with slight reservation in his eyes.

“How different things would be if we were friends.” Her thoughts lingered on the possibilities for a while before she abandoned them completely. Only one realization came into mind:

“Well, we’re friends now. Perhaps everything that happened in the past was needed for us to meet like this.” She slid off her robe and propped it back on the hanger. 

She continued, “Whatever it is, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now belongs to us.” 

In that moment, a switch flipped in Draco’s mind, and he knew those words would stick to him for a long time. Maybe it wasn’t a chance at redemption that he yearned for--the conversation he had with her made him realize that the chance had always been presented to him--rather it was company. Genuine company. The one that opened their arms for comfort, the one that offered understanding when he couldn’t offer some to himself, the one that provided reassurance that everything was going to be okay. 

She didn’t need to elaborate. Her words conveyed her intent clearly, her eyes blazed with firmness, confidence, and faith in him. The boy closed himself off for way too long out of the fear that he’d be rejected once again. The anxieties that had resulted from the foul glances, derogatory statements, and prematurely formed accusations towards his family locked him away to the only source of comfort that was available to him--himself. How was it possible that he made it through on his own all this time? He barely held on to a thread, and as he crumbled further, so did his grip. And when the grip was no more, he fell into the hollowed body that he was. He allowed his darkness to swallow him, to control him as he mindlessly drifted with each passing day. 

Until now.

Right now, in the stillness of the room, in the comfort of her dining table, in the presence of her worn out Ravenclaw robe, the thread had reconstructed itself. It presented itself as the small smile that softly graced her lips, the scent of clay that lingered on her hands, and his bowl that sat solemnly streaked with cracks in the workshop behind the main house. 

“I suppose you’re right.” The boy showed a smile of relief, which prompted the girl to reach out for his hand, giving it a firm squeeze.

“Here’s to our friendship!”

--

There were very few things that Draco cherished in his life: his family and his solitude. As weeks flew by with Y/N’s company, however, he found that his heart was beginning to create space for her as well. It began subtly with the way he silently observed her actions. She catered to each of her pieces with the same amount of dedication--every detail incorporated with mindfulness, with care, and intention. She exerted a similar effort when it came to guiding him. Every step in the process was taught with much patience. Her soft hands would graze his own in attempts to correct his form, to stabilize his shakiness, and to relieve him of the tension that came with his perfectionistic tendencies.

-flashback-

The sound of Draco’s uneven breaths made themselves aware in Y/N’s presence. She had left him alone to tend to his project and herself to her own. Muscle memory led her to scrape off the excess traces of lacquer from the cracks, while the boy fixed his concentration on sanding the surface of his bowl smooth. Scratching noises filled the air, and only became more amplified as minutes ticked onward. It was unfamiliar to the girl--the action itself shouldn’t have required much energy. With a brow arched upward, and her gaze directed towards him, the sight of furrowed brows and tense lines fill her view, eliciting a chuckle from her.

“You’re going to break the bowl at that rate, Draco.” The boy unclenched his jaw and gave Y/N an exasperated look, increasing the volume of her laughter.

“I told you I won’t be perfect.” 

“What is it that you’re having trouble with?” Y/N asked, as she made her way to his side of the table.

“Some of the excess just won’t budge from its place.” Draco huffed in frustration. She removed the bowl from his grasp, and examined the object. On the other hand, he takes the liberty to step closer to her, his face peering over her shoulder. The heat emanating from his body distracted her, which she responded to by immediately returning her attention to the remnants that resided on its cracks.

“It helps to focus on one spot at a time,” She grabs the crumpled piece of sandpaper laying on the side, and connects its surface to the porcelain. He watches as she uses minimal yet focused motions to scrub at the excess. Slowly but surely the residue clears out, revealing a clean, crisp line. “See?” She turns her head to the side only to be met with his in such close proximity. His breath softly brushes against her skin. His silvery orbs dive deep into her y/e/c ones. The pulses of their heartbeats ring through their ears, and the concentration shifts from the demonstration to one another. 

It’s the apparent flush staining his skin that has her pulling away. 

“Why don’t you try?” She nervously asks. Y/N hands the bowl to the boy, and observes as he attempts to emulate her actions. With motions still stiff and choppy, she finally takes his hand into hers.

“Relax, Draco. You need to be patient with it.” With slender fingers wrapped around the back of his palm, she guides his grip with focused and particular motions. The repetition engrains itself into his muscle memory, and he quickly gets the hang of it. He exhibits relief with every remnant removed. In return, she releases her grip and looks at him with a satisfied expression.

“Thank you.” He says, and he means it. With perfection constantly being expected of him, the feeling of humility that comes with being a beginner is foreign. He had always been pushed into the limelight--the weight of his family name designates the image of flawlessness, elegance, and poise in all that he did. No room for mistakes. He was required of only the best. So, when he looks at her and gazes at his hands, a genuine smile spreads on his lips. 

The expectation for perfection may have taunted his past, but the realization of his commitment in giving his best brought out a clear sense of victory despite the imperfect process that had been associated with it.

--

Some days are tougher than others. The nightmares make it difficult to get through the night regardless of how infrequent they became. It always resulted in him waking up, broken into a cold sweat. Goosebumps peppered his skin, the hair behind his neck stood straight, and he would gasp for air. With regret once again overcoming him, a weight forms in his throat--it’s impossible to go to sleep now. Moreover, the fear for the lack of a peaceful slumber keeps him wide awake until sunrise, and there is only one word that shouts at him in the back of his mind.

“Mudblood.”

“Mudblood.”

“You filthy mudblood!”

The sayings are coupled with the memory of his back pressed onto the cold, wet, bathroom floor. He could recall the stinging sensations that pricked his body, the sight of blood seeping through the white fabric of his uniform, and the energy that was draining from his spirit. It was the lowest he has ever been--mere moments away from what could’ve been his end. Maybe that’s what should’ve happened. There was no one for him to turn to--the warmth of his mother’s arms was so far away, the act of shedding tears was sacrificed to protect his family, and the fact that he was already repulsive in the eyes of others caused his hope to plummet. There wasn’t anyone who he could call his true friend--one he could confide in to relieve the burdens he had faced.

But there was Y/N. The erratic heartbeats that rang against his chest subside when he remembered the firmness within her voice as she cheered for their friendship. The sparkle and reassurance that was displayed within her eyes tickled his heart in a way that he hadn’t experienced before. The soft touch of her hands reminded him that he wasn’t alone. The patience in her voice reminded him that despite all of his shortcomings, there was always hope for change. 

It was then that he’d pluck himself out of bed, and take hold of the ceramic piece that laid prettily on his desk. With deep breaths, he ran his fingers through its golden streaks, allowing the chilled sensation to calm him down. His eyelids would flutter close, and he’d envision her soft smiles, her chipper personality, and the passion that was expressed through her eyes whenever she worked. He’d recall the worn-out Ravenclaw robe hanging on the wall of her dining room, and remember that she was there. She believed in him. She had given him a chance. With his mind set to ease and the morning sun illuminating through the fabric of his curtains, Draco picked up his own broken pieces, and binded himself with the faith she had as the lacquer to keep him together. 

Narcissa and Lucius had noticed subtle changes in the boy. A peaceful light had returned to his silvery eyes, the frown that graced his lips began to fade with time, and the tension that he held in his joints loosened. He treaded the halls with his back upright, his vision trained straight ahead--each step filled with more purpose than the last. They didn’t make it known to him, but the sight brought them much joy.

--

It was a cloudy day when Draco returned to Y/N’s workshop. This time around, however, there’s much more uncertainty and nervousness within him as he stands in the midst of her working. 

Earlier that morning, Narcissa mentioned hosting a ball within the manor (something that hasn’t been done in forever). Invitations were sent out already, the RSVP list continues to grow, and the property itself has been decorated to exhibit its new grandeur. Of course, he agreed to it--slightly concerned about how they’d be perceived--but he was more thrown off by his mother’s only request:

“Please bring Y/N with you, Draco. I’d like to commission her for a piece.” In his mind that translated into, “I want to meet the girl you’ve been constantly visiting.” He knew his mother wasn’t against her. He was more worried about how Y/N, herself, would respond.

The familiarity of her focused expression surfaces, and it attracts him much more than it has before. Her hands are nimble, and she moves fluently. Her hair was tied into a low and messy bun with loose strands framing her face. Her appearance now was much different than their first meeting at the gala, yet his mind went back to that night--picturing her beauty in her deep emerald green dress. With his feelings for her more clarified, he feels his heart beat at the thought of her touch, moreover the thought of his touch on her. Would she even return his feelings? 

“Draco, are you alright? You’ve been staring this way for a while now.” He takes the opportunity to test the waters.

“I needed to ask you something actually.” He goes around and pulls a stool to sit on, meeting the level of her gaze.

“And that is?”

“My mother asked for you,” He said, fumbling with his fingers, “My family is hosting a ball, and she wants you to come--she wants to meet you.” He notices the way her eyes widen at the sound of his announcement. 

“I’m sorry. Come again?” Draco released a soft chuckle before reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a decorated envelope with her name printed on the front.

“This is yours.” She takes it from his grasp gingerly and brushes her fingers on the fine embellishments. Realization hits her when she skims across the familiar letters of her name.

“I’ve imagined many things in my life, but they certainly don’t come close to this. Wow, imagine being invited to a Malfoy ball.” Her words flowed out with awe, softening his heart. He reaches out, and tucks one of the loose strands behind her ear. The action forces her to look into his eyes.

“She’s taken quite a liking to your work.” His smile brings out one of her own.

“I’m honored.” She starts to beam, “I should go dress shopping soon.” Her eyes remain transfixed on the information given on the actual invite itself.

“I think you’d look beautiful in anything you decide to wear.” It was meant to be a thought--meant to stay in his head--but it came out, and now the girl felt her face get hot. She covered it with her hands, while the boy just looked up at the ceiling to avoid her gaze.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that.” He says.

“It’s fine.” 

“If it’s fine then why are your hands still covering your face?”

“Why are you still looking up?” Draco, lowers his chin and pulls her wrists away.

“I’m not anymore.” When the words leave his lips, and his eyes meet hers, he becomes aware of the amount of peace that he attained since meeting her again. In some way, the silence that fills them is overtaken by the messages that their gazes send to one another, both containing gratitude and affection. 

“So will you come with me?” He asks.

“Definitely.”

--

 Y/N paced back and forth while many aristocrats stepped into the manor with much poise in their step. She didn’t mind formal events when it came to art, however, this case felt entirely foreign to her realm of comfort. She wasn’t from a wealthy family nor was she pureblooded either. Surely the end of the war had initiated a shift in change, but the significance of blood status still persisted in some even after. Nevertheless, she made herself present. With much resolve and a false sense of confidence, she stepped into the entrance of the building.

The foyer was bustling with chatter--many attendees stood with glasses of champagne in hand. Still in an awkward stature, the girl takes a look around. The ceilings were decorated with crystal chandeliers. Velvet curtains were pulled to the side, exposing massive windows. Arches, columns, even the walls were covered with ornamental carvings. Every single aspect portrayed luxury. Whenever Draco visited the girl, she discarded his association to wealth and solely focused on him as a person. Because of this, the realization that the boy actually had some coin in his pockets hit her like bricks. 

Draco, who had kept his eyes locked on the girl, chuckled to himself. She stuck out from the crowd with her eyes widened in awe. Not to mention her attire. Her hair was kept straight down with golden clips holding it tucked behind her ear. Furthermore, she was dressed in a champagne mermaid gown speckled with beads and embroidery, which flourished outwards and into a sheer fabric decorated with similar details. Her neckline plunged into the middle of her abdomen, yet her shoulders remained covered with long sleeves that wrapped themselves fittingly around her wrists. She truly had the tastes of an artist.

He quietly made his way to her as she continued to gawk at the room. “Your jaw is going to drop, darling.” He whispered in her ear. The feeling of large hands planting themselves on her waist caused her to let out a small yelp, pulling her out of her daze. She let out a breath of relief when she turned to see Draco’s face. 

“You scared me.”

“You were gawking at the walls.” Y/N rolled her eyes, and briefly skimmed him from head to toe. Heart skipping at the way his suit had admiringly framed his shape well. She giggled at the sight of the snake brooch that embellished the collar of his jacket.

“Always a Slytherin, aren’t you Malfoy?” As she brushed her fingers along the details of its design, Draco reached for her hand, and held it by her fingers. She could only stare as he lifted it higher to press his lips on it. Butterflies were felt everywhere.

“And a charmer.” She added. They shared a quick laugh before being interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat. Standing before them was Narcissa, who beamed at the sight of her son with the girl beside him.

“You must be Y/N Y/L/N. I admire your work, dear.” The older woman stuck her hand out, which the girl shook firmly.

“Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to meet you Mrs. Malfoy.”

“Please, call me Narcissa.” The delight in her voice emitted a welcoming energy, loosening the nerves that Y/N felt early on.

“Thank you so much for inviting me, Narcissa.” 

“It was no problem at all, dear. I’d actually like to speak to you regarding a commission later on tonight. Would that be alright with you?”

“Of course! I’m honored you’d even considered me.”

“Very well, I’ll leave you two alone now. I hope you enjoy yourselves.” Sweet smiles and gazes were exchanged between the two women. After casting a knowing look to her son, she departs from the pair, disappearing into the crowd. 

“Draco, I’ll have you know that I can’t dance to save my life.” He snickered at her confession, already letting the comfort between them settle in.

“It’s alright. Let’s walk instead.” With arms hooked, Draco begins leading her away from the bustling room and into a secluded hall. Mounted on the walls were paintings of his predecessors. He introduced each patriarchal figure to her, starting with Septimus. Her vision plastered itself to their features, mentally discerning the traits that Draco inherited. After a while of walking and conversation, they finally got to a family portrait. Depicted on it was a younger-looking Lucius and Narcissa, and seated on his mother’s lap was a young Draco himself. Y/N unhooked her arm from his, and approached the painting. She concentrated on the little boy. He had bright eyes, a toothy grin, and flowing platinum locks. His hand gripped firmly on Narcissa’s, and his small legs dangled over her dress. He was the only one smiling in the painting, and it warmed your heart knowing that the artist decided to keep that detail in.

“What’s going on in that mind of yours?” He asks, stepping close. He hesitantly snaked his arm around her waist, hoping that she didn’t mind. She looked up to him and smiled, stepping even closer to him. 

“You were so small.” Draco scowled slightly. However, his heart skipped a beat when he saw the way she looked at the portrait with adoration, allowing his foul expression to fade.

“Well that was painted when I was seven, so it’s no wonder I was small.” His sarcastic remark caused her to roll her eyes again, softly slapping the hand that was planted on her. He glanced at her and squeezed her side tighter, pulling Y/N even closer to his body--his warmth increasing the amount of butterflies that rose in her stomach.

“When I walked in earlier, it completely slipped my mind that this was your house. That you grew up here.”

“Why’s that?” He asks, genuinely interested in her response.

“Everytime you came over, I only saw you as Draco. Not as Draco Malfoy, only son of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, and heir to the Malfoy family name.” 

“Please elaborate.” He commands, his heart now racing.

“You’re more than the expectations held for you. You came with commitment to learn about a process that you were genuinely interested in. You grew with your mistakes and your frustrations. That experience was you, and you alone.” She couldn’t help but reveal that admiration she had for him through her voice. 

“I thought it was amazing.” She whispered, hoping that he wouldn’t hear her. He did, however. In turn, he grabbed her hand and led her further down the hallway and into his room. Y/N stood there confused at his sudden action. Her eyes then begin to widen at the sight of him removing his suit jacket with her mind drifting to rather dirty thoughts. 

“Draco, what are you-” 

“I didn’t think it was possible.” Y/N furrowed her brows.

“What do you mean?” Draco looked into her eyes, before shifting his gaze to his left sleeve. Her line of sight follows him as he unbuttons his cuff, and rolls the fabric up, revealing his dark mark. She gasps.

“I didn’t think it was possible to mend myself.” It didn’t take him to say much for her to finally understand that he didn’t intend to do anything dirty. It was the opposite of that. He was making himself vulnerable to her.

“But you showed me how.” He said, completing his statement. Tears brimmed her eyes upon the realization of the reality he had to live. The blaring mark that took away his innocence screamed against his pale skin. It screamed of the pain, of loneliness, and the many many long sleeved shirts he must’ve worn to keep it hidden away. 

“If there’s anyone amazing, it’s you, Y/N.” The tears that had built up fell as she furiously shook her head.

“No, Draco. It’s you. It’s all you.” She took his arm delicately into her hands and pressed her lips on his dark mark. Draco felt his eyes well up in tears, while her own spilled onto his skin. Every kiss that she peppered seemed to paint over his scars, his cracks with gold. The feeling of emptiness dissipated in her presence, only surrounding him with warmth that he had yearned to keep.

“I’m thankful for you.” He whispers. Y/N couldn’t hold herself back at that point anymore. She released his arm from her grip, and held his cheeks within her fingertips, wiping the moisture that managed to fall from his silvery orbs. She, then, slowly lifts herself using her tiptoes, and scans his face for a moment before pressing a sweet, short kiss on his lips. It was gentle, much like her. It was patient, much like her. It was filled with faith, hope, and concern--things that she hadn’t been able to express to him in words, yet was felt through her kiss. Draco closed his eyes at the sensation. When she parted from him, he cupped her face with his hands, and drew her close once more. A sigh escaped her as she felt all the emotions he managed to keep in. Each press conveyed a level of appreciation that the boy had never thought he was capable of showing. 

In that moment a memory of a shrill shout fills her mind, and she stops so suddenly.

“Weren’t you struck with sectumsempra?” She asks with her brows furrowed towards him. His lack of response confirms her curiosity. 

“May I?” Her fingers trail to the top of his shirt as she makes her request. Knowing what it is she wants to see, he nods, prompting her to carefully undo the buttons. Her hands tremble as she makes her way down, revealing the scars that resided on his body. She pushes the fabric over his shoulders, and begins tracing each one--much similar to the way he has done with the golden cracks on her bowl. She slowly lowers herself and starts placing kisses where he has been struck. With her hands gently fastened to his sides, her lips linger in one area before transferring to another. He finds comfort in them--it was as if each sensation reassured that he was loved. As she travels upward, she plants a kiss on his jaw, and a final one on his own. With it she expresses a message dedicated only to him: I believe in you.

They separate and bask in the moment by holding each other’s gaze. After a while, Draco wraps his arms around her waist, and pulls her into a tight embrace. He nuzzles his nose on the crook of her neck and kisses it, while she runs her hands up and down his bare sides. His left hand then finds its way to her jaw, tilting her face upwards. He proceeds to nip the expanse of her neck, making her head fall back to grant him more access. The hand that was wrapped around her waist travels downwards to her hip, grips it, and presses her body against his. 

“Draco,” she moans.

“Hm?” She doesn’t respond. She finds herself completely intoxicated by his lips as he moves from her neck, her sternum, and to her exposed abdomen. Instead, she laced her fingers into his hair and pushed him closer to her skin. 

The pair was interrupted by the sound of a knock on the door. 

“Young master! Are you in there?” It was a houself. Draco presses a finger to his lips, signalling to remain quiet.

“I don’t think he’s there, we should check elsewhere.” Light footsteps were heard fading into the distance, eliciting a light laugh between the two. Y/N looks into his eyes once more, and kisses him one last time.

“Should we go?” He responds with a small ‘yes’ and kisses her forehead. As he buttons his shirt, the girl plods across his room, fascinated with its luxuriousness as she takes in the details. One of them causes her to gasp, however. She walks with her throat choking up at sight of the familiar bowl that was placed on his desk. It was hers. She lifts it gently, recalling their first conversation at the gala. The golden scars remind her heavily of the boy behind her. As she traces them, warm hands rub against her sides before snaking around her waist once more. 

“Does this mean you’re my girlfriend now?” Y/N laughs at his question.

“I suppose it does.” She says as she weaves her fingers into his. The boy takes a moment to stare at the bowl ahead.

“When you said that Kintsugi helped you heal, I wasn’t quite sure to believe you or not. But, going through the process was more than enough to make me understand why.”

“You truly are amazing Draco Malfoy. I won’t let anyone tell me you aren’t.”

“Even if my past is completely flawed?”

“Your past made you into who you are right now. What we have is ‘now’, and ‘now’,” she sets the bowl down and faces him, while her hand caresses his cheek. “...‘now’ belongs to us. Now you are amazingly, wonderfully, imperfectly perfect.”

Epilogue:

The sound of Y/N’s words rung in his mind as Draco found himself standing in the middle of her workspace. With a firm grasp on the brush handle, he dips the bristles into the gold liquid, allowing the excess to drip back.

He takes a deep breath, and allows the solemnity of the room to fill him. Many thoughts overtake him in the moment, but only one makes itself prominent to him, resilience. After going through the binding process himself, he pridefully lays down the gold over the cracks on his bowl--each one portraying the imperfections of his past.

A/N: Hi! If you made it this far, I want to thank you so much for reading! There’s a bit of inaccuracy in the last bit, but besides that I hope I brought much light to the technique in general. I hope you enjoyed!! Feedback is very much appreciated :D

Tagging:

@beiahadid @hahee154hq @mushi98 @stretchyice @dracosathenaeum @dreaming-about-fanfictions @saby06143 @rottenhexrt @littlethie @amithatemo

Link to the taglist is on my masterlist :D

[jokertrap-ran]

(未定事件簿) EVENT!「午夜华章」 [Tears of Themis] EVENT: Symphony of the Night Translations (Chapter 6-01: Northern District’s Old Street)

*Tears of Themis Masterlist *Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut *The tracking tag for ALL Event Stories will go under: #Tears of an Event *(y/n) is your name when in direct referral; otherwise referred to as MC.

Location: Northern District's Old Street

A strange scene was unfolding at the entrance of the Micro-district by the time Zuo Ran and I rushed there.

There were many elderlies gathered around the entrance, murmuring about the many items lying on the ground.

Raising my head to peer at the second floor, I saw that unit 202's door was wide open.

Zuo Ran: Please excuse us, thank you.

Zuo Ran fended against the crowd for me as we both made a beeline for the door.

Zuo Ran: Hello. May I ask what has happened in Unit 202?

Doorman Uncle: Oh, it's you guys. The lease on Apartment Unit 202 is over, so I'm cleaning it up in preparation for its next tenant.

Zuo Ran: If so, then what are all those things lying on the ground below?

He pointed to the ground where everything was arranged in a way similar to a stall at the flea market.

Doorman Uncle: Those are items from Unit 202. The tenant said that they no longer want it, so we're free to dispose of it as we wish.

Zuo Ran: The tenant…. said so?

The Doorman pointed at the second floor.

Doorman Uncle: This was stated in the initial contract he signed for the lease. The tenant will leave at their own discretion once their lease is over, and anything left behind in the room will become free pickings for the Micro-district.

Doorman Uncle: The lock on this door was something he installed himself, but it’ll automatically unlock itself if he doesn’t renew his lease once it’s over.

Doorman Uncle: Oh, yes. This isn’t everything. I’ve already put the old computer of his that he left behind along with other knick-knacks up for auction.

Doorman Uncle: I just put it up online yesterday, and many people were bidding high prices for it. I’ve really chanced upon a treasure trove...

MC: ……

Zuo Ran suddenly clenched his fists tightly, but he didn’t say anything...

MC: Lawyer Zuo…?

He was silent, a mixture of emotions showing on his face.

MC: ……

MC: Mister, could you let me have a look at those things?

Doorman Uncle: Sure, feel free. You can buy them too, if you want.

I bent down to look at the items on display at the stall. Some of them looked like they had only been recently purchased, and you could tell that some of them were clearly worn out just from a glance.

I suddenly understood what Zuo Ran must be feeling right now.

MC: Mister, did the tenant start renting this place three years ago?

Doorman Uncle: Yes. Don’t you guys know your customers pretty well.

These items and even the house itself were all set up to be taken care of following his disappearance… Which goes to say that Medilla had already expected something like this to happen one day, ever since he started living here…

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

MC: He had originally intended to continue living here… until the time when danger came looking for him because of his job as a hacker.

MC: He had already decreed a long time ago, that should anything happen to him, all his possessions would immediately be given out to others…

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Zuo Ran: Let's go, (Y/n).

MC: Ah… Lawyer Zuo!

Seeing him turn and make his way out of the crowd, I hurried to catch up to him.

MC: Lawyer Zuo, don’t we have to go back upstairs to investigate…?

Zuo Ran: No need. We’ve already done enough here.

He clenched his fists, as if bracing himself for something.

Zuo Ran: Someone with a do-or-die attitude who sacrifices himself to no end for how passionate he is for his job, is someone admirable. Therefore...

Zuo Ran: We can’t let his life end in a “disappearance”. We must find him.

Zuo Ran never spoke again, but I could feel the sudden burst of determination radiating off his person.

MC: ...That's right.

MC: We'll definitely find him… That's for sure.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Previous Part: (Chapter 5-03: Truth I) | Next Part: (Chapter 6-02: Truth II)

[focsle]

1/3 Character bios for the Occultist Comedy! Disaster man is first. 

Basics Name: Roth Maxilla Nickname: None Age: 43. December 5th, 1976 Gender: Man Zodiac: Sagittarius sun, gemini moon, aquarius rising

Physical Characteristics Height: 6’ Weight: 170 lbs Distinctive features: He has an X-shaped scar on one cheek, and the palm of his right hand is all scarred up too. Lots of healed slashes. Mannerisms:  He’s very gestural. Has a flair for the dramatic and talks with his hands. He also speaks in hyperbole a lot of times. Voice: He has a radio show talk host vibe, mellifluous, but only when he’s aware of it. In casual conversation he speaks quite quickly and his voice is pitched higher than people expect. Fashion: He wears a lot of grey suits, but often without the jacket. Fond of vests with peaked lapels, and tends to have a bit of an old fashioned silhouette. He’s got a fish hook through his right ear though, just to spice it up a little.

Lifestyle Current place of residence: The suburbs of a small city in Upper World 247. The setting is like, US-Coastal-City-Adjacent, but isn’t a specific real-world location. His grandfather willed him his Weird Aging House when he passed, which at this point is in rough shape but it’s a place to live.

Occupation: He used to work as a high-end auctioneer dealing in antiques and antiquities. He got the job as a young man through family connections rather than formal learning, stayed there for a good twenty years, and then had a midlife crisis because he was sick of everyone and everything and dramatically quit / was fired after a very public meltdown. He found his way into working for a secretive occult organization with designs towards multidimensional travel through a mysterious email in his spam folder he decided to follow up on while he was struggling with unemployment.

Habits: Not a neat person to any capacity. He’s pretty scattered as a human, and his living spaces reflect that. Bit of a shut-in. He’s really hard to make plans with if they aren’t spontaneous and is otherwise chronically late for things.

Hobbies: Astrology, tending a really pathetic vegetable garden that makes him feel like he’s got his life together, muscle cars, horror/weird fiction pulp magazines, getting in bidding wars over odd shit on auction websites and being extremely good at it.

Emotional Traits Personality: He’s eccentric and flighty but more or less good-hearted. He’s a big-picture sort of thinker and tends to get rapidly carried away in his plans and ideas without looking at the finer details or logistics, but he brings a relentless optimism to those ideas. He’s somewhat of a hermit but is deeply grateful when people extend friendship to him. He doesn’t take people’s kindness for granted. However, he’s really hard to nail down, and can be hard to get a hold of because he gets caught up in something.

Positive traits: Tenacious, ambitious, incredibly open-minded, nonjudgemental

Negative traits: Gullible, impulsive, reckless, out-of-touch with people’s more practical struggles because a lot of things sort of fell into his lap as a youth and it’s benefitted him in the present.

Religion/belief system: He’s very…do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law (though Thelema doesn’t like, exist in the world the comic is set in BUT U GET WHAT I MEAN EY?). He’s all about following one’s truth, and is very open to discovering what that truth might be for him.

Likes: Trying new things, getting invited places by friends because he might not leave the house much otherwise, nighttime, collecting, feeling understood.

Dislikes: Feeling restricted by…assorted societal expectations, the neighbor to his left, routine, people who seem too sure of how the world works.

Goals: I think he ultimately is looking for a sense of belonging that lines up with his sense of self. He wants to be himself around people. And Entities.

Relationships Parents: Zachary and Eva Maxilla (both deceased)  Siblings: None Orientation: Down if u ask but only after a lot of handwringing. Relationship status: Hmm. Notable relationships:  Zachary, Eva, and Mordecai Maxilla: Roth’s father, mother, and grandfather. They were Actual Serious Occultists who had gained a family fortune generations ago and were therefore able to fund a lavish lifestyle. However, their occult activities existed on the fringe of Roth’s life, and so he was brought up only with a vague sense of it that he learned of more when he got older. He was raised more by his grandfather than his parents, and was closest with him. There also wasn’t much restriction on what Roth did or where he went in his upbringing. But he was a bookish homebody as a kid, so he mostly just stayed inside and read whatever he wanted.  He consumed a lot of information that contributed to the individual that he is today.

Alice Aubrey: An art handler Roth worked with when he was an auctioneer. She’s a painter who was working at the auction house part-time to have a livable income, but she hated it as much as Roth did. They commiserated together, and Roth appreciated Alice’s more grounded way of existing in the world. Liked her paintings too. When he had his breakdown and quit, he later felt bad about ‘leaving’ her there, and when he got his New Strange Job, he immediately reached out to her to see if she would want to join him. She agreed, though her reasons for entering into the work are much different than his.

Niver: An interdimensional bug that Roth accidentally let into his house but ended up befriending. Mostly because it’s a weird chatty monster in his house and that’s Exciting, but also because it gives him the time of day. It’s also the first client to agree to ‘buy’ what Roth’s paranormal company is selling. He later finds a kindred spirit in Niver, in some ways because it has similar challenges and aspirations to Roth, and a similar insatiable curiosity for things outside its own life. They get on well.

[teacuphuman09]

Inceptiversary 2019 MasterPost

It will soon be July and you know what that means! IT’S INCEPTIVERSARY TIME!!!!!!

In case you don’t know (and that’s fine, we love new blood in this fandom), Inceptiversary is the yearly celebration of the release of the film that keeps us darlings dreaming bigger: Inception. It takes place over five weeks (July 1st to August 5th) and includes fandom focused events, challenges, and content. It’s when we Inceptionites come together to strengthen the community, show appreciation, and welcome in a new generation of dreamers!

ALL SHIPS ARE WELCOME in the Inceptiversary festivities and we encourage you to explore a ship you haven’t before. You never know what you might find!

“But wait, teacup,” you say. “How am I to keep track of all these awesome events? How will I know what’s happening and what’s to come?”

I’m glad you asked, dear dreamer, because we have the super-organized and equally awesome @freighttraininmybrain over at the Inception Social Calendar and the miraculous trio of @flosculatory, @deinvatiwrites, and @dbshawnblog on the @Inceptiversaryblog keeping us from succumbing to Inception FOMO! So hold onto your grip on reality because the unbelievable details of this year’s Inceptiversary are laid out below!

1) Theme Weeks: 

Inceptiversary is structured over five glorious weeks, each of which caters to a theme in fandom. Fans are encouraged to post and reblog all manner of content related to each week’s theme. Memes, fics, fanvids, artwork, conspiracy theories; all will find a home! And you may just discover something you didn’t know you needed in your life.

This year’s Theme Weeks are:

Week 1, July 1 - 7 No Stone Unturned - Inception Gen Week 

This is a special Theme Week this year as we’ve paired it with a prompt challenge of the same name that will be run by @bayta-darell! The Inception fandom has a ton of love to go around, but what about the non-romantic kind of love? This week, we're focusing on all of the great platonic and familial relationships with a series of daily prompts. These are just meant as a starting point to get you inspired and by all means, disregard these as much as you want! All Inception content that isn't based on romantic or sexual relationships is welcome, and fanwork recommendations are certainly encouraged as well. Have fun, and happy Inceptiversary!

Day 1: Backstory

Day 2: Team Dynamics

Day 3: Character Study

Day 4: Rare/Underappreciated Characters (Philippa, James, Miles, Nash... anyone outside of our main dream team)

Day 5: Non-Canon Interactions

Day 6: World-Building

Day 7: Post-Canon

Week 2, July 8 - 14 It’s The End Of The World As We Know It: 

Zombies! Meteors! The Rapture! Girl Scouts! It’s the apocalypse and we want to know all about the survivors!

Week 3, July 15 - 21 Curtain Fic: 

Domestication at its best! Bring out all your happily ever afters and spend a week in bliss as your favourite ships ride off on magical rainbow unicorns and make all their dreams come true!

Week 4, July 22 -28 In Between The Lines: 

We all have them. Those headcanons about what went on behind the scenes of Inception. What happened to Tadashi? Is Ariadne hiding gills under all those scarves? Just what did the team do with all that time left over in the dream? And for Nolan’s sake, did the damn top fall over or not?

Week 5, July 29 - August 5 Crack/Fluff: 

It’s been a long month so kick back and relax with a large dose of everyone’s favourite guilty pleasure: Crackfic! We all need those fics that are purely for entertaining silly and happy ideas. They’re a soft place to land and a great opportunity to get wacky ideas out of your head! Indulge and enjoy the ride!

2. Watch Parties (@corinnetags, @noitsnacktime, @freighttraininmybrain ):    

Watch parties are an excellent way to meet other people in fandom and tend to create a ton of inspiration for future wips! All movies are connected to the cast of Inception in one way or another and will be held on either Slack or Discord or both depending on host availability/preference.  The schedule for all viewings can be found on the Inceptiversary Social Calendar.

3. Watch Party Bingo: (@withinmeloveresides1, @zuulee63)

On July 1st, 16th, and 31st, Inception Bingo during the Official (not really) Inception Watch Parties! You can check out the viewing times on the Inception Social Calendar. More info to come!

4. Inception 30 Day Challenge (@flosculatory): 

The 30 Day Challenge is such an interesting and entertaining look into the minds of your fellow Inceptionites! Learn how others feel about your favourite Inception moments and enjoy a look back at why we’re all still here, nine years after its release.

5. Trope/Kink Bingo (@teacuphuman09, @dreamhubbies):

One of the most popular aspects of Inceptiversary is the Trope/Kink Bingo, and goodness, does it ever deliver! Scoot on over to @inceptiversarybingo  for info on how to get your hands on your very own bingo card, then indulge your (not so) secret desire to write all the tropes and/or kinks your little fandom heart desires!

6) AELDWS: (@teacuphuman09):

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a stake in this year’s Arthur/Eames Last Drabble Writer Standing event. AELDWS was missed last year, but in 2019 it’s returning to its roots and eliminating one writer every week until a champion is crowned! (I’m coming for you, @deinvatiwrites)

7)  Inceptionkitties: (@a-forger-and-a-point-man) 

The Caption Contest is back! Send in your purrfect puss pics, captioned with a quote from Inception and you could win all the fame and fortune of the Inception cat fandom! Get to it, meow!

8)  Inception Quiz (@thingsbeginningwitha, @betterpausenow, @freighttraininmybrain):

Known by some (me) as one of the most difficult quizzes of all time, the Inception Quiz tests your knowledge, dedication, and attention to detail of all things Inception. Think you can handle it? (You can!) More details to come!

9) Inception Positivity: (@flosculatory)

Do you have a fandom crush? Someone you admire or look up to? Someone you feel needs to know just how important and appreciated they are? Then jump over to @inceptionpositivity to fill out a submission form and send your love across the fandom!

10) Fic Recs: (@teacuphuman09)

Looking for a specific fic or wanting to read along with the Theme Weeks? @inceptionficrx (@teacuphuman09) has what the doctor ordered! We’ll have weekly reading recs as well as special recs for Wednesday Hump Day and Bunk Fic Fridays (@avacynner); little pick-me-ups and some pants-tingling to see you through the weekend!

11) Inception/007 Battle Royale: (@a-forger-and-a-point-man)

The who, what, where, and when has yet to be announced, but get ready for yet another fight to the (canon)death! More details to come!

12) Inception Big Bang: (@dreaminghigher)

Back after a few years off, the Inception Big Bang is a fantastic event that combines titillating fic ideas with gorgeous artwork! Head on over to @inceptionbigbang for more info, and hurry because sign-ups are almost closed!

13)  Fandom Auction for @nolaespoir: (@corinnetags)

Fandom lost an incredible talent and friend, Nolaespoir, and this year’s auction is in her name, with proceeds going to charities dedicated to suicide prevention and mental health. Check out the auction site and bid on some amazing items up for grabs!

14) Here’s a list of other Inceptiversary blogs and tags you should follow to keep up to date on the festivities:

First and foremost there is the Inception Blogs Masterlist, curated by the incomparable @a-forger-and-a-point-man

Are you a member of the InceptionSlack yet? It’s a great online platform that allows us to communicate directly and get to know each other! We have chat rooms for just about everything from career support to writing & art, and everyone is welcome! We have the best custom emojis, let me tell you! This is also where the Watch Parties will be hosted, so if you’d like an invitation, send @teacuphuman09 or @deinvatiwrites an ask!

Looking for something a little more Inception-centric than Slack? Want to be part of everything Inception related? The Inception Discord is the place to be! So head on over and check their platform out and enjoy some sweet, sweet discord!

Wondering about who’s who or the history of our fandom over the past nine years? @flosculatory and @gessorosso have put together two wonderful resources! The Friending Meme is a place to put your deets if you’re wanting to connect with others in the fandom and the Fandom Page (which now houses the Friending Meme!) is an ongoing collection of events and moments in fandom history. If you’d like to contribute something to the Fandom Page, please contact @gessorosso.

You should obviously be following #inception,  #inceptiversary, and your ship tags (tumblr.com/tagged/[search term]), but may we also suggest:

#christopher nolan

#emma thomas

#wally pfister

#hans zimmer

#tom hardy

#ken watanabe

#marion cotillard

#leonardo dicaprio

#dileep rao

#ellen page

#joseph gordon-levitt

#cillian murphy

#michael caine

#lukas haas

#tom berenger

#pete postlethwaite (RIP)

14) Where can I find the Inception Button I keep hearing so much about?

RIGHT HERE!

That’s it, that’s all (it’s not, there’s always more). So get ready because we’re just days away from Inceptiversary 2019!

[masaru2042]

The Engine is My Boss

This a little short of the r/entitledparents thing.  But this time, it’s a story of Bessie...Dana’s former engine, running into a very entitled mother and her brat wanting a cab ride.  And then, the mother damages the Flying Scotsman’s cowcatcher, that’s a big no-no!

So, it’s Dana again.  I got another one of those stories.  Entitled parents, you know.  And their kids.  Something you have to deal with when driving a steam engine.  But this one isn’t from Sodor, it’s from my old job.

I used to work for a particular railroad museum in Chattanooga and was the driver of the famous Southern #4501 “Ms. Mikado”, aka Bessie Baldwin.  

Little story on Bessie herself.  Bessie is a Mikado type steam locomotive, runs on coal, though she has a brother who runs on waste vegetable oil.  Which is why I suggested the fuel to Sir Topham Hatt for Gordon.  Bessie managed to talk him into it, saying she’s considering a conversion herself mostly because she’s sick of the bill she gets from TVA.  Yeah, she orders coal from TVA, having them drop off a couple cars when they deliver to the steam plant.  And it’s expensive!  I know when Bessie’s having a bad day when she looks at the invoice she gets from TVA.  She already complains about the high electric bill, now this.  Saul loves it when she starts complaining.

Mikados have a wheel arrangement of 2-8-2, a wheel arrangement invented in Japan.  Sodor has a couple of Mikados of its own, notably the two Smallies...Bert and Mike.  But also Hiro Kawasaki, who is a Mikado from Japan.  The United States saw the wheel arrangement Japan was using for its steam engines and wanted to use it for their steam engines.  The very first MS-1 Mikado built by Baldwin Locomotive Works was Bessie herself.  And she’s the last one of that particular type remaining.  It’s why she is nicknamed Ms. Mikado.  Because she is THE Mikado of the US.

And she’ll let you know it.

She was built in Pennsylvania in 1911, but don’t let that fool you, she’s a Southern belle through and through, even jokes that her water tank is actually filled with sweet tea, not water.  It isn’t, but she loves to say it is.  She was retired in the 1940s when the Southern Railway was going to diesel, sold to a short line and pulled coal cars until the 1960s when she was bought by a railfan who restored her to working order.  Unfortunately, said railfan passed away, and she ended up getting his entire estate.  He left her everything, and I do mean everything, including the museum itself!

Bessie Baldwin is in fact the third richest locomotive in the world.  Her business partner is Saul Amerigo, a Consolidated 2-8-0 built by ALCO in 1901.  He’s the Southern #630.

Some of you Brits might notice the odd surnames these engines have.  In Britain, steam engines tend to take on the surname of their designer, not so in the States.  American steam engines use their plant name as the surnames.  Since Bessie was built at Baldwin Locomotive Works, she’s Bessie Baldwin.  Saul was built by the American Locomotive Company, so rather than call him Saul ALCO, he’s Saul Amerigo...for the explorer who named the Americas.  Japanese steam engines also do the same thing with their surnames, which is why Hiro has the surname of Kawasaki, despite that in Japan the surnames come first.  He actually would be Kawasaki Hiro.

Kinda interesting little tidbit.

Also, Bessie is a big fangirl of the Flying Scotsman. It’s adorable.  Likewise, Scott’s got a crush on her as well.  If she’s not focusing on the business, she’s on Skype, or Discord, or Facebook with Scott.  

And what can I say about Bessie, she practically saved my life once.  I was down on my luck, got out of an abusive relationship with my ex-husband, couldn’t go back to working as a freight hauler at Norfolk and Southern, was about to commit suicide when Bessie came in, whistle blaring, scooping me up and took me to the museum.  And from that day on until my move to Sodor, I was her driver.  My cousin was her fireman.

She even hopped on a boat to Sodor just to surprise me for Christmas all because I was home sick.  And that’s no easy task for a steam engine that’s 150 tons.  I don’t deserve a friend like Bessie, but I’m glad she is one.  She’s like the grandmother I never had but always wanted.  She even lets me call her “grannie” a few times too.  And apparently Saul is my crazy, fun uncle.  Which make sense since my actual uncle drives him.

And she is a hard-ass, make no mistake.  She will make you work hard, but in the end, you’ll feel like you achieved something after you did.

But there’s one thing I’ll have to say about Bessie is...you have to follow her rules, no matter what.  She’s a “my way, or the highway” kind of girl.  Especially when it comes to railroad safety.

On Sodor, cab rides are a flat NO.  There’s a reason for that, it’s an actual working railway that has steam engines on it.  The only exceptions are VIPs, inspectors, the press, and Sir Topham Hatt’s mother, Dowager Hatt.  Don’t ask about the last one, because I don’t know!

However, I do know about heritage railways in the UK that will allow for cab rides, or even the chance to drive said steam engine with a trainer driver and trainer fireman to supervise the guest.  The NWR is very strict on no cab rides.  

However, back at the museum in Chattanooga, Bessie does allow for cab rides on short excursions, not on long excursions, and the person riding has to be at least 16 years of age, or older.  And only two extra riders.  Despite American steam engines having much larger cabs than British steam engines, it’s still a tight fit to have a bunch of people standing in it, so, there’s a limit.  The driver and fireman still needs their conductor to be with them, so two extra people riding is the limit.  That makes five people in total inside Bessie’s cab, and that’s a bit cramped, even for her large cab.

And 16 years or older is because she doesn’t want little kids who can’t keep their hands to themselves from messing with her controls.  She figures if the person is old enough to drive a car, they can be mature enough to keep their hands to themselves while being escorted by a parent or guardian.  That’s 16 with an adult.  However, 18 years and over, you can ride without an adult.

Again, Bessie figures, if you’re old enough to go to war, you’re old enough to not have a babysitter in her cab along with you.

Bessie is funny that way.

Also to get a cab ride, it’s an extra surcharge.  

Hey, if you’re gonna be bothering the driver and fireman, you might as well pay them for their time of answering all your questions while they’re trying to pay attention to their job, as Bessie states.

And don’t argue with her about it.  She also loves giving the cab rider a nice little lecture before the ride, to make sure the rider understands what they’re allowed to do and what they’re not allowed to do.  Because Bessie is Bessie.  And she doesn’t want people messing around with things they shouldn’t.

It is her body after all and she makes that clear by saying “you wouldn’t want someone constantly poking you in all the inappropriate places too, right?”

Some people keep forgetting that sapient steam engines are living beings, and have their own boundaries and comfort zones just like humans do.  And they expect people respect their boundaries.  It takes a lot of trust that the engine must have to work with a driver and fireman manning the controls to assist in the control of steam, and even more trust to allow untrained strangers inside the cab on a ride.

And this is why she doesn’t allow children in her cab.

She had a bad experience once when she gave it a try to allow children inside her cab, and we’ll leave it at that.  But it does involve various fluids that little kids tend to excrete either on purpose or on accident.  

So, no kids.

They can ride in the coaches instead!

Unfortunately, this is one of those stories that involves a child wanting a cab ride and the entitled mother not understanding that no means no, and thinks that talking to the manager of the museum will get what she wants.

Hahaha, no.

So, we were about go out on our little short excursion, a special all the way to the east end of Chattanooga, passing by historic Civil War sites along the way.  The scenery is always nice, especially in the summer.  A lot of people love riding this special because at the end of the line, before returning, you get to see some turntable action.  Kids love that!

On this particular track, there’s a tunnel, and because of the coal burning, you do have to hold your breath a bit when you’re riding in the cab and going through the tunnel.  You don’t want that soot in your mouth.  This is the other reason why kids aren’t allowed to ride in the cab.

Well, on that day, Bessie was reversing slowly to the coaches, the conductor was hanging out out the door, helping her and me to see behind her large tender.  She just upgraded from her old 15 ton coal capacity tender to an 18 ton coal capacity tender, something she made a little bid on an auction off of an old Illinois Central J-3.  Not as big as the Centipede tenders that Saul’s younger sister Opal or his nephew Zack had, but way more than what Gordon uses!  A single Corridor Tender that Gresley designed had a 9 ton coal capacity.  Bessie now has a tender that is twice that capacity.  And she ripped a mechanical stoker from an old Canadian Pacific 4-6-2 steam engine she had purchased as a static display.

We don’t know if said engine was sapient or not, and the Pacific isn’t in good shape for a restore either.  Sad.

So, as we were backing up, my cousin Chuck turned his head to hear some sort of argument happening at the ticket counter.  It happens.  The supervisor inside the ticket counter should be able to help out with any trouble any dissatisfied customer has.  So lucky I didn’t have that job.  I’m not a people person, or rather a general public person.  It’s why I went to work for NS and hauled freight in a diesel up and down the east coast.

The rest of the crowd was out, waiting for the coaches to open up, taking pictures as we backed up.  Bessie’s bell was blaring loudly to make sure people knew she was moving.  She’s a big ole girl, and she wants to make sure you stay out of her way.  And then, the mother who had a scrawny looking 6 year old boy, came storming our way.  The ticket lady came out the door and raced after her.

“Hey, cuz…” said Chuck. “We got trouble.”

I got up from my seat and looked out the fireman’s window.

“Bessie, stop!” I shouted and she clenched her brakes.

“Set the brake!” Bessie called back.

I pulled back on the brake lever and then returned to Chuck’s window.

“What’s the hold up?” Bessie asked.  Her knuckle hadn’t touched the knuckle of the first coach yet.

“Trouble,” said Chuck.

“What?  What kind of trouble.”

There were times Bessie wished she had a neck so she could look around.  Though, she does have very excellent peripheral vision, despite being over a century old.

“The ‘I wanna speak to a manager’ kind,” I told her.

“Well, ain’t that a bowl of peaches and cream…”

Except, the mother wasn’t storming up to Bessie to complain to her, because well, Bessie’s the manager.  She was storming right to the cab where we were.  

Yeah, people tend to either forget, or not know that Bessie is the boss to talk to for any problems.  She’ll put her driver wheel down and tell you “tough shit” and then get to her trip.  And if you don’t like it, that’s your problem.  She’s too old to care and she has a time table to adhere.

“Excuse me,” the woman said, dragging her jiggling son over. “My son wants a cab ride, and the lady at the ticket counter said you won’t give him one.  I’m willing to pay extra.  That’s not a problem.”

“Right,” I said. “Your son can’t have a cab ride.  That’s policy.  No child under the age of 16 can ride in the cab.”

“I WANNA RIDE THE TRAIN!” screamed the kid.

I felt a slight tilt from Bessie’s frame.  Oh, she hates the screamers.  She hates the screamers.  I could feel the cab shudder just a little at the ear bleeding sound of that child’s voice.

“And you will, precious,” said the mother.

“He can ride the train,” said Chuck. “Just not the cab.  It’s for his safety and also for insurance reasons.  We don’t want him potentially messing with the delicate controls inside.  And Bessie is very particular when it comes to who can touch her valves.  Little children tend to don’t know how to keep their hands to themselves.  And it’s just best they don’t ride inside here.”

The mother wasn’t happy with that answer and her mouth puckered, wrinkling at the lips.

“My son is a good boy, he won’t mess with the train’s controls,” she said.

“I ain’t a train, honey!” Bessie shouted.  The woman wasn’t paying attention to her.

“It’s also very hot in the cab,” I said. “Which can be very dangerous for very young children's health.  There’s also the danger of the child inhaling the particles that come from the engine’s funnel going through the tunnel.  She burns coal in her firebox and there’s a lot of soot and ashes.  This can damage a child’s lungs.  It’s safer for them to ride the coaches.”

“Now, see here!” the mother called.

Oh god, not the “see here” phrase.  A Southern mom’s version of holding a gun to your head to get what she wants.  You don’t piss of a Southern momma.  Ever.  

Chuck and I just tensed at her grating voice.

“You let my little son ride in your cab, he’s been a good boy!” she said. “I wanted to do something nice for him.  I’ll be sitting there with him, so I’ll make sure he won’t touch anything.”

“We could get fired if we allowed your son in Bessie’s cab,” said Chuck. “It doesn’t matter if you’re with him or not.”

“I WANNA RIDE THE TRAIN, MOMMA!” the child screamed again.

“You’re upsetting my little boy!” she shouted at the both of us. “Now you let my son in there right now, or I’ll see the manager! I’ll make sure you are fired!”

“Oh?” I perked up, jumping down from the cab. “You wanna see the manager?  Okay.  You can see my boss.  And she can tell you why you ain’t getting into that cab.”

All the while, that kid kept screaming, pulling on his mother’s arm.  And with each crescendo, I winced.

“Somebody’s torturin’ a cat, it sounds like,” said Bessie. “Marci, get the ASPCA on the phone!”

That’s Bessie, everyone!

“Ma’am,” I began. “This is my manager, Bessie Baldwin.  You can now relay all your grievances to her.”

“You’re joking!” the mother shouted. “I will not be disrespected.”

“She ain’t jokin’,” said Bessie. “I own the museum.  Now, what’s this about a cab ride?”

“A train runs the museum?”

Keep in mind, that kid was still screaming.  He even flopped onto the grass, pulling up the dirt around him.

“Engine, or locomotive,” began Bessie. “And if locomotive is to hard to say, then use engine. Either one will fit.  The train is the thing I was backing up to before you ran over with your wailing banshee, demanding for a cab ride despite it being against our policy!  I haven’t finished coupling up to it, and I’ve got passengers waiting.  Now, what is it you want?”

No engine likes being called a “train.”

“My son deserves a cab ride,” she said. “And your...operator…”

“Engineer,” I said.

“Don’t interrupt me, young lady,” she snapped at me.

“I don’t give a damn if you’re precious little hell spawn’s got good grades, helped a little old lady across the street, made Cub Scouts, won a little league game, or saved a bag of drowning kittens near the Chickamauga Dam, he ain’t getting in my cab.”

I heard a clank on the rails.  Bessie just set her center driver wheel down.  And when she does that, it’s end of discussion.

I don’t think the mother got that message though.

In fact, she put her foot down as well.

“My son…” the mother began.

“Can get the hell out of my museum,” Bessie finished.

“How dare you…”

“Demand that I let that wallowing little monster inside my cab.”

That’s right, Bessie can play the game too.

The mother pointed her finger stiffly at Bessie, coming near her cowcatcher.  Just when she was about to open her mouth again, Bessie blew her whistle loudly.  Now, Bessie’s whistle ain’t no peeper you Brits are probably used to hearing from a steam engine.  It’s the kind of whistle most people think of when they hear “steam engine whistle”.  The loud...whooowhooo! She’s got a three chime whistle.  And that clamped the mother’s mouth up real quick.  It also grabbed all the eyes from the other passengers to the front.

“I don’t have time to argue with an entitled, stuck up snob that’s obviously gotten more than she deserves, and never once been grateful for it,” began Bessie. “Nor for her little hellion that sounds like he wants to die of asphyxiation rather than shutting up.  It’s obvious you haven’t popped one on his little bottom enough.  If I had a pair of hands, he would have been taken out to the back of the shed and given a prompt to whoopin’ for making such a scene like that.”  She tilted her frame down. “Both my engineer and fireman have given you the reason why we do not allow children under the age of 16 from ridin’ inside my cab.  This is policy, and it is to protect my business as much as the child’s health.  The boy can easily suffer a heat stroke standing so close to my firebox.  My cab ain’t like your fancy Lexus with climate control at the touch of a button.  Driving a steam engine is no fun ride, it is hard, hot and sweaty work.  And I do not want your child’s snot covered hands anywhere near my controls.  I’ve spent most of my century not knowing the intimate relationship between a child’s snot bubble and my valves, and I wish to keep it that way. And another thing, the policy of cab rides is not only my policy, but Norfolk and Southern’s policy.  I must adhere to that policy if I wish to continue to run on their lines.  What you are asking for just to please your brat and your sense of entitlement will put me out of business.  Now either go buy a regular ticket, enjoy the ride in the coaches and shut the hell up, or get the hell off my property.”

There was a short humph from the mother as she began to drag her kid away.

“See if I bring my business back here again,” she said. “And I want a refund and compensation for you scaring my precious child.”

“Patricia!” Bessie shouted. “Did this woman pay for a ticket yet?”

“No, ma’am,” said Patricia.

“That ain’t happenin’, hon,” said Bessie. “Now, get the hell out.  You’re holding everyone up.  Chuck, release the brake so I can back up.  I needa get the coaches hitched.”

There was a clink and Bessie began to back up slowly again, softly expelling steam as she went and letting gravity guide her back.  Her bell rang loudly.  Then, tapping her brakes, she finally came to a stop as the knuckles connected.

I didn’t have to be in the cab to back her up.  Chuck was just as good as a driver as he was a fireman, and could handle both at the same time just to help Bessie back up.  And Bessie took care of the rest.

I watched the mother drag her child away, exclaiming: “I’ll sue your company!  You’ll go bankrupt and have to be scrapped for parts!”

No engine likes the “S” word.  Neither Gordon, nor Bessie.

“Lady, you are banned from my museum definitely!” Bessie called back. “If you try to come back on museum property, I will have you arrested for tresspassin’.  And I have the police on speed dial!”

She does. Bessie has an iPad hooked up in her cab, and can do a “hey, Siri, call 911” if need be.  Some of the small wires near her smokebox are in fact connected to a microphone so that Siri can hear her and a speaker so that she can hear whoever is talking to her over the phone.  Bessie is a bit of a jerryrigger, she can jimmy anything she needs in a pinch, or rather, design it and get one of the mechanics to jimmy it for her.  Because, she doesn’t have any hands.  And the iPad is actually connected to a rigging near the water glass and plugged into a USB cord that’s attached to her dynamo.  

The woman walked swiftly away only to stop for a moment and peered down upon a bright red cowcatcher hanging up by two long nails with four yellow numbers written on it.  The numbers were 4472.  The woman let go of the child’s hand and then began to tug on the cowcatcher.

Oh no, not the Flying Scotsman’s cowcatcher!

“What in blue blazes are you doin’!” Bessie shouted just as she saw the woman try to drag the heavy iron cowcatcher from its resting place.  That thing was Bessie’s prized possession, something she won off an auction from another railway museum.  The cowcatcher was from Scott Gresley’s USA tour in the late 1960’s, an event that Bessie sadly missed.  Scott Gresley, aka the Flying Scotsman, came to the United States on a friendly tour with his owner Sir Alan Pegler as a show of friendship between the two allies.  It nearly ended in tragedy when the Prime Minister at the time withdrew funds and bankrupted Pegler and Scott was nearly scrapped to pay off the debts.  Luckily, this was during the time of the Civil Rights movement, which then decided to include sapient steam engines in its movement.  Scott was recognized as a person, not an object, could not be cut apart and scrapped, as that would be considered murder, and was sent home under good faith that the UK will recognize Scott’s personhood.  They did, in fact.  Scott’s now the second richest sapient steam engine in the world and helps to fund the British Railway Museum.

And the last thing Bessie wants is anyone to mess with her beau’s cowcatcher.

“You leave that alone!” Bessie shouted. “Security!”

The aids were already calling for security, Bessie sounding her whistle finally drew them towards where the commotion was happening.  All the while, the woman took hold of the cowcatcher and hefted it from the nails.  It slid and dropped face down with a loud clang!  And right on the woman’s big toe as well.

She called out and slipped her foot from the heavy iron cowcatcher, hopping on one foot.  The cowcatcher was very sturdy, so it won’t be easily broken from a fall, but no doubt it probably needs a good repaint after scraping on the concrete.  

“You’re gonna pay for whatever detailing is needed to fix the paint,” Bessie said. “Security!”

At last the security guards grabbed the woman. One of them, a rather large man, picked up the child and then took both to their cars.  All the while the woman kept shouting she wanted to sue Bessie for not allowing her son a cab ride.

Bessie had to file a small claims and take the woman to court over the damage to Scott’s cowcatcher.  Of course, being an engine, she couldn’t really appear in court, but had her lawyer and her secretary appear on her behalf.  It wasn’t much, just a couple hundred dollars to have the cowcatcher repainted, but then there was the filing the police report for disruption of the other customers, as well as being fined for delaying a passenger excursion train.  Needless to say, the woman had to pay a hefty fine, and serve several hours of community service for her attitude.

Bessie would have given the boy a ride eventually, once he became 16, but now that’s not going to be possible.  She put a ban on the boy until he was 18 so he could come back without  his loudmouthed mother.  However, being around 6 years old, it’ll be over a decade before that boy will be allowed to return to the museum.

But that’s not a problem for Bessie.  Oh no.  She intends to keep on puffing for another century, until the Good Lord finally decides its her time.  Until then, she’ll keep taking passengers, and telling stories of her days on the Southern Railroad.

[scatteredenthusiasticwriter]

Rag Doll

Sarah sat on a flat back chair from the 1800s and her elbows were resting on an antique dining table from the 1900s. Her long brown hair hung down, covering her face, while she scrutinized a cameo brooch trying to date it for a client. Antiques acquired over the years surrounded her with history. Sarah was so involved inspecting the brooch she didn’t hear the bell ring when the door to her little shop opened.

“Dr. Miles?” Sarah looked up and her face emerged as her dark black hair parted. Her glasses had a magnifying glass attached to each lens. Standing before her was a tall, lanky man wearing a black suit. He looked like a G-Man from the Prohibition Days. “Dr. Sarah Miles?” Sarah nodded in acknowledgement.

“My name is James Murray. I am with the law firm Finch Bellows Marten. I am sorry to tell you this, but, your uncle Benjamin Miles passed away a few weeks ago. The reading of his will is tomorrow at noon at my office on the corner of Main and 5th. I apologize for the late notice.”

“I am surprised my Uncle Benjamin included me in his will. We didn't speak to each other for years. We were at an estate sale years ago, engaged in a fierce bidding war for a rare seventeenth century vase. He won the bid. I never forgave him,” directing her attention back to the brooch.

“I am sorry to hear that. Your Uncle’s three children will be in attendance also," reaching the letter out to her. Sarah accepted the letter and tossed it towards the pile of unread mail teetering at the edge of the table.

James Murray turned and walked towards the door leaving Sarah mumbling to the brooch. He then exited the shop.

Sarah reached for the letter and opened it with a dagger shaped letter opener. The letter said, Sarah Miles is named in the will of Benjamin Miles. We ask that you attend the reading of his last will and testament. 

Could he be leaving me that vase? Curiosity got the better of her and decided to attend the reading.

     # # #

“It’s noon, shouldn’t we start? I can’t wait around to hear what the old man left me,” Lydia stated while pacing.      

“That’s if he left you anything. Dad told me I will always be his favorite, even after he’s gone," Elizabeth said. 

“Enough from the both of you vying for the top position. What does it matter? The fact is he’s gone, never to return, thank God," stated John.

James Murray shifted papers, uncomfortable with the conversation. There was a knock then the Sarah stepped inside. The three cousins looked at each other, mouths agape. Making no eye contact, Sarah walked to the back of the room and sat down.

“What the hell is she doing here? I thought this was a private reading for family only," Elizabeth bellowed.

Lydia agreed adding, “You’re not family. When was the last time you saw or spoke to my father? Ahh yes, it was at that auction where you lost out winning the vase. It looks very nice on Dad’s mantle.”

Sarah shifted in her seat hoping this would be over soon.

James began,“Today we are reading the last will and testament of Benjamin Miles.” 

John interrupted, “Skip all the legal gibberish and get to the bequeathed part.”

James inhaled, then exhaled, “I, Benjamin Miles, being of sound mind and body do bequeathed the following. To my daughter Lydia, I leave her a set of china that belonged to my great grandmother, and $5,000. To my daughter Elizabeth, I leave my rare collection of bottles, and $6,000. To my son John, I leave my Volkswagen Beetle and $1.00. To the local museum I leave all my antiques. To my niece Sarah, you never forgave me for winning the bid on the seventeenth century vase.  I am giving you that vase along with my curio cabinet and any and all items contained within.”

“Wow, I thought John got cheated. Looks like Sarah wins the prize for the most cheated. I have no doubt you will research that cabinet to death," Lydia said. 

“Hopefully your PhD in History pays off. Maybe there is hidden treasure inside," laughed Elizabeth.

# # #

Sarah instructed the delivery men to place the curio cabinet against the wall in the living room. Sarah tipped the movers and escorted them to the door, locking it behind her. She stood in front of the dark wooden cabinet, her fingers gliding along every smooth inch. When Sarah opened the framed glass door, something jumped on her shoulder and propelled into the cabinet, sending tingles of fear down her spine. Milo, you silly cat, get out of there before you scratch it. Milo sniffed and pawed at a spot in the center of the shelf, until Sarah pulled him out. What did you find? Using her fingers, as though reading braille, she glided them around. She discovered an indent, circular in shape like a quarter sized button. She pushed down on it. Without warning, the bottom panel of the cabinet shot open hitting both of her shins, causing her to yell and jump backwards into Milo, sending him running. There were stories going around the antique community about a handful of curio cabinets, built in the1800s, having secret drawers. Her smile broadened as she gazed upon at. 

The drawer contained a skeleton key, an old newspaper dated 1878, and a rag doll. The headline read, The Town of Goldchester’s Mysterious Illness Targets All Its Young Girls. The next story was about a young girl named Sally Monroe who died in a gold mine collapse also in Goldchester. Sarah read when the town’s people dug her out, she was cradling her rag doll, fingertips bloodied and black. She fully opened the paper and an envelope fell to the floor. It contained a deed to a house in Goldchester, Arizona. 

# # #

The cab driver waiting outside of Sarah’s shop honked twice. Sarah emerged juggling her suitcase and a well worn brown leather briefcase. The driver placed the suitcase in the trunk and reached for the briefcase. “I got this one," Sarah insisted then sat in the backseat. The briefcase held the skeleton key and the deed. The cab driver shrugged his shoulders. He closed the trunk, got into the cab and drove Sarah to the airport.

The plane landed with a thud, startling her. She set her watch back two hours to adjust the time difference from Massachusetts. She exited the airport and right into Arizona’s dry heat. A cab pulled in front of her and she got in, instructing the driver to take her to the Goldchester Bed & Breakfast. After a twenty minute ride, the cab slowed and pulled over in front of a two story building with a wrap around porch and a two seater swing. Sarah tipped the driver and collected her suitcase. She climbed the three creaky wooden steps and entered the Bed and Breakfast.

Sarah hit the gold bell on the counter. From the back appeared a stout woman wearing an apron covered with flour. 

“Welcome. You must be Sarah Miles. I’m Haddie Wilcox. Been expecting you.Your room is ready, handing Sarah the key. Second floor, first door on the right. Dinner is at 6:00pm sharp," Haddie said returning to the back.

Sarah climbed the stairs and entered her room. She placed the suitcase on the bed and headed back out to find the Town Hall, briefcase in hand. Unsuccessful in her search for information, Sarah walked the few blocks to the house. She stood in front of 111 Miners Circle, a quaint little blue two story house with a white picket fence and white shutters.

Sarah used the skeleton key to unlock the door. She stepped inside to find the entire bottom floor completely furnished with white sheets covering each piece. Sarah removed the white sheets from a couch, two Queen Anne chairs, and a writing desk she dated around 1825. She spied a curio cabinet in the corner, her eyes widening in disbelief. The curio cabinet looked exactly like hers. Sarah walked over to the cabinet and opened the glass framed door, thankful there was no cat this time. Sarah glided her fingers across the shelf, discovering the indent. This time she stepped back as she pushed down on the button. The bottom panel opened, just like hers, revealing the same newspaper, but this time it contained a gold key. The room turned cold as ice. An even colder breeze circled around Sarah, causing her to shiver. Sarah snatched up the newspaper, the gold key, and threw the rag doll into the briefcase as she ran out of the house.

Haddie, and her young daughter Laura, were waiting at the table when Sarah rushed in, out of breath. She apologized for being late. Haddie smiled and passed the chicken and gravy. After dinner, Sarah and Haddie retired to the living room to have coffee.

“Haddie, back home I found a deed and skeleton key in a hidden drawer inside the curio cabinet I inherited from my Uncle Benjamin. I went to Town Hall today for information but the house doesn’t have much history. The address is 111 Miners Circle, so I went there and to my surprise, the skeleton key opened the door. Inside I found a curio cabinet, just like the one back home, that has the same hidden drawer. It too contains the same old newspaper with the story about Sally Monroe, who died in a gold mine that collapsed. When they dug her out she was still cradling her rag doll. The rag doll in both papers looks exactly like this one". Sarah held the rag doll out to Haddie.

Haddie gasped, “Did you say your Uncle’s name was Benjamin? Benjamin Miles?”

Sarah nodded. “Oh my, his grandfather, your great grandfather also named Benjamin was the one who found Sally. Story has it that Benjamin was more of a grandfather to Sally than her own. She would visit often to see the rag doll inside the curio cabinet. During one visit Benjamin gave Sally the rag doll. Oh, how she loved that doll.  After the funeral, Sally’s mother gave Benjamin the rag doll back as a reminder of Sally. Shortly after Sally’s death, young girls in town began getting sick with strange symptoms. The girls complained of a heaviness on their chest.  Their skin dried like a mummy’s skin and their fingertips turned black. Each girl cried out for their doll while gasping for air. No one could figure out why each girl cried out for their doll before they passed. The town lost every young girl that year.”

Sally asked, “Was the cause ever discovered?” Haddie shook her head.

The following morning, Sarah walked back to the house, taking her briefcase containing the rag doll with her. As she approached the house, she thought she saw faces staring down at her from each window. Sarah entered a bone chilling house. All the furniture was upside down, the white linens rolled and twisted into a large rag doll. Sarah’s briefcase started shaking. She opened it and watched the rag doll convulse. She shut the briefcase with shaking hands and ran for the door. As she reached for the handle the door slammed shut. She heard children’s laughter and running overhead. Sarah’s curiosity overshadowed her fear. She stood tall, and after taking a few long breaths that could be seen, she climbed the stairs. The doors on the second floor opened and slammed shut repeatedly, all except for one. Sarah approached the unopened door when something touched her, chilling her to the bone. 

“What do you want?” Sarah shouted. The landing swayed throwing her off balance. She tried to run but the stairs got further away with each step. Her chest felt like a heavy weight was on it, causing her to fall, then her finger tips turned blood red, then black. Sarah watched in horror as the skin on her arms shriveled, shrouding her bones. She began gasping for air as she cried out, “Sally stop.”

The walls heaved as though breathing. The door in front of her swing open revealing a blinding light. At its center a silhouette appeared. Sarah attempted to get up but the weight held her hostage. The silhouette glided towards her, the blinding light blown out like a candle. The white silhouette swayed like a sheer curtain in the breeze. Sarah watched as more silhouettes came into focus. Young girls now encircled Sally.

Sally’s face began to distort, blood red eyes glowing. She ascended, weightless arms outstretched, and with a deafening scream, demanded her Maggie be given back. Sally plunged down onto Sarah pinning her in place. The girls were now screaming for Maggie to be returned. Sarah nodded in fear, hoping they understood. Sally rose, allowing Sarah to get up. She ran down the stairs, but, at the bottom Sally blocked the path, her distorted face aflame. 

“I have your doll. Please, let me get it.” Sarah pleaded. 

Sally glided aside. Sarah ran to her briefcase and pulled the rag doll out. Sally was instantly upon her and snatched the doll from her hands and began cradling it. Sarah watched as Sally and the girls rejuvenated into themselves again.

They motioned for Sarah to follow them upstairs. The once closed door now opened, revealing a white light bright as a star. Sarah watched as each girl entered the light, waving goodbye as they disappeared. Sally remained. 

“I am so happy to have Maggie back. I missed her so. I took the young girls from town to help me find my Maggie. You brought Maggie home,” Sally said with a contented smile as she walked to Sarah and kissed her on the cheek. Sally made her way towards the light. As she entered, the light folded into itself engulfing Sally, then darkness. 

Sarah went downstairs and noticed a glow coming from the corner of the room. It was the gold key. A faint voice whispered in her ear, “Go to the painting of your family.” 

Confused, Sarah walked over to a painting of her great grandfather and Uncle Benjamin. This is my ancestor’s house? She tried to take the painting off the wall then noticed the hinges. She pulled the picture aside, revealing a wall safe. Sarah used the gold key to open the safe and was flabbergasted at what was inside.

# # #

The wall safe contained some of the gold Sally’s father mined. He gave it to Sarah's Great Grandfather Benjamin as a way of thanking him for trying to save Sally. The gold was now worth $500 Million.

The cork popped off of the Dom Perignon hitting the ceiling then bounced back in front of Milo. He jumped and ran. Sarah raised her Champagne filled glass thanking her uncle. 

“I guess I was your favorite after all.”

[paypercliche]

Talk Money To Me: The Future of Paid Media In A Voice-First World

Voice Killed The Keyboard Star

Over the past year, you’ve likely heard murmurings about the Dawn of Voice Search. 7 million “voice-first” devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo were shipped last year and an estimated 25 million more will ship in 2017. Mobile manufacturers increasingly champion their respective voice assistants – Siri, Alexa, Cortana – as key device features. Talk is the new Type. You’ve likely encountered some of the following statistics in recent months:

“76% of all Americans think voice search is great for multitasking”

“The majority of U.S. teens (55%) use hands-free search every day”

“25% of 16-24 year olds use voice search on mobile”

“1 in 5 online adults have used voice search on their mobile in the last month”

“Cortana now has 133 million monthly users”

“25% of desktop searches on Windows 10 are voice”

What does it all mean? For one thing, it means SEO experts are hard at work figuring out the best ways to position quality site content as “The Answer” that Google and Bing will reference when responding to a voice query. Long tail search queries have made a comeback and more and more content is being phrased in question and answer format, but meanwhile, voice search means paid search has been left in the dark. For now.

I’m Sorry Paid, I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That

“Text ads followed by 10 organic results is a thing of the past in the voice-driven world.” According to Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP of Advertising and Commerce at Google

Approximately 77% of Google’s total revenue comes from search advertisements and unless they want to see that number shrink significantly, they already have their best and brightest working out how to effectively monetize voice search. Google may boast about the sales figures of Home and Pixel and perhaps they’ll unveil a device called “Google Ear” in time for the holidays, but their future success comes from voice advertising.

Sooner than later, Google will bring paid ads to voice-first devices (and once they do you can safely bet Microsoft’s Bing engineers will start figuring out how to copy them). Amazon has also made hints that they intend to monetize voice search and it won’t be long before Facebook joins the crowd. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai noted in November, voice search has “expanded the pie”.

Would You Like Ads With That? Integrating advertisements into our voice interactions will be no easy task. Imagine asking your Google Home to “find a nice Italian restaurant” and hearing it respond with an ad for “unlimited pasta at Olive Garden”. A human assistant doesn’t shill for a business every time you ask for their help and if our digital assistants start blaring ads in between answers, we’ll quickly grow weary of such intrusions. Voice ads must be useful and subtle to work and ad publishers – be it Google or otherwise – must figure out how to sell those ads.

Here are 5 ways that might happen in the near future:

1) Shopping Assistant The groundwork for voice ordering has already been laid. You can ask your TV to order Dominos or ask your fridge to buy more Coke, but can voice assistants help us actually shop?

Suppose you want to buy a book for a friend. You ask Google to find a hardcover copy of Moby Dick in new condition. Google tells you it found 24 options, so you ask how many offer Free Shipping. 12 do. “OK Google, which is the cheapest?”. “$15.02 From barnsandnoble.com”. You give Google approval and the book is on its way.

Probability Score: 9 – Google already has this information at hand with Merchant Center and it may not take much to utilize shopping feeds to create smart voice shopping algorithms in the very near future.

2) Upsell Voice assistants may also introduce ads via the ancient art of the upsell. A voice query about how to use a new product you purchased could trigger an ad for a guidebook or accessory. Voice queries are overwhelmingly requests for information and frequently the answer will require a subsequent purchase, allowing advertisers the opportunity to promote their add-ons, replacement parts, repair or warranty services, and other items of use to the consumer.

Probability Score: 7 – This could feasibly be an extension of Interests & Remarketing Lists, including Similar Users, targeting users who have already shopped with you or shown interest in one of Google’s purchase intent categories. Alternately, upsell ads could simply be triggered by voice queries when a question prompts a service or product purchase.

3) Special Offers The one time we welcome an intrusion into our purchasing decisions is when someone has a better offer than the one we’re considering. Numerous websites – from Price Grabber to Retail Me Not – have made fortunes by gathering price comparisons or coupon codes for the thrifty consumer to peruse. After all, how useful is a digital assistant if they can’t tell us about the best deals available?

Probability Score: 5 – This one is a little trickier and may first come in the form of an add-on. Or perhaps the first instance will come from a cheaper “Echo” model, as Amazon has been known to offer more affordable Kindle models that come with advertisements. An Echo that chimes in with a special promotion occasionally is a feasible solution in the coming years.

4) The Experts “OK Google, how do I fix a leaky, rusted pipe?”

“OK, fixing a leaky, rusted pipe requires several tools and supplies. A professional plumber is recommended. Shall I locate some in your area?”

In addition to local services at your rescue, voice assistants could offer all sorts of expert help from retailers, B2B industries, and more. Ask Google “what’s the best backpack for a 3-day trip?” and you’ll likely get a guide from REI, but it’s easy to imagine a quick ad boasting “30% off a 40-liter weekend pack from Moosejaw” without missing a step in your consumer journey. “How to do my taxes” might elicit an ad from Turbo Tax. The possibilities are endless.

Probability Score: 4 – While it may be the most useful iteration of paid ads in voice search, it may also be the most difficult to implement – particularly on the auction end. Google must first solve the hurdle of how to allow businesses to bid on voice queries, how to determine which ads to “speak” to the consumer, and what constitutes a “click” (or a conversion for that matter). Will it happen? Most certainly, but we may be years away.

5) Alerts Google and others have dabbled in the idea of push notifications to your mobile device from a nearby retailer. The thought of having your phone spammed with unsolicited ads wherever you go was quickly shunned by mobile users at large. Voice assistants, however, offer a much less intrusive way of alerting you to nearby deals. You’re already in conversation with your phone or smart speaker and besides, if you tell a human friend you’re hungry, wouldn’t they mention a nearby taco place with happy hour deals?

It isn’t a far cry for voice assistants to offer similar notifications in our interactions. Who would be opposed to Google or Alexa alerting them to a special deal at their favorite sushi bar? Maybe the band you’ve been listening to a lot on Amazon Music is coming to town. Wouldn’t you like to be informed about ticket sales?

Probability Score: 6 – Another tricky one – in this case learning each user’s threshold for unsolicited ads will be the obstacle to implementing behaviorally triggered voice ads. However, an early iteration could come soon in the form of user prompts. “OK Google, show me the best happy hours near me.” may be informational at first, but isn’t a stretch to paid placements and promotions that bump offers to the top of the list.

OK Google, I’m ready for my close-up While paid voice ads may seem tricky to navigate – for both publisher and advertiser – the reality is that paid ads already have a place reserved in voice search and while we may have to wait some months for Google to implement an intelligent ad interface, smart businesses will begin conjuring up ways to present their products and services to the estimated 300 million monthly users already becoming accustomed to asking their voice assistants for help with daily tasks and needs.

Will your business be ready when the first paid ad is recited to a consumer?

[angelarawlings-blog]

Muscat to Muscat

Two days at sea to recharge our batteries after the 4 day Indian onslaught, so glad we did it and now it has given us the thought that we would like to see more by way of a land tour, to see the Taj Mahal, do an Indian safari & a trip up the Ganges - something to research! Dad & I got our photos entered into the photo competition, for $5 per photo (maximum of 8) the photo gallery will print your picture & display it with all the other entries - at the end of it you get to keep your photos, so it's a good way of getting an A4 print of your favourites. We saw them go up on the wall with all the other entries, 120 in all. There are 3 categories, Peoples choice (every passenger gets 1 vote), Photographers choice & Mickey Lives special award. We love the sea days, it gives you chance to catch your breath, relax, not adhere to a schedule but doing so anyway because of your inbuilt clock! It's so very hot and we enjoy sitting in the shade of our balcony, others are baking in the sun on the pool deck, everyone seems happy doing "their thing". Talks by guest speakers on different topics, quizzes, competitions, gambling in the casino, you can take part or do nothing - it's got something for everyone! We arrive in Muscat on Saturday 15th April, Stuart & I were here in December & had done a tour to the Grand Mosque, the Sultans Palace and a museum showing the history of Oman. This time we decided we would like to walk along the seafront to one of the lookout towers and take in the beauty of the coastline. It was such a hot day, we only got a few minutes out of the port & were questioning our sanity & ability to walk the distance but not wanting to admit defeat we carried on, stopping along the way to take photos, watch families fishing, a man swimming, the gardeners tending the public parks - we walked about 2.5 to 3 miles to the tower, where we climbed to the top & took in the views. The journey back was equally as interesting & hot! We walked along the other side of the road, finding shade to walk in - stopping at a local cafe on the way back, then looking around one of the oldest souks in Oman. The people in Oman are so friendly, they live together in peace - they have respect for each other and are an example to the world on what the Islamic faith is. (Many years ago we had a student live with our family, he was called Ebrahim Suheil Ali & he was from Muscat. He stayed with us twice, each time for 6 months, whilst he went to a local language school to learn English & also do some police training, he became part of our family, this gentle man. A few years later, whilst on duty (in his role in the police in Oman), Ebrahim had a terrible accident in his patrol car, which left him paralysed - the first we knew of this was when we got a phone call to say he was in the Wellington Humana hospital & was asking for his English family - without hesitation we jumped into the car & made the journey to London, Dad only realising he had left his slippers on when we stopped at the motorway services! This was the late 1970's and the Sultan had paid for his treatment in the U.K., he also sent him to the US to try & get him to walk again but sadly he did not. Every year we heard from him, he was married with 2 sons, when Stuart & I got married in 1987 we invited him to our wedding, he declined but wished us well, when my sister Susie married Bill we invited him but got no reply, neither did we get a Christmas card, this rang alarm bells with Mum & she contacted the embassy - weeKs later we learnt that Ebrahim had passed away. He always said that he would like us to visit his land - well here we are Ebrahim & your land is beautiful- we only wish you were here to see us visit, we now would like to see if we can find out what happened to his family & now we have been this we are going to try & do). We all wandered to the photo gallery this evening to see what the results were of the photo competition,as we thought it may have been announced earlier in the day, luckily we arrived 10 minutes before the announcement, people were milling around so we joined the waiting crowd. First one to be announced was the people's choice - with 15 votes a picture of 2 boys won. Next was the photographers choice - one of the photographers gave a talk on the rule of,thirds in photography - then announced the winning number, Stu looked at me & mouthed "it's yours" I shook my head at him thinking he had made a mistake! - but couldn't believe it that it actually was mine! Wow - there were so many fantastic pictures, I didn't set up the shot by rule of 3rds I just took it! Next was Mickeys special award, when he said he chose the photo, not knowing which one the photographers had chosen - I glanced at Dad - yes no fix at all Dads beautiful photo of the white throated Kingfisher was the winner! Jubilant & proud winners, Dad & I quietly sang we are the champions all the way back to the cabins! Dubai We had to clear immigration in Dubai, we docked at 12, cleared immigration by 1.15 & were on our way by taxi to the Dubai Mall, with temperatures hitting 40 degrees we thought this was a prudent activity - it is a spectacle to see, huge, with everything you could possibly wish for, from high end to a discount Japanese store, ice skating & dancing fountains. Fast food, slow food, tea, coffee, Waitrose(!) - you could get lost quite easily in here. Watching two of the fountain shows which give you a dazzling display every half hour from 6pm, one in the light & one as it became dusk we arrived back at the ship too late for dinner so enjoyed the buffet instead. Our last evening with Josh & Cathy as they are leaving us tomorrow. Abu Dhabi We must have docked very early in Abu Dhabi as we were alongside when we opened our curtains & the dock was alive with activity - Mum & Dad went to find Josh & Cathy before they departed. As we were back to back we did a tour of the sheikh Zayed Mosque & the heritage centre in Abu Dhabi - arriving at the Mosque we filed off the bus in the busy car park, passing the security guard he wouldn't let mum &'I pass and told us to stand to one side - the guide said we wouldn't be able to go in & would have to wait in the coach, disappointed at being inappropriately dressed (my cream long sleeved shirt deemed by its colour to be transparent - it wasn't. Mums thin scarf and possibly the hint of her ankles prevented her entry) we made our way back to the bus, then about 15 minutes later the guide came running, thrust a bag at us & said "your husband has bought these! Put them on quickly & come with me!" Donning our black abayas & covering our heads with a black scarf we moved incognito into the mosque. So glad we did, it was absolutely stunning, ornate, pristine breathtakingly beautiful - the largest mosque in the world! In the sweltering heat we visited the heritage centre, watching people perform traditional crafts in reconstructed ancient buildings, carving, boat making, carpentry, displays of swords & daggers, it was fascinating but we were all wilting in the heat. Back onboard we completed the lifeboat drill & set sail for the next leg of our journey, to Rome - first port of call Muscat! Muscat - again 😊 We've booked tours for this trip to Muscat, Mum & Dad are doing a boat trip to see if they can see any sea life, Stu & I are going to Nouvelle Nakhon Fort. On our way to the fort we call at the village of Barkha to visit the local fish market - here the local fishermen are selling their catch - huge tuna, squid and lots of smaller fish, some of which were still gasping 😔, that we don't know the names of - we watch the theatre of some men in an auction, the auctioneer moving the fish around on a tiled stage area as the bids come in - one fellow tourist asked me if they were playing a fish game! Onto the fort, which is believed to date back to the pre Islamic era & is located on the edge of the Jabal Akhdar mountains & overlooks vast palm orchards - it is spectacular as we walk in the heat through the sand coloured architecture contrasting with the bright blue sky. This fort has been renovated to its original glory, there are rooms set as they would have been with cushions laid onto carpet for guests to sit down on, wooden pegs sticking out of the wall for the weapons to be hung easy to believe you had stepped back in time, particularly as there were not lots of tour buses there at the same time! We stopped at the Al Thowarah hot spring on the way to our lunch stop - the water was at 40 degrees Celsius, so not a place for a cool off, but we sat on rocks with our feet in the water - Garra Rufa fish nibbled at the skin on our feet giving us a mini pedicure, 20 minutes later, our feet feeling clean & refreshed we walked back to the coach, passing through a group of men having a barbecue get together, we drove onto a resort hotel for a sumptuous buffet lunch - all too quickly, we were back to the ship, the heat was unrelenting - it had been 41 degrees Celsius - a dry, crackling heat, this is the end of their tourist season as within weeks it will be 50 to 55 degrees not a place for a holiday. Impressed by Oman again, the Sultan looks after his people, there's no tax, education, healthcare is all paid for, they pay very little for fuel, they get paid to go to university - the people can apply for interest free loans, at 21 they can apply for land (given free) on which to build a house - all this has come from the proceeds of the oil & a very fair ruler! Mum & Dad saw many dolphins on their boat trip, feeling it was cruel though with many motor boats corralling the dolphins, they were not out there too long but Dad got some great photos!

[bookwormchocaholic]

The Lonesome Road: Chapter 6

A03

SYNOPSIS:  Belle is drawn to her employers’ neighbor and is surprised when he offers to help her out of a difficult situation.

Note: Not beta-ed, expect mistakes.

Rating: M

Special thanks to @onceuponanovel for the gorgeous artwork!!!!

April 1934 An early spring had blown into Storybrooke and the outskirts, prompting Belle and Rowan to start take the occasional afternoon drive. One Saturday afternoon found them in their truck, bouncing along the road, the windows rolled down, the radio crooning “My Blue Heaven.” The fresh air wafted off the sea and the newly bloomed flowers and tickled Belle’s nostrils.

She noticed her husband’s hand lying in the space between them and slid hers over his. Rowan turned to her and smiled, his expression gentle. Belle returned his beam and though she enjoyed talking with her husband, she relished the quiet moments too. Words were not always required. A look, a smile, a squeeze of the hand – sometimes that was more than enough. Neither she nor Rowan were wax poetic. Thoughtful gestures and tender caresses spoke volumes; she wouldn’t trade that for all the flowery soliloquies in the world. Now that she knew all of Rowan’s deep, dark secrets, and he knew hers, there were no walls between them.

Cora had failed.

Rowan’s initial reaction was to strike out at Cora for meddling in their marriage. It took Belle a couple of hours to convince him that they were better than Cora, and she didn’t want them to lower themselves to that nasty woman’s level.

<I> “Very well.” Rowan had groused, his mouth drawn into a cute pout. “But she shouldn’t get away with what she did.”

“She won’t.” Belle assured him, straddling his lap and distracted him by untucking his shirt from his trousers and undoing the buttons. “It wouldn’t be Christian to seek revenge.”

Rowan grumbled. He plucked the pins from her hair and buried his fingers into her curls. “Humph, I’m hardly a saint.” But he soon let it go when she grazed her teeth along his clavicle. </I>

Belle stroked her still-flattened stomach. She didn’t want their baby to come into a household rife with turmoil. They had to set a good example for their little one. They also had to trust that God would deal with Cora in His own time.

“What is this?” Rowan muttered and slowed the truck, stopping twenty feet near the turn off to the Mills’ farm.

Belle’s head snapped up and she let out a small gasp.

A crowd was congregated near the porch of the house. One man stood on the steps, barking out orders. The Mills family was standing off to the side, their heads hanging low. This scene was not an uncommon one, not this day in age. A family in debt, unable to pay their mortgage, having to auction off their farm.

Rowan turned off the engine and climbed out of the truck. Belle slid over to his side and he helped her out, then he shut the door. Hand in hand, they crossed into the yard and joined the growing number of spectators.

“Is it one of those penny auctions?” Belle leaned in towards her husband. “Like the ones we read about in the papers?”

“I think it might be.” Rowan replied, studying the auctioneer.

Auctions were routine. Penny-auctions were unique. If a family lost their home, and if their neighbors were kind, the neighbors would only make low bids and purchase the property for nearly nothing. Then they would return the property to its rightful owners. The Mills family had few friends though and people could no longer afford to be liberal with their pennies.

Belle frowned. She felt no pity whatsoever for Cora. Buying expensive clothes on credit, going on ludicrous trips, neglecting the farm - the woman had made her bed and now she had to lie in it.

But Henry and the girls…Belle hated the thought of the children being homeless. Zelena and Regina were wild little beasts, but they were still children. Henry’s shoulders were shaking; his head was the lowest of all of them. Still he could not hide the bruise that encircled his eye.

Cora regally looked on, leveling her gaze at the crowd, forbidding anyone to place a bid. Her features were pinched into a severe grimace. She was on the wrong side of thirty-five and looked older now, from slathering her scowling face in cakey cosmetics and spidery gray strands webbing through her hair. Life and unhappiness had aged her and now despite all of her machinations, she was to lose her home.

Belle found herself raising her hand to make a bid for 50 cents and without any challengers, the auctioneer declared the property hers.

She exhaled and ventured a glance at her husband. Neither of them made large purchases without consulting with the other.

Rowan was grinning from ear to ear. “What happened to not seeking revenge?” He compressed her hand slightly.

“I’m not.” Belle flushed under his teasing gaze. “The children need a home. And this could be profitable for us.”

“Perhaps so.” He nodded to Cora and her family. “I think you ought to deliver them the good news.”

Belle stood on tip toe and pressed a kiss to her husband’s coarse cheek. His five o’clock shadow had already begun.

She approached Cora, her shoulders squared and her head held high. The irony of the situation could not be lost on either of them. Six months prior Belle was boarding with the Mills’, snatching up the crumbs of the charity that they had tossed at her feet. And now she was the mistress of their property, the house, and all of their livestock. All for a measly 50 cents.

“Mrs. Gold, please-” Henry doffed his hat and twisted it. The poor man’s knees knocked; he was desperate enough o grovel.

Belle waved him off. “I won’t force you to leave.”

“Really?” He gaped, his eyes glistening.

“We will draw up a formal rental agreement later.” Belle informed him. “For now you can continue on as you have been.” She shifted her gaze to Cora.

The woman was seething, Belle could tell. If looks could kill. Her narrow jaw was set and her carefully manicured fingers were balled.

Belle crossed her arms. “You used me, Cora, and mistreated me during a dark time in my life. You promised to show me Christian charity, but it took a man that I barely knew to show me what that really was. And after I left, you caused trouble for me.” She bit down on her tongue, lest she say anything too revealing. Henry had to be aware of his wife’s vices, but she didn’t want to air such dirty laundry before the children. They need not know that their mother was an adulteress. “Well, now you will get to see what it is like to be on the receiving end of Christian charity. My husband and I will be by in a few days with the agreement.”

Cora sniffed and she lifted her head, sticking her nose in the air.

Belle swiftly pivoted on her heel and returned to her husband’s embrace. She planted a kiss square on Rowan’s lips for all to see; a blatant declaration that he belonged to her and her alone.

And that there was nothing Cora could do to change that.

#

Rowan slumped into a sweaty heap on top of Belle and planted small kisses along her brow. His damp skin was still melded to hers while the sheets clung to her back and sides. Her breathing was labored, but was slowly returning to normal.

They had spent the evening celebrating her “business venture.”

“And you’re all right with it?” Belle asked, for perhaps the hundredth time. Rowan pecked her lips and flipped them over so that he could be beneath her.

“Of course.” He petted her back, teasing little circles into her spine. “Why wouldn’t I be all right with it?”

“Most husbands would hate if their wives took matters into their own hands.” Belle answered.

Her mother never acted independently of her father. Moe French was in charge of all matters at home, from financial to spiritual, to the daily planning of the meals to how the family presented themselves in public. He considered the verse that the wife was to submit to the husband as the Eleventh Commandment. Their union seemed to work…although when Colette French was living, she would get a certain wistful look in her eye from time to time. Belle couldn’t help but wonder if her mother wanted more.

“Then it is a good thing I am your husband and not one of the others.” Rowan gave an impatient snort. Her husband was a rare breed. He always treated her as an equal; that they found one another was nothing short of a miracle. “You ought to be in charge of this, since you made the purchase.”

Belle leaned her head back and gave him a quizzical look. “Is that so?”

“Yes. I have this farm to oversee.” He encouraged. “You can do it, I know you can. ‘She planteth a field, and buyeth it.’ See I can quote Scriptures too, when I have a mind to. Besides, you can’t tell me it won’t please you to strut around the Mills’ farm for Cora to see.”

“You’re terrible!” Belle giggled, playfully slapping his shoulder. She couldn’t deny though, that she did feel a little smug.

“I am, but you love me anyway.” Rowan’s laughter rumbled in his chest before he sobered. “I feel sorry for Henry. No man should be faced with losing his land.”

Henry Mills’ black eye had not gone unnoticed by Rowan either. When Belle confided her concerns to him, that Henry was abused, Rowan implied that Cora was capable of anything. Henry, being a gentleman, would never raise a hand to his wife, not even in defense. Belle considered herself lucky getting out from under that roof when she did; Cora could have easily turned on her. But now that she had the upper hand, so to speak, Belle figured she could make things easier for Henry and the girls, and Cora would have no choice but to comply.

Belle nodded and pressed her lips to his chin. “I pray it never happens to you. This farm defines you.”

Rowan shook his head and cradled the side of her face. “Nothing defines me except for you and the baby.”

Belle felt her heart squeeze and fought the tears welling in her eyes. Finding herself rested enough for another session of love making, she flung her arms around his neck and sealed her mouth over his.

She didn’t know what lied a head of them, but knew as long as she had Rowan and the baby by her side, that they could face anything together.

[the-royal-courier]

Events This Week

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Bizmo’s Brawlpub Tavern Night When: Wednesday, January 18th Time: 7 Bells (server) Bizmo's Brawlpub is open for all the assorted members of the Underground. Come grab a drink, make some deals, and make some gold. Or just smash your face against one of Bizmo's brawlers!

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OOC:  Blizzard Events Starting

Call of the Scarab Starting 1/21 through 1/23 This micro holiday commemorates the opening of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj. Come out to Silithus and show your Alliance pride, by helping to gather materials before the Horde does! Its a matter of pride! The winning factions will have their banner above the Gates for a whole year. Come out and help us show why Alliance is best.

Lunar Festival Starting 1/21 through 2/4

Every year the druids of Moonglade hold a celebration of their city's great triumph over an ancient evil. During the Lunar Festival, citizens of Azeroth have the opportunity to honor their elders by celebrating their sage wisdom, sharing in magnificent feasts, and of course... shooting fireworks!

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Ironforge Winter Craft Fest When: Saturday, January 21st Where: The Great Forge in Ironforge Time: 6 bells (server)

The Dwarven clans of Khaz Modan, as well as other brothers and sisters of the Alliance, wish to host a crafter's festival to honor centuries of fine craftsmanship! This will be the Winter installment in this seasonal event!

Vendors: - Modarin of the "Cask and Anvil" will be providing you with the finest Dwarven dining under the mountain! - Bathildis of "The Steel Pub" will be supplying some of the finest brews in Khaz Modan! - Davonna will be assisting fest-goers at the "Cask and Anvil" pub! - Gorval will be setting up a blacksmithing booth to display his finely crafted wares! - Cairdaid will be hosting contest of coordination! - Velkard will be providing us with hand-carved Wildhammer Totems! - Kioal will be bringing his masterful leatherworking talents, and perhaps a few wares! - Hulain will be selling his amazing parchment, among other wares! (This is an actual in-game drawing parchment using the addon GHI. I can personally attest to how cool it is!)

Entertainers:

- Bigeasy will be roaming the festival grounds, providing folk with festive music! - Veltaazha will be reading runes! See what fate holds for you!

More info here: http://ironforgecraftfest.tumblr.com/  or contact Bathilidis in game @bath-ironstout

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Rose Clinic Grand Opening

When: Saturday, January 21st Where: Elwynn Forest, Eastvale Logging Camp Time: 6 bells (server)

The Rose Clinic is being opened and overseen by Lady Christina Bension. In honor of her mother, who died giving life to Tina.  Having spent her life within the walls of Northshire Abby, under the careful watch of the Sisters there. Kindness has been shown to this young woman and after starting her teachings in the medical field at the young age of fifteen. Christen has chosen to open and run a small clinic within Stormwind City.

@the-rose-priestess

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Weekly Events

The Cask an Anvil: When - Fridays @ 6 pm server Where - Ironforge Who - Modarin Theme - Social

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The Steel Pub

When: Sunday @ 6 pm server Where: in Anvilmar, Dun Morogh Who: Bath Ironstout Theme: Social

@bath-ironstout @ironstoutbrews

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Upcoming Events

Vulpes & Co Live Auction When: Tuesday, January 24th Time: 8 bells (server)

Vulpes & Co. invites you to our 4th monthly auction! Further information will be posted on our tumblr within the next few days. [ vulpes-and-co.tumblr.com ] @vulpes-and-co

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Spice & Spirits When: Friday, January 27 Time: 6 Bells (server)

Prizes, spin the bottle, Zandalari ghost pepper eating contest and live entertainment! houselockwood.tumblr.com IN REDRIDGE!! Menu: Ribs - Wings - Shrimp - Steak Order plain, or with your choice: sweet or spicey barbeque sauce! Special house drinks! Contact @houselockwood

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Pandaren New Year Celebration When: January 28th Time: 6 bells (server)

The New Year is ringing in for the Pandaren! Come join the Iron Rose Consortium in Dawn’s Blossom. Bring anyone and everyone that you wish to give luck to during this time. From Fireworks to paper lanterns! Wear whatever make you feel festive in this time as we honor the Crane. This Year is all about the Red Crane, with hope for the New Year. There will be music for dancing, food and drinks.

Kung-fu hustle:

This is the Sparring event, everyone can sign up for. This will be a clean fighting, nothing below the belt.  It will be a /roll type sparring. This will be a fist fight! so put up your fist and join in.

1st place will get the tcg Dragon kite pet 2nd will get 2k

The Fire Crackle battle

Everyone who sighs up will need the Dazzling Rod.

The rules are simple that one it starts if you get hit your out. There will be three free for all’s and then those who win will then go after each other to see who will be the true winner. Then 2nd and third place.

1st will get a tiny blue carp pet 2nd will get 1k 3rd will get 500g

( you can pick it up here: Tower entrance 43.0, 35.8. Treasure coordinates 42.9, 35.3. You can just pick it up nothing to kill for it)

Contact @neytiriravenholde for more information.

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What: Open Lunar Festival Remembrance Ceremony hosted by the Kalimdor Collective

When: Saturday, January 28 beginning at or around 5:00 PM ST Where: Lakeshire, Redridge Mountains

For the first time in years, KC will be moving through the EK on our guild RP campaign--and we will be in the area of Redridge Mountains during the Lunar Festival!

We decided to take this opportunity to bring Kalimdorian culture to the residents of the area, and invite any RPers who frequent this part of the world to join us in our Lunar Festival Remembrance Ceremony!

Rough Schedule (all times are in server time):

5:00 PM We will begin to gather, mingle, and meet one another 5:15ish PM Tables will be set out for an open-air Kalimdorian-style feast 6:00 PM We will gather by the lake for a retelling of the story of Omen 6:15ish PM Elune Stones will be tossed into the lake in remembrance of comrades and loved ones who have passed. Visitors and the curious are encouraged to bring Elune stones to toss as well, and to share a short memory or word of remembrance for their loved ones.

Whenever that’s finished…

For those interested, we will engage in a short cleansing ritual to prepare us for the New Lunar Year.

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So you’re interested in coming…

    Wear finery or anything befitting the Lunar Festival     Bring any Elune Stones you may have--great time to use that Elune’s Lantern you probably forgot about (and be prepared to share with those who forgot!)     Prepare a short memorial for comrades or loved ones

If you have any ideas, would like to participate in leadership of this in one way or another, or have any questions, please contact Telrien, Ymaara, or Maeshkin in-game!

Look forward to seeing you there!

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[Fashion Battles™] by Stealthstar-Silverhand is hosting a New Years themed transmog battle. Everyone is welcome to this event!

Where: Court of the Sun, Silvermoon City When:January 29th, 2017 @ (8(PM(PT), 9PM(MT),10PM(CT) , 11PM(ET)) Realm Host: Farstriders//Silverhand//Thoriumbrotherhood

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The Tipsy Date Auction

Come one, come all! Single and ready to mingle? Looking to donate gold to a charity and get a date out of it? Or perhaps you are just looking for a fun time with some friendly faces? Well look no further.  The Tipsy Hourglass is hosting a Date Auction!  That’s correct – a date auction during the month of love! Come and celebrate the season of love with us; enjoy a drink amongst friends and hot food and sweets provided by our lovely tavern. But most of all, come for a chance to win a date with some of the most beautiful and weirdly wonderful men/women/and all those in between on Azeroth and beyond!

All coin spent on bids toward our lovely singles will be donated to funding supplies for the war as well as back home for those who have left behind families in need of a little help this season. Let us spread the love to all corners of the world!

(A small portion will also be given to the lovely couple to treat themselves to a nice dinner on us.)

Where: The Tipsy Hourglass ((A Hero’s Welcome in new Dalaran. Portals/summons available for lower levelled players.))

When: February the 11th at 5 bells!

Looking to put yourself in the line of fire and test your nerves to the hungry crowd? Get into contact with Zae in-game either via mail (preferred) or whisper to be added onto the ‘auction’ list! Alternatively you can also contact Graece or Ollivier, my beautiful officers if I am unavailable.

All bids would be at IC money value that we prefer to use within our events:

1 copper = 1 cent 1 Silver = 1 dollar 1 Gold = 100 dollars

Just one rule:

While this is an auction event, people sold are not in any way obligated to do as the buyer wishes against their toons will! You all know what I mean. This is not that kind of event!

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(Have an event to advertise? Send an in game mail to Risri or message @risrielthron)

[clearperception-blog1]

Online Website Development

Online  Website Development

Essential features of website development that you need to know as a website owner

With increased competition in the present world scenario, top class website development plan is no more the developer's sole task. It is in fact the website owner's competitive spirit that defines the business prospect on the internet. Site owners are getting more demanding in their needs. Studies have shown that a discerning website owner, who emphasis's on being unique and in standing out from the rest, is most often the one to taste a quicker sure-shot-success. In fact, most of the thousands of websites now target on providing something very unique for its visitors. Although similar product based websites abound in hundreds, uniqueness brings things that competitor sites do not offer regardless of their being similar in nature.

It has now become quite imperative for a website owner to know the nuances of a good website. No matter to which part of the world you belong, there are always definite indispensable elements that a website is required to possess.

Before you embark on your website creation endeavour, keep yourself well informed of the essential and necessary features that need be present on your website. I have put up the most essential features that you need to know about your proposed site - so that you can get it designed and developed as a knowledgeable and discerning website owner. You no longer will be left at the mercy of software companies.

Feature 5: Relate your website theme with the product and target audience

The theme and artistic elements of your website design and layout should be related to suit the target audience of your website.

Feature 6: Ensure website compatibility on popular browsers

Your website might just not work well on every browser. Hence, speak out to the designers and developers about compatibility of your website on the most popular browsers. Check out for yourself if it works on all the popular browsers.

Feature 7: Check for an error free content

Get into every tiny detail of the website content, captions, graphic elements etc and ensure that it is totally error free. Look out for both grammatical and spelling errors.

Feature 8: Keep options open for spring up a surprise

Ask our developer and designers to keep options wide open for you to spring up a surprise for the website visitors. You may add a new skin or probably change the images on the home page for an occasion like for example: New Year or Christmas. You could also occasionally change the article content or add a new video etc. This sustains visitor interest in your website.

Basically, web development is a field of software development associated to development of internet applications. In any social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, Hi-5 and others, you will see various forms of internet applications. For instance, if you're a user of these social networking sites, there are several features like:

Create your own photo album

Share your favorite pictures, songs and news

Embed videos to your website and so on and so forth

This type of developers normally work on the server side framework in which uses scripting languages like PHP, JSP, .NET, Python and Perl. They handle information whether they are on their own web servers on or an external system. If you are a beginner, start learning the basics like HTML language before you begin any web development courses. If you have decided to start earning an online degree in this particular field, you must be able to manage your time between work and study.

Online advertising, also called online marketing or Internet advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. Consumers view online advertising as an unwanted distraction with few benefits and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.[1]:19 In 2013, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $42.8 billion, a 17% increase over the $36.57 billion in revenues in 2012.[2]:4–5 U.S. internet ad revenue hit a historic high of $20.1 billion for the first half of 2013, up 18% over the same period in 2012.[3] Online advertising is widely used across virtually all industry sectors.[1]:16 Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation.

Online ad revenues may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams. Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to hide their content behind paywalls.[4] In early days of the Internet, online advertising was mostly prohibited. For example, two of the predecessor networks to the Internet, ARPANET and NSFNet, had "acceptable use policies" that banned network "use for commercial activities by for-profit institutions".[5][6] The NSFNet began phasing out its commercial use ban in 1991.[7][8][9][10] The first widely publicized example of online advertising was conducted via electronic mail. On 3 May 1978, a marketer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Gary Thuerk, sent an email to most of the ARPANET's American west coast users, advertising an open house for a new model of a DEC computer.[6][11] Despite the prevailing acceptable use policies, electronic mail marketing rapidly expanded[12] and eventually became known as "spam." The first known large-scale non-commercial spam message was sent on 18 January 1994 by an Andrews University system administrator, by cross-posting a religious message to all USENET newsgroups.[13] In January 1994 Mark Eberra started the first email marketing company for opt in email list under the domain Insideconnect.com [14] Four months later, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, broadly promoted their legal services in a USENET posting titled "Green Card Lottery – Final One?"[15] Canter and Siegel's Green Card USENET spam raised the profile of online advertising, stimulating widespread interest in advertising via both Usenet and traditional email.[13] More recently, spam has evolved into a more industrial operation, where spammers use armies of virus-infected computers (botnets) to send spam remotely.[11] Online banner advertising began in the early 1990s as page owners sought additional revenue streams to support their content.

Commercial online service Prodigy displayed banners at the bottom of the screen to promote Sears products.[16] The first clickable web ad was sold by Global Network Navigator in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm.[17] In 1994, web banner advertising became mainstream when HotWired, the online component of Wired Magazine, sold banner ads to AT&T and other companies. The first AT&T ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate, and instead of directing clickers to AT&T's website, the ad linked to an online tour of seven of the world's most acclaimed art museums.[18][19] GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search advertising keyword auction in 1998.[20]:119 Google launched its "AdWords" search advertising program in 2000[21] and introduced quality-based ranking allocation in 2002,[22] which sorts search advertisements by a combination of bid price and searchers' likeliness to click on the ads.[20]:123 More recently, companies have sought to merge their advertising messages into editorial content or valuable services. Examples include Red Bull's Red Bull Media House streaming Felix Baumgartner's jump from space online, Coca-Cola's online magazines, and Nike's free applications for performance tracking.[19] Advertisers are also embracing social media[23][24] and mobile advertising; mobile ad spending has grown 90% each year from 2010 to 2013.[1]:13 Example of display advertising featuring geotargeting Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.[25] As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed profile of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising. This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting.[26] Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear.[20]:118 Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.[27] Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting. A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region). The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.[28] For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers.[29] Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further.[28] Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page. Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs. Frame ads were the first form of web banners.[18] The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.[30] A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window.[31] A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.[1]:22 Pop-under ads and similar technologies are now advised against by online authorities such as Google, who state that they "do not condone this practice".[32] A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a preset time period. An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad.[33] Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space. A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks.[34] Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch.[35][36] Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.[37] "News Feed Ads", also called "Sponsored Stories", "Boosted Posts", typically exist on social media platforms that offer a steady stream of information updates ("news feed"[38]) in regulated formats (i.e. in similar sized small boxes with a uniform style).

Those advertisements are intertwined with non-promoted news that the users are reading through. Those advertisements can be of any content, such as promoting a website, a fan page, an app, or a product. Some examples are: Facebook's "Sponsored Stories",[39] LinkedIn's "Sponsored Updates",[40] and Twitter's "Promoted Tweets".[41] This display ads format falls into its own category because unlike banner ads which are quite distinguishable, News Feed Ads' format blends well into non-paid news updates. This format of online advertisement yields much higher click-through rates than traditional display ads[42][43] The process by which online advertising is displayed can involve many parties. In the simplest case, the web site publisher selects and serves the ads. Publishers which operate their own advertising departments may use this method. Online advertising serving process - simple publisher case The ads may be outsourced to an advertising agency under contract with the publisher, and served from the advertising agency's servers. Online advertising serving process using an ad agency Online advertising serving process using online bidding Alternatively, ad space may be offered for sale in a bidding market using an ad exchange and real-time bidding. This involves many parties interacting automatically in real time. In response to a request from the user's browser, the publisher content server sends the web page content to the user's browser over the Internet. The page does not yet contain ads, but contains links which cause the user's browser to connect to the publisher ad server to request that the spaces left for ads be filled in with ads. Information identifying the user, such as cookies and the page being viewed, is transmitted to the publisher ad server.

The publisher ad server then communicates with a supply-side platform server. The publisher is offering ad space for sale, so they are considered the supplier. The supply side platform also receives the user's identifying information, which it sends to a data management platform. At the data management platform, the user's identifying information is used to look up demographic information, previous purchases, and other information of interest to advertisers. Broadly speaking, there are three types of data obtained through such a data management platform: First party data refers to the data retrieved from customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, in addition to website and paid media content or cross-platform data. This can include data from customer behaviors, actions or interests.[44] Second party data refers to an amalgamation of statistics related to cookie pools on external publications and platforms. The data is provided directly from the source (adservers, hosted solutions for social or an analytics platform). It is also possible to negotiate a deal with a particular publisher to secure specific data points or audiences.[45] Third party data is sourced from external providers and often aggregated from numerous websites. Businesses sell third-party data and are able to share this via an array of distribution avenues.[46] This customer information is combined and returned to the supply side platform, which can now package up the offer of ad space along with information about the user who will view it. The supply side platform sends that offer to an ad exchange. The ad exchange puts the offer out for bid to demand-side platforms. Demand side platforms act on behalf of ad agencies, who sell ads which advertise brands.

Demand side platforms thus have ads ready to display, and are searching for users to view them. Bidders get the information about the user ready to view the ad, and decide, based on that information, how much to offer to buy the ad space. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, a demand side platform has 10 milliseconds to respond to an offer. The ad exchange picks the winning bid and informs both parties. The ad exchange then passes the link to the ad back through the supply side platform and the publisher's ad server to the user's browser, which then requests the ad content from the agency's ad server. The ad agency can thus confirm that the ad was delivered to the browser.[47] This is simplified, according to the IAB. Exchanges may try to unload unsold ("remnant") space at low prices through other exchanges. Some agencies maintain semi-permanent pre-cached bids with ad exchanges, and those may be examined before going out to additional demand side platforms for bids. The process for mobile advertising is different and may involve mobile carriers and handset software manufacturers.[47] An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load.[48] Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.[49][50] A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks. Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to advertiser's websites. Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing. Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.[51] Search engine marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query.[20]:117 Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results. Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords. Search engine optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms. Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers.[52][53][54] Many vendors offer SEO services.[1]:22 Sponsored search (also called sponsored links, search ads, or paid search) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords. Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords.[20]:118[55] In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints.[20]:118 Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids.[20]:119 Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.[22] Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.[56] Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers.

Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, "advergaming," or application sponsorship).[1]:23 Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general online advertising.[50] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons. There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively.[1]:14 The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers.[1]:14 In July 2014 Facebook reported advertising revenue for the June 2014 quarter of $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 percent over the second quarter of 2013. Of that, mobile advertising revenue accounted for around 62 percent, an increase of 41 percent on the previous year. Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message.[1]:22 Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in). As opposed to static messaging, chat advertising refers to real time messages dropped to users on certain sites. This is done by the usage of live chat software or tracking applications installed within certain websites with the operating personnel behind the site often dropping adverts on the traffic surfing around the sites. In reality this is a subset of the email advertising but different because of its time window. Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services. Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and online auction-based listings.[1]:22 Craigslist and eBay are two prominent providers of online classified listings. Adware is software that, once installed, automatically displays advertisements on a user's computer. The ads may appear in the software itself, integrated into web pages visited by the user, or in pop-ups/pop-unders.[57] Adware installed without the user's permission is a type of malware.[58] Affiliate marketing occurs when advertisers organize third parties to generate potential customers for them. Third-party affiliates receive payment based on sales generated through their promotion.[1]:22 Affiliate marketers generate traffic to offers from affiliate networks, and when the desired action is taken by the visitor, the affiliate earns a commission. These desired actions can be an email submission, a phone call, filling out an online form, or an online order being completed. Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blogs, news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides and more. Considering that most marketing involves some form of published media, it is almost (though not entirely) redundant to call 'content marketing' anything other than simply 'marketing'.

There are, of course, other forms of marketing (in-person marketing, telephone-based marketing, word of mouth marketing, etc.) where the label is more useful for identifying the type of marketing. However, even these are usually merely presenting content that they are marketing as information in a way that is different from traditional print, radio, TV, film, email, or web media. Online marketing platform (OMP) is an integrated web-based platform that combines the benefits of a business directory, local search engine, search engine optimisation (SEO) tool, customer relationship management (CRM) package and content management system (CMS). Ebay and Amazon are used as online marketing and logistics management platforms. On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other Social Media, retail online marketing is also used. Online business marketing platforms such as Marketo, Aprimo, MarketBright and Pardot have been bought by major IT companies (Eloqua-Oracle, Neolane-Adobe and Unica-IBM). Unlike television marketing in which Neilsen TV Ratings can be relied upon for viewing metrics, online advertisers do not have an independent party to verify viewing claims made by the big online platforms.[59] Advertisers and publishers use a wide range of payment calculation methods. In 2012, advertisers calculated 32% of online advertising transactions on a cost-per-impression basis, 66% on customer performance (e.g. cost per click or cost per acquisition), and 2% on hybrids of impression and performance methods.[1]:17 Cost per mille, often abbreviated to CPM, means that advertisers pay for every thousand displays of their message to potential customers (mille is the Latin word for thousand). In the online context, ad displays are usually called "impressions.

" Definitions of an "impression" vary among publishers,[60] and some impressions may not be charged because they don't represent a new exposure to an actual customer.[61] Advertisers can use technologies such as web bugs to verify if an impression is actually delivered.[62][63]:59 Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else's content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.[64] CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud," and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.[65]:1–4 CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad. CPC advertising works well when advertisers want visitors to their sites, but it's a less accurate measurement for advertisers looking to build brand awareness.[66] CPC's market share has grown each year since its introduction, eclipsing CPM to dominate two-thirds of all online advertising compensation methods.[1]:18[65]:1 Like impressions, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers. GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50% of clicks on static mobile banner ads are accidental and resulted in redirected visitors leaving the new site immediately.[67] Cost per engagement aims to track not just that an ad unit loaded on the page (i.e., an impression was served), but also that the viewer actually saw and/or interacted with the ad.[68][69] Cost per view video advertising. Both Google and TubeMogul endorsed this standardized CPV metric to the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it's garnering a notable amount of industry support.[70] CPV is the primary benchmark used in YouTube Advertising Campaigns, as part of Google's AdWords platform. The CPI compensation method is specific to mobile applications and mobile advertising. In CPI ad campaigns brands are charged a fixed of bid rate only when the application was installed. Main article: Attribution (marketing) In marketing, "attribution" is the measurement of effectiveness of particular ads in a consumer's ultimate decision to purchase. Multiple ad impressions may lead to a consumer "click" or other action. A single action may lead to revenue being paid to multiple ad space sellers.[71] CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPP (Pay Per Performance) advertising means the advertiser pays for the number of users who perform a desired activity, such as completing a purchase or filling out a registration form. Performance-based compensation can also incorporate revenue sharing, where publishers earn a percentage of the advertiser's profits made as a result of the ad. Performance-based compensation shifts the risk of failed advertising onto publishers.[65]:4, 16 Fixed cost compensation means advertisers pay a fixed cost for delivery of ads online, usually over a specified time period, irrespective of the ad's visibility or users' response to it. One examples is CPD (cost per day) where advertisers pay a fixed cost for publishing an ad for a day irrespective of impressions served or clicks. The low costs of electronic communication reduce the cost of displaying online advertisements compared to offline ads. Online advertising, and in particular social media, provides a low-cost means for advertisers to engage with large established communities.[56] Advertising online offers better returns than in other media.[65]:1 Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of the potential audience or actual audience response,[20]:119 how a visitor reached their advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually loaded within a visitor's view.[62][63]:59 This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns over time.

Advertisers have a wide variety of ways of presenting their promotional messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links. Unlike many offline ads, online ads also can be interactive.[19] For example, some ads let users input queries[72] or let users follow the advertiser on social media.[73] Online ads can even incorporate games.[74] Publishers can offer advertisers the ability to reach customizable and narrow market segments for targeted advertising. Online advertising may use geo-targeting to display relevant advertisements to the user's geography. Advertisers can customize each individual ad to a particular user based on the user's previous preferences.[27] Advertisers can also track whether a visitor has already seen a particular ad in order to reduce unwanted repetitious exposures and provide adequate time gaps between exposures.[75] Online advertising can reach nearly every global market, and online advertising influences offline sales.[76][77][78] Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately. The delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher's publication schedule. Furthermore, online advertisers can modify or replace ad copy more rapidly than their offline counterparts.[79] According to a US Senate investigation, the current state of online advertising endangers the security and privacy of users.[80] Eye-tracking studies have shown that Internet users often ignore web page zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called "banner blindness"), and this problem is worse online than in offline media.[81] On the other hand, studies suggest that even those ads "ignored" by the users may influence the user subconsciously.[82] There are numerous ways that advertisers can be overcharged for their advertising. For example, click fraud occurs when a publisher or third parties click (manually or through automated means) on a CPC ad with no legitimate buying intent.[83] For example, click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on ads to deplete its rival's advertising budget, or when publishers attempt to manufacture revenue.[83] Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites. In 2011, certain scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer, forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's knowledge.[84] As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers. To combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are developing ways to count online impressions credibly.[85][86] Because users have different operating systems, web browsers[87] and computer hardware (including mobile devices and different screen sizes), online ads may appear to users differently from how the advertiser intended, or the ads may not display properly at all.

A 2012 comScore study revealed that, on average, 31% of ads were not "in-view" when rendered, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen.[88] Rich media ads create even greater compatibility problems, as some developers may use competing (and exclusive) software to render the ads (see e.g. Comparison of HTML 5 and Flash).[89] Furthermore, advertisers may encounter legal problems if legally required information doesn't actually display to users, even if that failure is due to technological heterogeneity.[90]:i In the United States, the FTC has released a set of guidelines indicating that it's the advertisers' responsibility to ensure the ads display any required disclosures or disclaimers, irrespective of the users' technology.[90]:4–8 Ad blocking, or ad filtering, means the ads do not appear to the user because the user uses technology to screen out ads. Many browsers block unsolicited pop-up ads by default.[91] Other software programs or browser add-ons may also block the loading of ads, or block elements on a page with behaviors characteristic of ads (e.g. HTML autoplay of both audio and video). Approximately 9% of all online page views come from browsers with ad-blocking software installed,[92] and some publishers have 40%+ of their visitors using ad-blockers.[4] Some web browsers offer privacy modes where users can hide information about themselves from publishers and advertisers. Among other consequences, advertisers can't use cookies to serve targeted ads to private browsers. Most major browsers have incorporated Do Not Track options into their browser headers, but the regulations currently are only enforced by the honor system.[93][94][95] The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised consumer concerns about their privacy.[28][63] Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given an opportunity.[96][97] Over half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.[98] Many consumers have reservations about online behavioral targeting. By tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite well. Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to maximizing their abilities to track consumers.[63]:60[99][100] According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent.[101][102] Consumers can be especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such as financial or health status.[99] Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online persona's identity,[103]:1 leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to those from a well-known brand owner)[104] and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419" scam.[105][106][107] The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012, totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.[108][109] Consumers also face malware risks, i.e. malvertising, when interacting with online advertising. Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn.[110][111] For example, in August 2014 Yahoo's advertising network reportedly saw cases of infection of a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.[112] The Internet's low cost of disseminating advertising contributes to spam, especially by large-scale spammers. Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labeling to content filters, but most of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.[6] In general, consumer protection laws apply equally to online and offline activities.[90]:i However, there are questions over which jurisdiction's laws apply and which regulatory agencies have enforcement authority over transborder activity.[113] As with offline advertising, industry participants have undertaken numerous efforts to self-regulate and develop industry standards or codes of conduct.

Several United States advertising industry organizations jointly published Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising based on standards proposed by the FTC in 2009.[114] European ad associations published a similar document in 2011.[115] Primary tenets of both documents include consumer control of data transfer to third parties, data security, and consent for collection of certain health and financial data.[114]:2–4 Neither framework, however, penalizes violators of the codes of conduct.[116] Privacy regulation can require users' consent before an advertiser can track the user or communicate with the user. However, affirmative consent ("opt in") can be difficult and expensive to obtain.[63]:60 Industry participants often prefer other regulatory schemes. Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to privacy issues with advertising. The United States has specific restrictions on online tracking of children in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),[114]:16–17 and the FTC has recently expanded its interpretation of COPPA to include requiring ad networks to obtain parental consent before knowingly tracking kids.[117] Otherwise, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission frequently supports industry self-regulation, although increasingly it has been undertaking enforcement actions related to online privacy and security.[118] The FTC has also been pushing for industry consensus about possible Do Not Track legislation. In contrast, the European Union's "Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive" restricts websites' ability to use consumer data much more comprehensively. The EU limitations restrict targeting by online advertisers; researchers have estimated online advertising effectiveness decreases on average by around 65% in Europe relative to the rest of the world.[63]:58 Many laws specifically regulate the ways online ads are delivered. For example, online advertising delivered via email is more regulated than the same ad content delivered via banner ads. Among other restrictions, the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that any commercial email provide an opt-out mechanism.[113] Similarly, mobile advertising is governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), which (among other restrictions) requires user opt-in before sending advertising via text messaging.Shortly after the series' debut, fans started discussing the possibility of a relationship between Xena and her sidekick and best friend Gabrielle.

Toward the end of the first season, the show's producers began to play to this perception by deliberately inserting usually humorous lesbian innuendo into some episodes. The show acquired a cult following in the lesbian community. However, Xena had a number of male love interests as well, and from the first season she had an adversarial but sexually charged dynamic with Ares, the God of War, who frequently tried to win her over as his "Warrior Queen." Gabrielle herself had once had a male husband, and his death deeply affected her.

According to journalist Cathy Young, the quarrel between online fans of the show about whether there should be a relationship between Xena and Gabrielle had a sociopolitical angle, in which some on the anti-relationship side were "undoubtedly driven by bona fide bigotry", while some on the pro-relationship side were lesbians who "approached the argument as a real-life gay rights struggle" in which "denying a sexual relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was tantamount to denying the reality of their own lives".[23] She added:

In 2000, during the airing of the fifth season, the intensity and sometimes nastiness of the "shipping wars" in the Xena fandom was chronicled (from a non-subtexter's point of view) by Australian artist Nancy Lorenz in an article titled "The Discrimination in the Xenaverse" in the online Xena fan magazine Whoosh!,[24] and also in numerous letters in response.[25]

The wars did not abate after the series came to an end in 2001. With no new material from the show itself, the debates were further fueled by various statements from the cast and crew. In January 2003, Lucy Lawless, the show's star, told Lesbian News magazine that after watching the series finale (in which Gabrielle revived Xena with a mouth-to-mouth water transfer filmed to look like a full kiss) she had come to believe that Xena and Gabrielle's relationship was "definitely gay."[26] However, in the interviews and commentaries on the DVD sets released in 2003–2005, the actors, writers and producers continued to stress the ambiguity of the relationship, and in several interviews both Lawless and Renee O'Connor, who played Gabrielle, spoke of Ares as a principal love interest for Xena. In the interview for the Season 6 episode "Coming Home", O'Connor commented, "If there was ever going to be one man in Xena's life, it would be Ares."

In March 2005, one-time Xena screenwriter Katherine Fugate, an outspoken supporter of the Xena/Gabrielle pairing, posted a statement on her website appealing for tolerance in the fandom:

China Shipping Development (SEHK: 1138, SSE: 600026) is a Chinese shipping company with its headquarters in Shanghai. The company is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The company produces, pursues and sells as a shipping company ships worldwide. China Shipping Group Company, founded on the 1 July 1997, is the holding company of China Shipping Development. Among the rest, the companies China Shipping Container Lines und China Shipping Haisheng also belong to the Parent company. The main business focus of the company involves coastal, ocean and Yangtze River cargo transportation, ship leasing, cargo forwarding and cargo transport agency, purchase and sale of ships, repair and development of containers, ship spare parts purchase and sale agency, consultancy and transfer of shipping technology.[1]

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404, B-70, Nitin Shanti Nagar Building,

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Opp. TMT Bus Stop, 

Thane – 401107

NGO Website Designing 

Troika Tech Services

WordPress Development Company in Mumbai

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Online Website Development

Online  Website Development

Essential features of website development that you need to know as a website owner

With increased competition in the present world scenario, top class website development plan is no more the developer's sole task. It is in fact the website owner's competitive spirit that defines the business prospect on the internet. Site owners are getting more demanding in their needs. Studies have shown that a discerning website owner, who emphasis's on being unique and in standing out from the rest, is most often the one to taste a quicker sure-shot-success. In fact, most of the thousands of websites now target on providing something very unique for its visitors. Although similar product based websites abound in hundreds, uniqueness brings things that competitor sites do not offer regardless of their being similar in nature.

It has now become quite imperative for a website owner to know the nuances of a good website. No matter to which part of the world you belong, there are always definite indispensable elements that a website is required to possess.

Before you embark on your website creation endeavour, keep yourself well informed of the essential and necessary features that need be present on your website. I have put up the most essential features that you need to know about your proposed site - so that you can get it designed and developed as a knowledgeable and discerning website owner. You no longer will be left at the mercy of software companies.

Feature 5: Relate your website theme with the product and target audience

The theme and artistic elements of your website design and layout should be related to suit the target audience of your website.

Feature 6: Ensure website compatibility on popular browsers

Your website might just not work well on every browser. Hence, speak out to the designers and developers about compatibility of your website on the most popular browsers. Check out for yourself if it works on all the popular browsers.

Feature 7: Check for an error free content

Get into every tiny detail of the website content, captions, graphic elements etc and ensure that it is totally error free. Look out for both grammatical and spelling errors.

Feature 8: Keep options open for spring up a surprise

Ask our developer and designers to keep options wide open for you to spring up a surprise for the website visitors. You may add a new skin or probably change the images on the home page for an occasion like for example: New Year or Christmas. You could also occasionally change the article content or add a new video etc. This sustains visitor interest in your website.

Basically, web development is a field of software development associated to development of internet applications. In any social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, Hi-5 and others, you will see various forms of internet applications. For instance, if you're a user of these social networking sites, there are several features like:

Create your own photo album

Share your favorite pictures, songs and news

Embed videos to your website and so on and so forth

This type of developers normally work on the server side framework in which uses scripting languages like PHP, JSP, .NET, Python and Perl. They handle information whether they are on their own web servers on or an external system. If you are a beginner, start learning the basics like HTML language before you begin any web development courses. If you have decided to start earning an online degree in this particular field, you must be able to manage your time between work and study.

Online advertising, also called online marketing or Internet advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. Consumers view online advertising as an unwanted distraction with few benefits and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.[1]:19 In 2013, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $42.8 billion, a 17% increase over the $36.57 billion in revenues in 2012.[2]:4–5 U.S. internet ad revenue hit a historic high of $20.1 billion for the first half of 2013, up 18% over the same period in 2012.[3] Online advertising is widely used across virtually all industry sectors.[1]:16 Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation.

Online ad revenues may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams. Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to hide their content behind paywalls.[4] In early days of the Internet, online advertising was mostly prohibited. For example, two of the predecessor networks to the Internet, ARPANET and NSFNet, had "acceptable use policies" that banned network "use for commercial activities by for-profit institutions".[5][6] The NSFNet began phasing out its commercial use ban in 1991.[7][8][9][10] The first widely publicized example of online advertising was conducted via electronic mail. On 3 May 1978, a marketer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Gary Thuerk, sent an email to most of the ARPANET's American west coast users, advertising an open house for a new model of a DEC computer.[6][11] Despite the prevailing acceptable use policies, electronic mail marketing rapidly expanded[12] and eventually became known as "spam." The first known large-scale non-commercial spam message was sent on 18 January 1994 by an Andrews University system administrator, by cross-posting a religious message to all USENET newsgroups.[13] In January 1994 Mark Eberra started the first email marketing company for opt in email list under the domain Insideconnect.com [14] Four months later, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, broadly promoted their legal services in a USENET posting titled "Green Card Lottery – Final One?"[15] Canter and Siegel's Green Card USENET spam raised the profile of online advertising, stimulating widespread interest in advertising via both Usenet and traditional email.[13] More recently, spam has evolved into a more industrial operation, where spammers use armies of virus-infected computers (botnets) to send spam remotely.[11] Online banner advertising began in the early 1990s as page owners sought additional revenue streams to support their content.

Commercial online service Prodigy displayed banners at the bottom of the screen to promote Sears products.[16] The first clickable web ad was sold by Global Network Navigator in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm.[17] In 1994, web banner advertising became mainstream when HotWired, the online component of Wired Magazine, sold banner ads to AT&T and other companies. The first AT&T ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate, and instead of directing clickers to AT&T's website, the ad linked to an online tour of seven of the world's most acclaimed art museums.[18][19] GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search advertising keyword auction in 1998.[20]:119 Google launched its "AdWords" search advertising program in 2000[21] and introduced quality-based ranking allocation in 2002,[22] which sorts search advertisements by a combination of bid price and searchers' likeliness to click on the ads.[20]:123 More recently, companies have sought to merge their advertising messages into editorial content or valuable services. Examples include Red Bull's Red Bull Media House streaming Felix Baumgartner's jump from space online, Coca-Cola's online magazines, and Nike's free applications for performance tracking.[19] Advertisers are also embracing social media[23][24] and mobile advertising; mobile ad spending has grown 90% each year from 2010 to 2013.[1]:13 Example of display advertising featuring geotargeting Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.[25] As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed profile of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising. This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting.[26] Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear.[20]:118 Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.[27] Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting. A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region). The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.[28] For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers.[29] Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further.[28] Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page. Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs. Frame ads were the first form of web banners.[18] The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.[30] A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window.[31] A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.[1]:22 Pop-under ads and similar technologies are now advised against by online authorities such as Google, who state that they "do not condone this practice".[32] A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a preset time period. An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad.[33] Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space. A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks.[34] Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch.[35][36] Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.[37] "News Feed Ads", also called "Sponsored Stories", "Boosted Posts", typically exist on social media platforms that offer a steady stream of information updates ("news feed"[38]) in regulated formats (i.e. in similar sized small boxes with a uniform style).

Those advertisements are intertwined with non-promoted news that the users are reading through. Those advertisements can be of any content, such as promoting a website, a fan page, an app, or a product. Some examples are: Facebook's "Sponsored Stories",[39] LinkedIn's "Sponsored Updates",[40] and Twitter's "Promoted Tweets".[41] This display ads format falls into its own category because unlike banner ads which are quite distinguishable, News Feed Ads' format blends well into non-paid news updates. This format of online advertisement yields much higher click-through rates than traditional display ads[42][43] The process by which online advertising is displayed can involve many parties. In the simplest case, the web site publisher selects and serves the ads. Publishers which operate their own advertising departments may use this method. Online advertising serving process - simple publisher case The ads may be outsourced to an advertising agency under contract with the publisher, and served from the advertising agency's servers. Online advertising serving process using an ad agency Online advertising serving process using online bidding Alternatively, ad space may be offered for sale in a bidding market using an ad exchange and real-time bidding. This involves many parties interacting automatically in real time. In response to a request from the user's browser, the publisher content server sends the web page content to the user's browser over the Internet. The page does not yet contain ads, but contains links which cause the user's browser to connect to the publisher ad server to request that the spaces left for ads be filled in with ads. Information identifying the user, such as cookies and the page being viewed, is transmitted to the publisher ad server.

The publisher ad server then communicates with a supply-side platform server. The publisher is offering ad space for sale, so they are considered the supplier. The supply side platform also receives the user's identifying information, which it sends to a data management platform. At the data management platform, the user's identifying information is used to look up demographic information, previous purchases, and other information of interest to advertisers. Broadly speaking, there are three types of data obtained through such a data management platform: First party data refers to the data retrieved from customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, in addition to website and paid media content or cross-platform data. This can include data from customer behaviors, actions or interests.[44] Second party data refers to an amalgamation of statistics related to cookie pools on external publications and platforms. The data is provided directly from the source (adservers, hosted solutions for social or an analytics platform). It is also possible to negotiate a deal with a particular publisher to secure specific data points or audiences.[45] Third party data is sourced from external providers and often aggregated from numerous websites. Businesses sell third-party data and are able to share this via an array of distribution avenues.[46] This customer information is combined and returned to the supply side platform, which can now package up the offer of ad space along with information about the user who will view it. The supply side platform sends that offer to an ad exchange. The ad exchange puts the offer out for bid to demand-side platforms. Demand side platforms act on behalf of ad agencies, who sell ads which advertise brands.

Demand side platforms thus have ads ready to display, and are searching for users to view them. Bidders get the information about the user ready to view the ad, and decide, based on that information, how much to offer to buy the ad space. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, a demand side platform has 10 milliseconds to respond to an offer. The ad exchange picks the winning bid and informs both parties. The ad exchange then passes the link to the ad back through the supply side platform and the publisher's ad server to the user's browser, which then requests the ad content from the agency's ad server. The ad agency can thus confirm that the ad was delivered to the browser.[47] This is simplified, according to the IAB. Exchanges may try to unload unsold ("remnant") space at low prices through other exchanges. Some agencies maintain semi-permanent pre-cached bids with ad exchanges, and those may be examined before going out to additional demand side platforms for bids. The process for mobile advertising is different and may involve mobile carriers and handset software manufacturers.[47] An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load.[48] Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.[49][50] A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks. Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to advertiser's websites. Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing. Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.[51] Search engine marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query.[20]:117 Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results. Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords. Search engine optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms. Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers.[52][53][54] Many vendors offer SEO services.[1]:22 Sponsored search (also called sponsored links, search ads, or paid search) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords. Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords.[20]:118[55] In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints.[20]:118 Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids.[20]:119 Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.[22] Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.[56] Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers.

Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, "advergaming," or application sponsorship).[1]:23 Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general online advertising.[50] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons. There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively.[1]:14 The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers.[1]:14 In July 2014 Facebook reported advertising revenue for the June 2014 quarter of $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 percent over the second quarter of 2013. Of that, mobile advertising revenue accounted for around 62 percent, an increase of 41 percent on the previous year. Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message.[1]:22 Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in). As opposed to static messaging, chat advertising refers to real time messages dropped to users on certain sites. This is done by the usage of live chat software or tracking applications installed within certain websites with the operating personnel behind the site often dropping adverts on the traffic surfing around the sites. In reality this is a subset of the email advertising but different because of its time window. Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services. Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and online auction-based listings.[1]:22 Craigslist and eBay are two prominent providers of online classified listings. Adware is software that, once installed, automatically displays advertisements on a user's computer. The ads may appear in the software itself, integrated into web pages visited by the user, or in pop-ups/pop-unders.[57] Adware installed without the user's permission is a type of malware.[58] Affiliate marketing occurs when advertisers organize third parties to generate potential customers for them. Third-party affiliates receive payment based on sales generated through their promotion.[1]:22 Affiliate marketers generate traffic to offers from affiliate networks, and when the desired action is taken by the visitor, the affiliate earns a commission. These desired actions can be an email submission, a phone call, filling out an online form, or an online order being completed. Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blogs, news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides and more. Considering that most marketing involves some form of published media, it is almost (though not entirely) redundant to call 'content marketing' anything other than simply 'marketing'.

There are, of course, other forms of marketing (in-person marketing, telephone-based marketing, word of mouth marketing, etc.) where the label is more useful for identifying the type of marketing. However, even these are usually merely presenting content that they are marketing as information in a way that is different from traditional print, radio, TV, film, email, or web media. Online marketing platform (OMP) is an integrated web-based platform that combines the benefits of a business directory, local search engine, search engine optimisation (SEO) tool, customer relationship management (CRM) package and content management system (CMS). Ebay and Amazon are used as online marketing and logistics management platforms. On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other Social Media, retail online marketing is also used. Online business marketing platforms such as Marketo, Aprimo, MarketBright and Pardot have been bought by major IT companies (Eloqua-Oracle, Neolane-Adobe and Unica-IBM). Unlike television marketing in which Neilsen TV Ratings can be relied upon for viewing metrics, online advertisers do not have an independent party to verify viewing claims made by the big online platforms.[59] Advertisers and publishers use a wide range of payment calculation methods. In 2012, advertisers calculated 32% of online advertising transactions on a cost-per-impression basis, 66% on customer performance (e.g. cost per click or cost per acquisition), and 2% on hybrids of impression and performance methods.[1]:17 Cost per mille, often abbreviated to CPM, means that advertisers pay for every thousand displays of their message to potential customers (mille is the Latin word for thousand). In the online context, ad displays are usually called "impressions.

" Definitions of an "impression" vary among publishers,[60] and some impressions may not be charged because they don't represent a new exposure to an actual customer.[61] Advertisers can use technologies such as web bugs to verify if an impression is actually delivered.[62][63]:59 Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else's content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.[64] CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud," and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.[65]:1–4 CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad. CPC advertising works well when advertisers want visitors to their sites, but it's a less accurate measurement for advertisers looking to build brand awareness.[66] CPC's market share has grown each year since its introduction, eclipsing CPM to dominate two-thirds of all online advertising compensation methods.[1]:18[65]:1 Like impressions, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers. GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50% of clicks on static mobile banner ads are accidental and resulted in redirected visitors leaving the new site immediately.[67] Cost per engagement aims to track not just that an ad unit loaded on the page (i.e., an impression was served), but also that the viewer actually saw and/or interacted with the ad.[68][69] Cost per view video advertising. Both Google and TubeMogul endorsed this standardized CPV metric to the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it's garnering a notable amount of industry support.[70] CPV is the primary benchmark used in YouTube Advertising Campaigns, as part of Google's AdWords platform. The CPI compensation method is specific to mobile applications and mobile advertising. In CPI ad campaigns brands are charged a fixed of bid rate only when the application was installed. Main article: Attribution (marketing) In marketing, "attribution" is the measurement of effectiveness of particular ads in a consumer's ultimate decision to purchase. Multiple ad impressions may lead to a consumer "click" or other action. A single action may lead to revenue being paid to multiple ad space sellers.[71] CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPP (Pay Per Performance) advertising means the advertiser pays for the number of users who perform a desired activity, such as completing a purchase or filling out a registration form. Performance-based compensation can also incorporate revenue sharing, where publishers earn a percentage of the advertiser's profits made as a result of the ad. Performance-based compensation shifts the risk of failed advertising onto publishers.[65]:4, 16 Fixed cost compensation means advertisers pay a fixed cost for delivery of ads online, usually over a specified time period, irrespective of the ad's visibility or users' response to it. One examples is CPD (cost per day) where advertisers pay a fixed cost for publishing an ad for a day irrespective of impressions served or clicks. The low costs of electronic communication reduce the cost of displaying online advertisements compared to offline ads. Online advertising, and in particular social media, provides a low-cost means for advertisers to engage with large established communities.[56] Advertising online offers better returns than in other media.[65]:1 Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of the potential audience or actual audience response,[20]:119 how a visitor reached their advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually loaded within a visitor's view.[62][63]:59 This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns over time.

Advertisers have a wide variety of ways of presenting their promotional messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links. Unlike many offline ads, online ads also can be interactive.[19] For example, some ads let users input queries[72] or let users follow the advertiser on social media.[73] Online ads can even incorporate games.[74] Publishers can offer advertisers the ability to reach customizable and narrow market segments for targeted advertising. Online advertising may use geo-targeting to display relevant advertisements to the user's geography. Advertisers can customize each individual ad to a particular user based on the user's previous preferences.[27] Advertisers can also track whether a visitor has already seen a particular ad in order to reduce unwanted repetitious exposures and provide adequate time gaps between exposures.[75] Online advertising can reach nearly every global market, and online advertising influences offline sales.[76][77][78] Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately. The delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher's publication schedule. Furthermore, online advertisers can modify or replace ad copy more rapidly than their offline counterparts.[79] According to a US Senate investigation, the current state of online advertising endangers the security and privacy of users.[80] Eye-tracking studies have shown that Internet users often ignore web page zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called "banner blindness"), and this problem is worse online than in offline media.[81] On the other hand, studies suggest that even those ads "ignored" by the users may influence the user subconsciously.[82] There are numerous ways that advertisers can be overcharged for their advertising. For example, click fraud occurs when a publisher or third parties click (manually or through automated means) on a CPC ad with no legitimate buying intent.[83] For example, click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on ads to deplete its rival's advertising budget, or when publishers attempt to manufacture revenue.[83] Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites. In 2011, certain scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer, forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's knowledge.[84] As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers. To combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are developing ways to count online impressions credibly.[85][86] Because users have different operating systems, web browsers[87] and computer hardware (including mobile devices and different screen sizes), online ads may appear to users differently from how the advertiser intended, or the ads may not display properly at all.

A 2012 comScore study revealed that, on average, 31% of ads were not "in-view" when rendered, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen.[88] Rich media ads create even greater compatibility problems, as some developers may use competing (and exclusive) software to render the ads (see e.g. Comparison of HTML 5 and Flash).[89] Furthermore, advertisers may encounter legal problems if legally required information doesn't actually display to users, even if that failure is due to technological heterogeneity.[90]:i In the United States, the FTC has released a set of guidelines indicating that it's the advertisers' responsibility to ensure the ads display any required disclosures or disclaimers, irrespective of the users' technology.[90]:4–8 Ad blocking, or ad filtering, means the ads do not appear to the user because the user uses technology to screen out ads. Many browsers block unsolicited pop-up ads by default.[91] Other software programs or browser add-ons may also block the loading of ads, or block elements on a page with behaviors characteristic of ads (e.g. HTML autoplay of both audio and video). Approximately 9% of all online page views come from browsers with ad-blocking software installed,[92] and some publishers have 40%+ of their visitors using ad-blockers.[4] Some web browsers offer privacy modes where users can hide information about themselves from publishers and advertisers. Among other consequences, advertisers can't use cookies to serve targeted ads to private browsers. Most major browsers have incorporated Do Not Track options into their browser headers, but the regulations currently are only enforced by the honor system.[93][94][95] The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised consumer concerns about their privacy.[28][63] Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given an opportunity.[96][97] Over half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.[98] Many consumers have reservations about online behavioral targeting. By tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite well. Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to maximizing their abilities to track consumers.[63]:60[99][100] According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent.[101][102] Consumers can be especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such as financial or health status.[99] Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online persona's identity,[103]:1 leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to those from a well-known brand owner)[104] and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419" scam.[105][106][107] The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012, totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.[108][109] Consumers also face malware risks, i.e. malvertising, when interacting with online advertising. Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn.[110][111] For example, in August 2014 Yahoo's advertising network reportedly saw cases of infection of a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.[112] The Internet's low cost of disseminating advertising contributes to spam, especially by large-scale spammers. Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labeling to content filters, but most of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.[6] In general, consumer protection laws apply equally to online and offline activities.[90]:i However, there are questions over which jurisdiction's laws apply and which regulatory agencies have enforcement authority over transborder activity.[113] As with offline advertising, industry participants have undertaken numerous efforts to self-regulate and develop industry standards or codes of conduct.

Several United States advertising industry organizations jointly published Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising based on standards proposed by the FTC in 2009.[114] European ad associations published a similar document in 2011.[115] Primary tenets of both documents include consumer control of data transfer to third parties, data security, and consent for collection of certain health and financial data.[114]:2–4 Neither framework, however, penalizes violators of the codes of conduct.[116] Privacy regulation can require users' consent before an advertiser can track the user or communicate with the user. However, affirmative consent ("opt in") can be difficult and expensive to obtain.[63]:60 Industry participants often prefer other regulatory schemes. Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to privacy issues with advertising. The United States has specific restrictions on online tracking of children in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),[114]:16–17 and the FTC has recently expanded its interpretation of COPPA to include requiring ad networks to obtain parental consent before knowingly tracking kids.[117] Otherwise, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission frequently supports industry self-regulation, although increasingly it has been undertaking enforcement actions related to online privacy and security.[118] The FTC has also been pushing for industry consensus about possible Do Not Track legislation. In contrast, the European Union's "Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive" restricts websites' ability to use consumer data much more comprehensively. The EU limitations restrict targeting by online advertisers; researchers have estimated online advertising effectiveness decreases on average by around 65% in Europe relative to the rest of the world.[63]:58 Many laws specifically regulate the ways online ads are delivered. For example, online advertising delivered via email is more regulated than the same ad content delivered via banner ads. Among other restrictions, the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that any commercial email provide an opt-out mechanism.[113] Similarly, mobile advertising is governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), which (among other restrictions) requires user opt-in before sending advertising via text messaging.Shortly after the series' debut, fans started discussing the possibility of a relationship between Xena and her sidekick and best friend Gabrielle.

Toward the end of the first season, the show's producers began to play to this perception by deliberately inserting usually humorous lesbian innuendo into some episodes. The show acquired a cult following in the lesbian community. However, Xena had a number of male love interests as well, and from the first season she had an adversarial but sexually charged dynamic with Ares, the God of War, who frequently tried to win her over as his "Warrior Queen." Gabrielle herself had once had a male husband, and his death deeply affected her.

According to journalist Cathy Young, the quarrel between online fans of the show about whether there should be a relationship between Xena and Gabrielle had a sociopolitical angle, in which some on the anti-relationship side were "undoubtedly driven by bona fide bigotry", while some on the pro-relationship side were lesbians who "approached the argument as a real-life gay rights struggle" in which "denying a sexual relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was tantamount to denying the reality of their own lives".[23] She added:

In 2000, during the airing of the fifth season, the intensity and sometimes nastiness of the "shipping wars" in the Xena fandom was chronicled (from a non-subtexter's point of view) by Australian artist Nancy Lorenz in an article titled "The Discrimination in the Xenaverse" in the online Xena fan magazine Whoosh!,[24] and also in numerous letters in response.[25]

The wars did not abate after the series came to an end in 2001. With no new material from the show itself, the debates were further fueled by various statements from the cast and crew. In January 2003, Lucy Lawless, the show's star, told Lesbian News magazine that after watching the series finale (in which Gabrielle revived Xena with a mouth-to-mouth water transfer filmed to look like a full kiss) she had come to believe that Xena and Gabrielle's relationship was "definitely gay."[26] However, in the interviews and commentaries on the DVD sets released in 2003–2005, the actors, writers and producers continued to stress the ambiguity of the relationship, and in several interviews both Lawless and Renee O'Connor, who played Gabrielle, spoke of Ares as a principal love interest for Xena. In the interview for the Season 6 episode "Coming Home", O'Connor commented, "If there was ever going to be one man in Xena's life, it would be Ares."

In March 2005, one-time Xena screenwriter Katherine Fugate, an outspoken supporter of the Xena/Gabrielle pairing, posted a statement on her website appealing for tolerance in the fandom:

China Shipping Development (SEHK: 1138, SSE: 600026) is a Chinese shipping company with its headquarters in Shanghai. The company is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The company produces, pursues and sells as a shipping company ships worldwide. China Shipping Group Company, founded on the 1 July 1997, is the holding company of China Shipping Development. Among the rest, the companies China Shipping Container Lines und China Shipping Haisheng also belong to the Parent company. The main business focus of the company involves coastal, ocean and Yangtze River cargo transportation, ship leasing, cargo forwarding and cargo transport agency, purchase and sale of ships, repair and development of containers, ship spare parts purchase and sale agency, consultancy and transfer of shipping technology.[1]

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Online Website Development

Online  Website Development

Essential features of website development that you need to know as a website owner

With increased competition in the present world scenario, top class website development plan is no more the developer's sole task. It is in fact the website owner's competitive spirit that defines the business prospect on the internet. Site owners are getting more demanding in their needs. Studies have shown that a discerning website owner, who emphasis's on being unique and in standing out from the rest, is most often the one to taste a quicker sure-shot-success. In fact, most of the thousands of websites now target on providing something very unique for its visitors. Although similar product based websites abound in hundreds, uniqueness brings things that competitor sites do not offer regardless of their being similar in nature.

It has now become quite imperative for a website owner to know the nuances of a good website. No matter to which part of the world you belong, there are always definite indispensable elements that a website is required to possess.

Before you embark on your website creation endeavour, keep yourself well informed of the essential and necessary features that need be present on your website. I have put up the most essential features that you need to know about your proposed site - so that you can get it designed and developed as a knowledgeable and discerning website owner. You no longer will be left at the mercy of software companies.

Feature 5: Relate your website theme with the product and target audience

The theme and artistic elements of your website design and layout should be related to suit the target audience of your website.

Feature 6: Ensure website compatibility on popular browsers

Your website might just not work well on every browser. Hence, speak out to the designers and developers about compatibility of your website on the most popular browsers. Check out for yourself if it works on all the popular browsers.

Feature 7: Check for an error free content

Get into every tiny detail of the website content, captions, graphic elements etc and ensure that it is totally error free. Look out for both grammatical and spelling errors.

Feature 8: Keep options open for spring up a surprise

Ask our developer and designers to keep options wide open for you to spring up a surprise for the website visitors. You may add a new skin or probably change the images on the home page for an occasion like for example: New Year or Christmas. You could also occasionally change the article content or add a new video etc. This sustains visitor interest in your website.

Basically, web development is a field of software development associated to development of internet applications. In any social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, Hi-5 and others, you will see various forms of internet applications. For instance, if you're a user of these social networking sites, there are several features like:

Create your own photo album

Share your favorite pictures, songs and news

Embed videos to your website and so on and so forth

This type of developers normally work on the server side framework in which uses scripting languages like PHP, JSP, .NET, Python and Perl. They handle information whether they are on their own web servers on or an external system. If you are a beginner, start learning the basics like HTML language before you begin any web development courses. If you have decided to start earning an online degree in this particular field, you must be able to manage your time between work and study.

Online advertising, also called online marketing or Internet advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. Consumers view online advertising as an unwanted distraction with few benefits and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.[1]:19 In 2013, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $42.8 billion, a 17% increase over the $36.57 billion in revenues in 2012.[2]:4–5 U.S. internet ad revenue hit a historic high of $20.1 billion for the first half of 2013, up 18% over the same period in 2012.[3] Online advertising is widely used across virtually all industry sectors.[1]:16 Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation.

Online ad revenues may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams. Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to hide their content behind paywalls.[4] In early days of the Internet, online advertising was mostly prohibited. For example, two of the predecessor networks to the Internet, ARPANET and NSFNet, had "acceptable use policies" that banned network "use for commercial activities by for-profit institutions".[5][6] The NSFNet began phasing out its commercial use ban in 1991.[7][8][9][10] The first widely publicized example of online advertising was conducted via electronic mail. On 3 May 1978, a marketer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Gary Thuerk, sent an email to most of the ARPANET's American west coast users, advertising an open house for a new model of a DEC computer.[6][11] Despite the prevailing acceptable use policies, electronic mail marketing rapidly expanded[12] and eventually became known as "spam." The first known large-scale non-commercial spam message was sent on 18 January 1994 by an Andrews University system administrator, by cross-posting a religious message to all USENET newsgroups.[13] In January 1994 Mark Eberra started the first email marketing company for opt in email list under the domain Insideconnect.com [14] Four months later, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, broadly promoted their legal services in a USENET posting titled "Green Card Lottery – Final One?"[15] Canter and Siegel's Green Card USENET spam raised the profile of online advertising, stimulating widespread interest in advertising via both Usenet and traditional email.[13] More recently, spam has evolved into a more industrial operation, where spammers use armies of virus-infected computers (botnets) to send spam remotely.[11] Online banner advertising began in the early 1990s as page owners sought additional revenue streams to support their content.

Commercial online service Prodigy displayed banners at the bottom of the screen to promote Sears products.[16] The first clickable web ad was sold by Global Network Navigator in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm.[17] In 1994, web banner advertising became mainstream when HotWired, the online component of Wired Magazine, sold banner ads to AT&T and other companies. The first AT&T ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate, and instead of directing clickers to AT&T's website, the ad linked to an online tour of seven of the world's most acclaimed art museums.[18][19] GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search advertising keyword auction in 1998.[20]:119 Google launched its "AdWords" search advertising program in 2000[21] and introduced quality-based ranking allocation in 2002,[22] which sorts search advertisements by a combination of bid price and searchers' likeliness to click on the ads.[20]:123 More recently, companies have sought to merge their advertising messages into editorial content or valuable services. Examples include Red Bull's Red Bull Media House streaming Felix Baumgartner's jump from space online, Coca-Cola's online magazines, and Nike's free applications for performance tracking.[19] Advertisers are also embracing social media[23][24] and mobile advertising; mobile ad spending has grown 90% each year from 2010 to 2013.[1]:13 Example of display advertising featuring geotargeting Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.[25] As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed profile of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising. This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting.[26] Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear.[20]:118 Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.[27] Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting. A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region). The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.[28] For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers.[29] Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further.[28] Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page. Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs. Frame ads were the first form of web banners.[18] The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.[30] A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window.[31] A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.[1]:22 Pop-under ads and similar technologies are now advised against by online authorities such as Google, who state that they "do not condone this practice".[32] A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a preset time period. An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad.[33] Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space. A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks.[34] Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch.[35][36] Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.[37] "News Feed Ads", also called "Sponsored Stories", "Boosted Posts", typically exist on social media platforms that offer a steady stream of information updates ("news feed"[38]) in regulated formats (i.e. in similar sized small boxes with a uniform style).

Those advertisements are intertwined with non-promoted news that the users are reading through. Those advertisements can be of any content, such as promoting a website, a fan page, an app, or a product. Some examples are: Facebook's "Sponsored Stories",[39] LinkedIn's "Sponsored Updates",[40] and Twitter's "Promoted Tweets".[41] This display ads format falls into its own category because unlike banner ads which are quite distinguishable, News Feed Ads' format blends well into non-paid news updates. This format of online advertisement yields much higher click-through rates than traditional display ads[42][43] The process by which online advertising is displayed can involve many parties. In the simplest case, the web site publisher selects and serves the ads. Publishers which operate their own advertising departments may use this method. Online advertising serving process - simple publisher case The ads may be outsourced to an advertising agency under contract with the publisher, and served from the advertising agency's servers. Online advertising serving process using an ad agency Online advertising serving process using online bidding Alternatively, ad space may be offered for sale in a bidding market using an ad exchange and real-time bidding. This involves many parties interacting automatically in real time. In response to a request from the user's browser, the publisher content server sends the web page content to the user's browser over the Internet. The page does not yet contain ads, but contains links which cause the user's browser to connect to the publisher ad server to request that the spaces left for ads be filled in with ads. Information identifying the user, such as cookies and the page being viewed, is transmitted to the publisher ad server.

The publisher ad server then communicates with a supply-side platform server. The publisher is offering ad space for sale, so they are considered the supplier. The supply side platform also receives the user's identifying information, which it sends to a data management platform. At the data management platform, the user's identifying information is used to look up demographic information, previous purchases, and other information of interest to advertisers. Broadly speaking, there are three types of data obtained through such a data management platform: First party data refers to the data retrieved from customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, in addition to website and paid media content or cross-platform data. This can include data from customer behaviors, actions or interests.[44] Second party data refers to an amalgamation of statistics related to cookie pools on external publications and platforms. The data is provided directly from the source (adservers, hosted solutions for social or an analytics platform). It is also possible to negotiate a deal with a particular publisher to secure specific data points or audiences.[45] Third party data is sourced from external providers and often aggregated from numerous websites. Businesses sell third-party data and are able to share this via an array of distribution avenues.[46] This customer information is combined and returned to the supply side platform, which can now package up the offer of ad space along with information about the user who will view it. The supply side platform sends that offer to an ad exchange. The ad exchange puts the offer out for bid to demand-side platforms. Demand side platforms act on behalf of ad agencies, who sell ads which advertise brands.

Demand side platforms thus have ads ready to display, and are searching for users to view them. Bidders get the information about the user ready to view the ad, and decide, based on that information, how much to offer to buy the ad space. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, a demand side platform has 10 milliseconds to respond to an offer. The ad exchange picks the winning bid and informs both parties. The ad exchange then passes the link to the ad back through the supply side platform and the publisher's ad server to the user's browser, which then requests the ad content from the agency's ad server. The ad agency can thus confirm that the ad was delivered to the browser.[47] This is simplified, according to the IAB. Exchanges may try to unload unsold ("remnant") space at low prices through other exchanges. Some agencies maintain semi-permanent pre-cached bids with ad exchanges, and those may be examined before going out to additional demand side platforms for bids. The process for mobile advertising is different and may involve mobile carriers and handset software manufacturers.[47] An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load.[48] Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.[49][50] A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks. Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to advertiser's websites. Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing. Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.[51] Search engine marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query.[20]:117 Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results. Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords. Search engine optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms. Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers.[52][53][54] Many vendors offer SEO services.[1]:22 Sponsored search (also called sponsored links, search ads, or paid search) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords. Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords.[20]:118[55] In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints.[20]:118 Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids.[20]:119 Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.[22] Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.[56] Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers.

Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, "advergaming," or application sponsorship).[1]:23 Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general online advertising.[50] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons. There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively.[1]:14 The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers.[1]:14 In July 2014 Facebook reported advertising revenue for the June 2014 quarter of $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 percent over the second quarter of 2013. Of that, mobile advertising revenue accounted for around 62 percent, an increase of 41 percent on the previous year. Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message.[1]:22 Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in). As opposed to static messaging, chat advertising refers to real time messages dropped to users on certain sites. This is done by the usage of live chat software or tracking applications installed within certain websites with the operating personnel behind the site often dropping adverts on the traffic surfing around the sites. In reality this is a subset of the email advertising but different because of its time window. Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services. Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and online auction-based listings.[1]:22 Craigslist and eBay are two prominent providers of online classified listings. Adware is software that, once installed, automatically displays advertisements on a user's computer. The ads may appear in the software itself, integrated into web pages visited by the user, or in pop-ups/pop-unders.[57] Adware installed without the user's permission is a type of malware.[58] Affiliate marketing occurs when advertisers organize third parties to generate potential customers for them. Third-party affiliates receive payment based on sales generated through their promotion.[1]:22 Affiliate marketers generate traffic to offers from affiliate networks, and when the desired action is taken by the visitor, the affiliate earns a commission. These desired actions can be an email submission, a phone call, filling out an online form, or an online order being completed. Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blogs, news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides and more. Considering that most marketing involves some form of published media, it is almost (though not entirely) redundant to call 'content marketing' anything other than simply 'marketing'.

There are, of course, other forms of marketing (in-person marketing, telephone-based marketing, word of mouth marketing, etc.) where the label is more useful for identifying the type of marketing. However, even these are usually merely presenting content that they are marketing as information in a way that is different from traditional print, radio, TV, film, email, or web media. Online marketing platform (OMP) is an integrated web-based platform that combines the benefits of a business directory, local search engine, search engine optimisation (SEO) tool, customer relationship management (CRM) package and content management system (CMS). Ebay and Amazon are used as online marketing and logistics management platforms. On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other Social Media, retail online marketing is also used. Online business marketing platforms such as Marketo, Aprimo, MarketBright and Pardot have been bought by major IT companies (Eloqua-Oracle, Neolane-Adobe and Unica-IBM). Unlike television marketing in which Neilsen TV Ratings can be relied upon for viewing metrics, online advertisers do not have an independent party to verify viewing claims made by the big online platforms.[59] Advertisers and publishers use a wide range of payment calculation methods. In 2012, advertisers calculated 32% of online advertising transactions on a cost-per-impression basis, 66% on customer performance (e.g. cost per click or cost per acquisition), and 2% on hybrids of impression and performance methods.[1]:17 Cost per mille, often abbreviated to CPM, means that advertisers pay for every thousand displays of their message to potential customers (mille is the Latin word for thousand). In the online context, ad displays are usually called "impressions.

" Definitions of an "impression" vary among publishers,[60] and some impressions may not be charged because they don't represent a new exposure to an actual customer.[61] Advertisers can use technologies such as web bugs to verify if an impression is actually delivered.[62][63]:59 Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else's content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.[64] CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud," and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.[65]:1–4 CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad. CPC advertising works well when advertisers want visitors to their sites, but it's a less accurate measurement for advertisers looking to build brand awareness.[66] CPC's market share has grown each year since its introduction, eclipsing CPM to dominate two-thirds of all online advertising compensation methods.[1]:18[65]:1 Like impressions, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers. GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50% of clicks on static mobile banner ads are accidental and resulted in redirected visitors leaving the new site immediately.[67] Cost per engagement aims to track not just that an ad unit loaded on the page (i.e., an impression was served), but also that the viewer actually saw and/or interacted with the ad.[68][69] Cost per view video advertising. Both Google and TubeMogul endorsed this standardized CPV metric to the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it's garnering a notable amount of industry support.[70] CPV is the primary benchmark used in YouTube Advertising Campaigns, as part of Google's AdWords platform. The CPI compensation method is specific to mobile applications and mobile advertising. In CPI ad campaigns brands are charged a fixed of bid rate only when the application was installed. Main article: Attribution (marketing) In marketing, "attribution" is the measurement of effectiveness of particular ads in a consumer's ultimate decision to purchase. Multiple ad impressions may lead to a consumer "click" or other action. A single action may lead to revenue being paid to multiple ad space sellers.[71] CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPP (Pay Per Performance) advertising means the advertiser pays for the number of users who perform a desired activity, such as completing a purchase or filling out a registration form. Performance-based compensation can also incorporate revenue sharing, where publishers earn a percentage of the advertiser's profits made as a result of the ad. Performance-based compensation shifts the risk of failed advertising onto publishers.[65]:4, 16 Fixed cost compensation means advertisers pay a fixed cost for delivery of ads online, usually over a specified time period, irrespective of the ad's visibility or users' response to it. One examples is CPD (cost per day) where advertisers pay a fixed cost for publishing an ad for a day irrespective of impressions served or clicks. The low costs of electronic communication reduce the cost of displaying online advertisements compared to offline ads. Online advertising, and in particular social media, provides a low-cost means for advertisers to engage with large established communities.[56] Advertising online offers better returns than in other media.[65]:1 Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of the potential audience or actual audience response,[20]:119 how a visitor reached their advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually loaded within a visitor's view.[62][63]:59 This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns over time.

Advertisers have a wide variety of ways of presenting their promotional messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links. Unlike many offline ads, online ads also can be interactive.[19] For example, some ads let users input queries[72] or let users follow the advertiser on social media.[73] Online ads can even incorporate games.[74] Publishers can offer advertisers the ability to reach customizable and narrow market segments for targeted advertising. Online advertising may use geo-targeting to display relevant advertisements to the user's geography. Advertisers can customize each individual ad to a particular user based on the user's previous preferences.[27] Advertisers can also track whether a visitor has already seen a particular ad in order to reduce unwanted repetitious exposures and provide adequate time gaps between exposures.[75] Online advertising can reach nearly every global market, and online advertising influences offline sales.[76][77][78] Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately. The delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher's publication schedule. Furthermore, online advertisers can modify or replace ad copy more rapidly than their offline counterparts.[79] According to a US Senate investigation, the current state of online advertising endangers the security and privacy of users.[80] Eye-tracking studies have shown that Internet users often ignore web page zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called "banner blindness"), and this problem is worse online than in offline media.[81] On the other hand, studies suggest that even those ads "ignored" by the users may influence the user subconsciously.[82] There are numerous ways that advertisers can be overcharged for their advertising. For example, click fraud occurs when a publisher or third parties click (manually or through automated means) on a CPC ad with no legitimate buying intent.[83] For example, click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on ads to deplete its rival's advertising budget, or when publishers attempt to manufacture revenue.[83] Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites. In 2011, certain scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer, forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's knowledge.[84] As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers. To combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are developing ways to count online impressions credibly.[85][86] Because users have different operating systems, web browsers[87] and computer hardware (including mobile devices and different screen sizes), online ads may appear to users differently from how the advertiser intended, or the ads may not display properly at all.

A 2012 comScore study revealed that, on average, 31% of ads were not "in-view" when rendered, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen.[88] Rich media ads create even greater compatibility problems, as some developers may use competing (and exclusive) software to render the ads (see e.g. Comparison of HTML 5 and Flash).[89] Furthermore, advertisers may encounter legal problems if legally required information doesn't actually display to users, even if that failure is due to technological heterogeneity.[90]:i In the United States, the FTC has released a set of guidelines indicating that it's the advertisers' responsibility to ensure the ads display any required disclosures or disclaimers, irrespective of the users' technology.[90]:4–8 Ad blocking, or ad filtering, means the ads do not appear to the user because the user uses technology to screen out ads. Many browsers block unsolicited pop-up ads by default.[91] Other software programs or browser add-ons may also block the loading of ads, or block elements on a page with behaviors characteristic of ads (e.g. HTML autoplay of both audio and video). Approximately 9% of all online page views come from browsers with ad-blocking software installed,[92] and some publishers have 40%+ of their visitors using ad-blockers.[4] Some web browsers offer privacy modes where users can hide information about themselves from publishers and advertisers. Among other consequences, advertisers can't use cookies to serve targeted ads to private browsers. Most major browsers have incorporated Do Not Track options into their browser headers, but the regulations currently are only enforced by the honor system.[93][94][95] The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised consumer concerns about their privacy.[28][63] Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given an opportunity.[96][97] Over half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.[98] Many consumers have reservations about online behavioral targeting. By tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite well. Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to maximizing their abilities to track consumers.[63]:60[99][100] According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent.[101][102] Consumers can be especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such as financial or health status.[99] Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online persona's identity,[103]:1 leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to those from a well-known brand owner)[104] and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419" scam.[105][106][107] The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012, totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.[108][109] Consumers also face malware risks, i.e. malvertising, when interacting with online advertising. Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn.[110][111] For example, in August 2014 Yahoo's advertising network reportedly saw cases of infection of a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.[112] The Internet's low cost of disseminating advertising contributes to spam, especially by large-scale spammers. Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labeling to content filters, but most of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.[6] In general, consumer protection laws apply equally to online and offline activities.[90]:i However, there are questions over which jurisdiction's laws apply and which regulatory agencies have enforcement authority over transborder activity.[113] As with offline advertising, industry participants have undertaken numerous efforts to self-regulate and develop industry standards or codes of conduct.

Several United States advertising industry organizations jointly published Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising based on standards proposed by the FTC in 2009.[114] European ad associations published a similar document in 2011.[115] Primary tenets of both documents include consumer control of data transfer to third parties, data security, and consent for collection of certain health and financial data.[114]:2–4 Neither framework, however, penalizes violators of the codes of conduct.[116] Privacy regulation can require users' consent before an advertiser can track the user or communicate with the user. However, affirmative consent ("opt in") can be difficult and expensive to obtain.[63]:60 Industry participants often prefer other regulatory schemes. Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to privacy issues with advertising. The United States has specific restrictions on online tracking of children in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),[114]:16–17 and the FTC has recently expanded its interpretation of COPPA to include requiring ad networks to obtain parental consent before knowingly tracking kids.[117] Otherwise, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission frequently supports industry self-regulation, although increasingly it has been undertaking enforcement actions related to online privacy and security.[118] The FTC has also been pushing for industry consensus about possible Do Not Track legislation. In contrast, the European Union's "Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive" restricts websites' ability to use consumer data much more comprehensively. The EU limitations restrict targeting by online advertisers; researchers have estimated online advertising effectiveness decreases on average by around 65% in Europe relative to the rest of the world.[63]:58 Many laws specifically regulate the ways online ads are delivered. For example, online advertising delivered via email is more regulated than the same ad content delivered via banner ads. Among other restrictions, the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that any commercial email provide an opt-out mechanism.[113] Similarly, mobile advertising is governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), which (among other restrictions) requires user opt-in before sending advertising via text messaging.Shortly after the series' debut, fans started discussing the possibility of a relationship between Xena and her sidekick and best friend Gabrielle.

Toward the end of the first season, the show's producers began to play to this perception by deliberately inserting usually humorous lesbian innuendo into some episodes. The show acquired a cult following in the lesbian community. However, Xena had a number of male love interests as well, and from the first season she had an adversarial but sexually charged dynamic with Ares, the God of War, who frequently tried to win her over as his "Warrior Queen." Gabrielle herself had once had a male husband, and his death deeply affected her.

According to journalist Cathy Young, the quarrel between online fans of the show about whether there should be a relationship between Xena and Gabrielle had a sociopolitical angle, in which some on the anti-relationship side were "undoubtedly driven by bona fide bigotry", while some on the pro-relationship side were lesbians who "approached the argument as a real-life gay rights struggle" in which "denying a sexual relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was tantamount to denying the reality of their own lives".[23] She added:

In 2000, during the airing of the fifth season, the intensity and sometimes nastiness of the "shipping wars" in the Xena fandom was chronicled (from a non-subtexter's point of view) by Australian artist Nancy Lorenz in an article titled "The Discrimination in the Xenaverse" in the online Xena fan magazine Whoosh!,[24] and also in numerous letters in response.[25]

The wars did not abate after the series came to an end in 2001. With no new material from the show itself, the debates were further fueled by various statements from the cast and crew. In January 2003, Lucy Lawless, the show's star, told Lesbian News magazine that after watching the series finale (in which Gabrielle revived Xena with a mouth-to-mouth water transfer filmed to look like a full kiss) she had come to believe that Xena and Gabrielle's relationship was "definitely gay."[26] However, in the interviews and commentaries on the DVD sets released in 2003–2005, the actors, writers and producers continued to stress the ambiguity of the relationship, and in several interviews both Lawless and Renee O'Connor, who played Gabrielle, spoke of Ares as a principal love interest for Xena. In the interview for the Season 6 episode "Coming Home", O'Connor commented, "If there was ever going to be one man in Xena's life, it would be Ares."

In March 2005, one-time Xena screenwriter Katherine Fugate, an outspoken supporter of the Xena/Gabrielle pairing, posted a statement on her website appealing for tolerance in the fandom:

China Shipping Development (SEHK: 1138, SSE: 600026) is a Chinese shipping company with its headquarters in Shanghai. The company is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The company produces, pursues and sells as a shipping company ships worldwide. China Shipping Group Company, founded on the 1 July 1997, is the holding company of China Shipping Development. Among the rest, the companies China Shipping Container Lines und China Shipping Haisheng also belong to the Parent company. The main business focus of the company involves coastal, ocean and Yangtze River cargo transportation, ship leasing, cargo forwarding and cargo transport agency, purchase and sale of ships, repair and development of containers, ship spare parts purchase and sale agency, consultancy and transfer of shipping technology.[1]

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404, B-70, Nitin Shanti Nagar Building,

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Online Website Development

Online  Website Development

Essential features of website development that you need to know as a website owner

With increased competition in the present world scenario, top class website development plan is no more the developer's sole task. It is in fact the website owner's competitive spirit that defines the business prospect on the internet. Site owners are getting more demanding in their needs. Studies have shown that a discerning website owner, who emphasis's on being unique and in standing out from the rest, is most often the one to taste a quicker sure-shot-success. In fact, most of the thousands of websites now target on providing something very unique for its visitors. Although similar product based websites abound in hundreds, uniqueness brings things that competitor sites do not offer regardless of their being similar in nature.

It has now become quite imperative for a website owner to know the nuances of a good website. No matter to which part of the world you belong, there are always definite indispensable elements that a website is required to possess.

Before you embark on your website creation endeavour, keep yourself well informed of the essential and necessary features that need be present on your website. I have put up the most essential features that you need to know about your proposed site - so that you can get it designed and developed as a knowledgeable and discerning website owner. You no longer will be left at the mercy of software companies.

Feature 5: Relate your website theme with the product and target audience

The theme and artistic elements of your website design and layout should be related to suit the target audience of your website.

Feature 6: Ensure website compatibility on popular browsers

Your website might just not work well on every browser. Hence, speak out to the designers and developers about compatibility of your website on the most popular browsers. Check out for yourself if it works on all the popular browsers.

Feature 7: Check for an error free content

Get into every tiny detail of the website content, captions, graphic elements etc and ensure that it is totally error free. Look out for both grammatical and spelling errors.

Feature 8: Keep options open for spring up a surprise

Ask our developer and designers to keep options wide open for you to spring up a surprise for the website visitors. You may add a new skin or probably change the images on the home page for an occasion like for example: New Year or Christmas. You could also occasionally change the article content or add a new video etc. This sustains visitor interest in your website.

Basically, web development is a field of software development associated to development of internet applications. In any social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, Hi-5 and others, you will see various forms of internet applications. For instance, if you're a user of these social networking sites, there are several features like:

Create your own photo album

Share your favorite pictures, songs and news

Embed videos to your website and so on and so forth

This type of developers normally work on the server side framework in which uses scripting languages like PHP, JSP, .NET, Python and Perl. They handle information whether they are on their own web servers on or an external system. If you are a beginner, start learning the basics like HTML language before you begin any web development courses. If you have decided to start earning an online degree in this particular field, you must be able to manage your time between work and study.

Online advertising, also called online marketing or Internet advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. Consumers view online advertising as an unwanted distraction with few benefits and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.[1]:19 In 2013, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $42.8 billion, a 17% increase over the $36.57 billion in revenues in 2012.[2]:4–5 U.S. internet ad revenue hit a historic high of $20.1 billion for the first half of 2013, up 18% over the same period in 2012.[3] Online advertising is widely used across virtually all industry sectors.[1]:16 Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation.

Online ad revenues may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams. Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to hide their content behind paywalls.[4] In early days of the Internet, online advertising was mostly prohibited. For example, two of the predecessor networks to the Internet, ARPANET and NSFNet, had "acceptable use policies" that banned network "use for commercial activities by for-profit institutions".[5][6] The NSFNet began phasing out its commercial use ban in 1991.[7][8][9][10] The first widely publicized example of online advertising was conducted via electronic mail. On 3 May 1978, a marketer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Gary Thuerk, sent an email to most of the ARPANET's American west coast users, advertising an open house for a new model of a DEC computer.[6][11] Despite the prevailing acceptable use policies, electronic mail marketing rapidly expanded[12] and eventually became known as "spam." The first known large-scale non-commercial spam message was sent on 18 January 1994 by an Andrews University system administrator, by cross-posting a religious message to all USENET newsgroups.[13] In January 1994 Mark Eberra started the first email marketing company for opt in email list under the domain Insideconnect.com [14] Four months later, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, broadly promoted their legal services in a USENET posting titled "Green Card Lottery – Final One?"[15] Canter and Siegel's Green Card USENET spam raised the profile of online advertising, stimulating widespread interest in advertising via both Usenet and traditional email.[13] More recently, spam has evolved into a more industrial operation, where spammers use armies of virus-infected computers (botnets) to send spam remotely.[11] Online banner advertising began in the early 1990s as page owners sought additional revenue streams to support their content.

Commercial online service Prodigy displayed banners at the bottom of the screen to promote Sears products.[16] The first clickable web ad was sold by Global Network Navigator in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm.[17] In 1994, web banner advertising became mainstream when HotWired, the online component of Wired Magazine, sold banner ads to AT&T and other companies. The first AT&T ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate, and instead of directing clickers to AT&T's website, the ad linked to an online tour of seven of the world's most acclaimed art museums.[18][19] GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search advertising keyword auction in 1998.[20]:119 Google launched its "AdWords" search advertising program in 2000[21] and introduced quality-based ranking allocation in 2002,[22] which sorts search advertisements by a combination of bid price and searchers' likeliness to click on the ads.[20]:123 More recently, companies have sought to merge their advertising messages into editorial content or valuable services. Examples include Red Bull's Red Bull Media House streaming Felix Baumgartner's jump from space online, Coca-Cola's online magazines, and Nike's free applications for performance tracking.[19] Advertisers are also embracing social media[23][24] and mobile advertising; mobile ad spending has grown 90% each year from 2010 to 2013.[1]:13 Example of display advertising featuring geotargeting Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.[25] As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed profile of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising. This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting.[26] Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear.[20]:118 Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.[27] Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting. A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region). The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.[28] For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers.[29] Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further.[28] Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page. Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs. Frame ads were the first form of web banners.[18] The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.[30] A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window.[31] A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.[1]:22 Pop-under ads and similar technologies are now advised against by online authorities such as Google, who state that they "do not condone this practice".[32] A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a preset time period. An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad.[33] Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space. A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks.[34] Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch.[35][36] Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.[37] "News Feed Ads", also called "Sponsored Stories", "Boosted Posts", typically exist on social media platforms that offer a steady stream of information updates ("news feed"[38]) in regulated formats (i.e. in similar sized small boxes with a uniform style).

Those advertisements are intertwined with non-promoted news that the users are reading through. Those advertisements can be of any content, such as promoting a website, a fan page, an app, or a product. Some examples are: Facebook's "Sponsored Stories",[39] LinkedIn's "Sponsored Updates",[40] and Twitter's "Promoted Tweets".[41] This display ads format falls into its own category because unlike banner ads which are quite distinguishable, News Feed Ads' format blends well into non-paid news updates. This format of online advertisement yields much higher click-through rates than traditional display ads[42][43] The process by which online advertising is displayed can involve many parties. In the simplest case, the web site publisher selects and serves the ads. Publishers which operate their own advertising departments may use this method. Online advertising serving process - simple publisher case The ads may be outsourced to an advertising agency under contract with the publisher, and served from the advertising agency's servers. Online advertising serving process using an ad agency Online advertising serving process using online bidding Alternatively, ad space may be offered for sale in a bidding market using an ad exchange and real-time bidding. This involves many parties interacting automatically in real time. In response to a request from the user's browser, the publisher content server sends the web page content to the user's browser over the Internet. The page does not yet contain ads, but contains links which cause the user's browser to connect to the publisher ad server to request that the spaces left for ads be filled in with ads. Information identifying the user, such as cookies and the page being viewed, is transmitted to the publisher ad server.

The publisher ad server then communicates with a supply-side platform server. The publisher is offering ad space for sale, so they are considered the supplier. The supply side platform also receives the user's identifying information, which it sends to a data management platform. At the data management platform, the user's identifying information is used to look up demographic information, previous purchases, and other information of interest to advertisers. Broadly speaking, there are three types of data obtained through such a data management platform: First party data refers to the data retrieved from customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, in addition to website and paid media content or cross-platform data. This can include data from customer behaviors, actions or interests.[44] Second party data refers to an amalgamation of statistics related to cookie pools on external publications and platforms. The data is provided directly from the source (adservers, hosted solutions for social or an analytics platform). It is also possible to negotiate a deal with a particular publisher to secure specific data points or audiences.[45] Third party data is sourced from external providers and often aggregated from numerous websites. Businesses sell third-party data and are able to share this via an array of distribution avenues.[46] This customer information is combined and returned to the supply side platform, which can now package up the offer of ad space along with information about the user who will view it. The supply side platform sends that offer to an ad exchange. The ad exchange puts the offer out for bid to demand-side platforms. Demand side platforms act on behalf of ad agencies, who sell ads which advertise brands.

Demand side platforms thus have ads ready to display, and are searching for users to view them. Bidders get the information about the user ready to view the ad, and decide, based on that information, how much to offer to buy the ad space. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, a demand side platform has 10 milliseconds to respond to an offer. The ad exchange picks the winning bid and informs both parties. The ad exchange then passes the link to the ad back through the supply side platform and the publisher's ad server to the user's browser, which then requests the ad content from the agency's ad server. The ad agency can thus confirm that the ad was delivered to the browser.[47] This is simplified, according to the IAB. Exchanges may try to unload unsold ("remnant") space at low prices through other exchanges. Some agencies maintain semi-permanent pre-cached bids with ad exchanges, and those may be examined before going out to additional demand side platforms for bids. The process for mobile advertising is different and may involve mobile carriers and handset software manufacturers.[47] An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load.[48] Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.[49][50] A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks. Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to advertiser's websites. Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing. Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.[51] Search engine marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query.[20]:117 Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results. Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords. Search engine optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms. Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers.[52][53][54] Many vendors offer SEO services.[1]:22 Sponsored search (also called sponsored links, search ads, or paid search) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords. Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords.[20]:118[55] In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints.[20]:118 Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids.[20]:119 Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.[22] Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.[56] Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers.

Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, "advergaming," or application sponsorship).[1]:23 Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general online advertising.[50] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons. There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively.[1]:14 The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers.[1]:14 In July 2014 Facebook reported advertising revenue for the June 2014 quarter of $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 percent over the second quarter of 2013. Of that, mobile advertising revenue accounted for around 62 percent, an increase of 41 percent on the previous year. Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message.[1]:22 Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in). As opposed to static messaging, chat advertising refers to real time messages dropped to users on certain sites. This is done by the usage of live chat software or tracking applications installed within certain websites with the operating personnel behind the site often dropping adverts on the traffic surfing around the sites. In reality this is a subset of the email advertising but different because of its time window. Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services. Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and online auction-based listings.[1]:22 Craigslist and eBay are two prominent providers of online classified listings. Adware is software that, once installed, automatically displays advertisements on a user's computer. The ads may appear in the software itself, integrated into web pages visited by the user, or in pop-ups/pop-unders.[57] Adware installed without the user's permission is a type of malware.[58] Affiliate marketing occurs when advertisers organize third parties to generate potential customers for them. Third-party affiliates receive payment based on sales generated through their promotion.[1]:22 Affiliate marketers generate traffic to offers from affiliate networks, and when the desired action is taken by the visitor, the affiliate earns a commission. These desired actions can be an email submission, a phone call, filling out an online form, or an online order being completed. Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blogs, news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides and more. Considering that most marketing involves some form of published media, it is almost (though not entirely) redundant to call 'content marketing' anything other than simply 'marketing'.

There are, of course, other forms of marketing (in-person marketing, telephone-based marketing, word of mouth marketing, etc.) where the label is more useful for identifying the type of marketing. However, even these are usually merely presenting content that they are marketing as information in a way that is different from traditional print, radio, TV, film, email, or web media. Online marketing platform (OMP) is an integrated web-based platform that combines the benefits of a business directory, local search engine, search engine optimisation (SEO) tool, customer relationship management (CRM) package and content management system (CMS). Ebay and Amazon are used as online marketing and logistics management platforms. On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other Social Media, retail online marketing is also used. Online business marketing platforms such as Marketo, Aprimo, MarketBright and Pardot have been bought by major IT companies (Eloqua-Oracle, Neolane-Adobe and Unica-IBM). Unlike television marketing in which Neilsen TV Ratings can be relied upon for viewing metrics, online advertisers do not have an independent party to verify viewing claims made by the big online platforms.[59] Advertisers and publishers use a wide range of payment calculation methods. In 2012, advertisers calculated 32% of online advertising transactions on a cost-per-impression basis, 66% on customer performance (e.g. cost per click or cost per acquisition), and 2% on hybrids of impression and performance methods.[1]:17 Cost per mille, often abbreviated to CPM, means that advertisers pay for every thousand displays of their message to potential customers (mille is the Latin word for thousand). In the online context, ad displays are usually called "impressions.

" Definitions of an "impression" vary among publishers,[60] and some impressions may not be charged because they don't represent a new exposure to an actual customer.[61] Advertisers can use technologies such as web bugs to verify if an impression is actually delivered.[62][63]:59 Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else's content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.[64] CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud," and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.[65]:1–4 CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad. CPC advertising works well when advertisers want visitors to their sites, but it's a less accurate measurement for advertisers looking to build brand awareness.[66] CPC's market share has grown each year since its introduction, eclipsing CPM to dominate two-thirds of all online advertising compensation methods.[1]:18[65]:1 Like impressions, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers. GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50% of clicks on static mobile banner ads are accidental and resulted in redirected visitors leaving the new site immediately.[67] Cost per engagement aims to track not just that an ad unit loaded on the page (i.e., an impression was served), but also that the viewer actually saw and/or interacted with the ad.[68][69] Cost per view video advertising. Both Google and TubeMogul endorsed this standardized CPV metric to the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it's garnering a notable amount of industry support.[70] CPV is the primary benchmark used in YouTube Advertising Campaigns, as part of Google's AdWords platform. The CPI compensation method is specific to mobile applications and mobile advertising. In CPI ad campaigns brands are charged a fixed of bid rate only when the application was installed. Main article: Attribution (marketing) In marketing, "attribution" is the measurement of effectiveness of particular ads in a consumer's ultimate decision to purchase. Multiple ad impressions may lead to a consumer "click" or other action. A single action may lead to revenue being paid to multiple ad space sellers.[71] CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPP (Pay Per Performance) advertising means the advertiser pays for the number of users who perform a desired activity, such as completing a purchase or filling out a registration form. Performance-based compensation can also incorporate revenue sharing, where publishers earn a percentage of the advertiser's profits made as a result of the ad. Performance-based compensation shifts the risk of failed advertising onto publishers.[65]:4, 16 Fixed cost compensation means advertisers pay a fixed cost for delivery of ads online, usually over a specified time period, irrespective of the ad's visibility or users' response to it. One examples is CPD (cost per day) where advertisers pay a fixed cost for publishing an ad for a day irrespective of impressions served or clicks. The low costs of electronic communication reduce the cost of displaying online advertisements compared to offline ads. Online advertising, and in particular social media, provides a low-cost means for advertisers to engage with large established communities.[56] Advertising online offers better returns than in other media.[65]:1 Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of the potential audience or actual audience response,[20]:119 how a visitor reached their advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually loaded within a visitor's view.[62][63]:59 This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns over time.

Advertisers have a wide variety of ways of presenting their promotional messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links. Unlike many offline ads, online ads also can be interactive.[19] For example, some ads let users input queries[72] or let users follow the advertiser on social media.[73] Online ads can even incorporate games.[74] Publishers can offer advertisers the ability to reach customizable and narrow market segments for targeted advertising. Online advertising may use geo-targeting to display relevant advertisements to the user's geography. Advertisers can customize each individual ad to a particular user based on the user's previous preferences.[27] Advertisers can also track whether a visitor has already seen a particular ad in order to reduce unwanted repetitious exposures and provide adequate time gaps between exposures.[75] Online advertising can reach nearly every global market, and online advertising influences offline sales.[76][77][78] Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately. The delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher's publication schedule. Furthermore, online advertisers can modify or replace ad copy more rapidly than their offline counterparts.[79] According to a US Senate investigation, the current state of online advertising endangers the security and privacy of users.[80] Eye-tracking studies have shown that Internet users often ignore web page zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called "banner blindness"), and this problem is worse online than in offline media.[81] On the other hand, studies suggest that even those ads "ignored" by the users may influence the user subconsciously.[82] There are numerous ways that advertisers can be overcharged for their advertising. For example, click fraud occurs when a publisher or third parties click (manually or through automated means) on a CPC ad with no legitimate buying intent.[83] For example, click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on ads to deplete its rival's advertising budget, or when publishers attempt to manufacture revenue.[83] Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites. In 2011, certain scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer, forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's knowledge.[84] As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers. To combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are developing ways to count online impressions credibly.[85][86] Because users have different operating systems, web browsers[87] and computer hardware (including mobile devices and different screen sizes), online ads may appear to users differently from how the advertiser intended, or the ads may not display properly at all.

A 2012 comScore study revealed that, on average, 31% of ads were not "in-view" when rendered, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen.[88] Rich media ads create even greater compatibility problems, as some developers may use competing (and exclusive) software to render the ads (see e.g. Comparison of HTML 5 and Flash).[89] Furthermore, advertisers may encounter legal problems if legally required information doesn't actually display to users, even if that failure is due to technological heterogeneity.[90]:i In the United States, the FTC has released a set of guidelines indicating that it's the advertisers' responsibility to ensure the ads display any required disclosures or disclaimers, irrespective of the users' technology.[90]:4–8 Ad blocking, or ad filtering, means the ads do not appear to the user because the user uses technology to screen out ads. Many browsers block unsolicited pop-up ads by default.[91] Other software programs or browser add-ons may also block the loading of ads, or block elements on a page with behaviors characteristic of ads (e.g. HTML autoplay of both audio and video). Approximately 9% of all online page views come from browsers with ad-blocking software installed,[92] and some publishers have 40%+ of their visitors using ad-blockers.[4] Some web browsers offer privacy modes where users can hide information about themselves from publishers and advertisers. Among other consequences, advertisers can't use cookies to serve targeted ads to private browsers. Most major browsers have incorporated Do Not Track options into their browser headers, but the regulations currently are only enforced by the honor system.[93][94][95] The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised consumer concerns about their privacy.[28][63] Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given an opportunity.[96][97] Over half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.[98] Many consumers have reservations about online behavioral targeting. By tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite well. Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to maximizing their abilities to track consumers.[63]:60[99][100] According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent.[101][102] Consumers can be especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such as financial or health status.[99] Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online persona's identity,[103]:1 leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to those from a well-known brand owner)[104] and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419" scam.[105][106][107] The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012, totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.[108][109] Consumers also face malware risks, i.e. malvertising, when interacting with online advertising. Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn.[110][111] For example, in August 2014 Yahoo's advertising network reportedly saw cases of infection of a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.[112] The Internet's low cost of disseminating advertising contributes to spam, especially by large-scale spammers. Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labeling to content filters, but most of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.[6] In general, consumer protection laws apply equally to online and offline activities.[90]:i However, there are questions over which jurisdiction's laws apply and which regulatory agencies have enforcement authority over transborder activity.[113] As with offline advertising, industry participants have undertaken numerous efforts to self-regulate and develop industry standards or codes of conduct.

Several United States advertising industry organizations jointly published Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising based on standards proposed by the FTC in 2009.[114] European ad associations published a similar document in 2011.[115] Primary tenets of both documents include consumer control of data transfer to third parties, data security, and consent for collection of certain health and financial data.[114]:2–4 Neither framework, however, penalizes violators of the codes of conduct.[116] Privacy regulation can require users' consent before an advertiser can track the user or communicate with the user. However, affirmative consent ("opt in") can be difficult and expensive to obtain.[63]:60 Industry participants often prefer other regulatory schemes. Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to privacy issues with advertising. The United States has specific restrictions on online tracking of children in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),[114]:16–17 and the FTC has recently expanded its interpretation of COPPA to include requiring ad networks to obtain parental consent before knowingly tracking kids.[117] Otherwise, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission frequently supports industry self-regulation, although increasingly it has been undertaking enforcement actions related to online privacy and security.[118] The FTC has also been pushing for industry consensus about possible Do Not Track legislation. In contrast, the European Union's "Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive" restricts websites' ability to use consumer data much more comprehensively. The EU limitations restrict targeting by online advertisers; researchers have estimated online advertising effectiveness decreases on average by around 65% in Europe relative to the rest of the world.[63]:58 Many laws specifically regulate the ways online ads are delivered. For example, online advertising delivered via email is more regulated than the same ad content delivered via banner ads. Among other restrictions, the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that any commercial email provide an opt-out mechanism.[113] Similarly, mobile advertising is governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), which (among other restrictions) requires user opt-in before sending advertising via text messaging.Shortly after the series' debut, fans started discussing the possibility of a relationship between Xena and her sidekick and best friend Gabrielle.

Toward the end of the first season, the show's producers began to play to this perception by deliberately inserting usually humorous lesbian innuendo into some episodes. The show acquired a cult following in the lesbian community. However, Xena had a number of male love interests as well, and from the first season she had an adversarial but sexually charged dynamic with Ares, the God of War, who frequently tried to win her over as his "Warrior Queen." Gabrielle herself had once had a male husband, and his death deeply affected her.

According to journalist Cathy Young, the quarrel between online fans of the show about whether there should be a relationship between Xena and Gabrielle had a sociopolitical angle, in which some on the anti-relationship side were "undoubtedly driven by bona fide bigotry", while some on the pro-relationship side were lesbians who "approached the argument as a real-life gay rights struggle" in which "denying a sexual relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was tantamount to denying the reality of their own lives".[23] She added:

In 2000, during the airing of the fifth season, the intensity and sometimes nastiness of the "shipping wars" in the Xena fandom was chronicled (from a non-subtexter's point of view) by Australian artist Nancy Lorenz in an article titled "The Discrimination in the Xenaverse" in the online Xena fan magazine Whoosh!,[24] and also in numerous letters in response.[25]

The wars did not abate after the series came to an end in 2001. With no new material from the show itself, the debates were further fueled by various statements from the cast and crew. In January 2003, Lucy Lawless, the show's star, told Lesbian News magazine that after watching the series finale (in which Gabrielle revived Xena with a mouth-to-mouth water transfer filmed to look like a full kiss) she had come to believe that Xena and Gabrielle's relationship was "definitely gay."[26] However, in the interviews and commentaries on the DVD sets released in 2003–2005, the actors, writers and producers continued to stress the ambiguity of the relationship, and in several interviews both Lawless and Renee O'Connor, who played Gabrielle, spoke of Ares as a principal love interest for Xena. In the interview for the Season 6 episode "Coming Home", O'Connor commented, "If there was ever going to be one man in Xena's life, it would be Ares."

In March 2005, one-time Xena screenwriter Katherine Fugate, an outspoken supporter of the Xena/Gabrielle pairing, posted a statement on her website appealing for tolerance in the fandom:

China Shipping Development (SEHK: 1138, SSE: 600026) is a Chinese shipping company with its headquarters in Shanghai. The company is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The company produces, pursues and sells as a shipping company ships worldwide. China Shipping Group Company, founded on the 1 July 1997, is the holding company of China Shipping Development. Among the rest, the companies China Shipping Container Lines und China Shipping Haisheng also belong to the Parent company. The main business focus of the company involves coastal, ocean and Yangtze River cargo transportation, ship leasing, cargo forwarding and cargo transport agency, purchase and sale of ships, repair and development of containers, ship spare parts purchase and sale agency, consultancy and transfer of shipping technology.[1]

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Online Website Development

Online  Website Development

Essential features of website development that you need to know as a website owner

With increased competition in the present world scenario, top class website development plan is no more the developer's sole task. It is in fact the website owner's competitive spirit that defines the business prospect on the internet. Site owners are getting more demanding in their needs. Studies have shown that a discerning website owner, who emphasis's on being unique and in standing out from the rest, is most often the one to taste a quicker sure-shot-success. In fact, most of the thousands of websites now target on providing something very unique for its visitors. Although similar product based websites abound in hundreds, uniqueness brings things that competitor sites do not offer regardless of their being similar in nature.

It has now become quite imperative for a website owner to know the nuances of a good website. No matter to which part of the world you belong, there are always definite indispensable elements that a website is required to possess.

Before you embark on your website creation endeavour, keep yourself well informed of the essential and necessary features that need be present on your website. I have put up the most essential features that you need to know about your proposed site - so that you can get it designed and developed as a knowledgeable and discerning website owner. You no longer will be left at the mercy of software companies.

Feature 5: Relate your website theme with the product and target audience

The theme and artistic elements of your website design and layout should be related to suit the target audience of your website.

Feature 6: Ensure website compatibility on popular browsers

Your website might just not work well on every browser. Hence, speak out to the designers and developers about compatibility of your website on the most popular browsers. Check out for yourself if it works on all the popular browsers.

Feature 7: Check for an error free content

Get into every tiny detail of the website content, captions, graphic elements etc and ensure that it is totally error free. Look out for both grammatical and spelling errors.

Feature 8: Keep options open for spring up a surprise

Ask our developer and designers to keep options wide open for you to spring up a surprise for the website visitors. You may add a new skin or probably change the images on the home page for an occasion like for example: New Year or Christmas. You could also occasionally change the article content or add a new video etc. This sustains visitor interest in your website.

Basically, web development is a field of software development associated to development of internet applications. In any social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, Hi-5 and others, you will see various forms of internet applications. For instance, if you're a user of these social networking sites, there are several features like:

Create your own photo album

Share your favorite pictures, songs and news

Embed videos to your website and so on and so forth

This type of developers normally work on the server side framework in which uses scripting languages like PHP, JSP, .NET, Python and Perl. They handle information whether they are on their own web servers on or an external system. If you are a beginner, start learning the basics like HTML language before you begin any web development courses. If you have decided to start earning an online degree in this particular field, you must be able to manage your time between work and study.

Online advertising, also called online marketing or Internet advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. Consumers view online advertising as an unwanted distraction with few benefits and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser. In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.[1]:19 In 2013, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $42.8 billion, a 17% increase over the $36.57 billion in revenues in 2012.[2]:4–5 U.S. internet ad revenue hit a historic high of $20.1 billion for the first half of 2013, up 18% over the same period in 2012.[3] Online advertising is widely used across virtually all industry sectors.[1]:16 Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation.

Online ad revenues may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams. Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to hide their content behind paywalls.[4] In early days of the Internet, online advertising was mostly prohibited. For example, two of the predecessor networks to the Internet, ARPANET and NSFNet, had "acceptable use policies" that banned network "use for commercial activities by for-profit institutions".[5][6] The NSFNet began phasing out its commercial use ban in 1991.[7][8][9][10] The first widely publicized example of online advertising was conducted via electronic mail. On 3 May 1978, a marketer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Gary Thuerk, sent an email to most of the ARPANET's American west coast users, advertising an open house for a new model of a DEC computer.[6][11] Despite the prevailing acceptable use policies, electronic mail marketing rapidly expanded[12] and eventually became known as "spam." The first known large-scale non-commercial spam message was sent on 18 January 1994 by an Andrews University system administrator, by cross-posting a religious message to all USENET newsgroups.[13] In January 1994 Mark Eberra started the first email marketing company for opt in email list under the domain Insideconnect.com [14] Four months later, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, broadly promoted their legal services in a USENET posting titled "Green Card Lottery – Final One?"[15] Canter and Siegel's Green Card USENET spam raised the profile of online advertising, stimulating widespread interest in advertising via both Usenet and traditional email.[13] More recently, spam has evolved into a more industrial operation, where spammers use armies of virus-infected computers (botnets) to send spam remotely.[11] Online banner advertising began in the early 1990s as page owners sought additional revenue streams to support their content.

Commercial online service Prodigy displayed banners at the bottom of the screen to promote Sears products.[16] The first clickable web ad was sold by Global Network Navigator in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm.[17] In 1994, web banner advertising became mainstream when HotWired, the online component of Wired Magazine, sold banner ads to AT&T and other companies. The first AT&T ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate, and instead of directing clickers to AT&T's website, the ad linked to an online tour of seven of the world's most acclaimed art museums.[18][19] GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search advertising keyword auction in 1998.[20]:119 Google launched its "AdWords" search advertising program in 2000[21] and introduced quality-based ranking allocation in 2002,[22] which sorts search advertisements by a combination of bid price and searchers' likeliness to click on the ads.[20]:123 More recently, companies have sought to merge their advertising messages into editorial content or valuable services. Examples include Red Bull's Red Bull Media House streaming Felix Baumgartner's jump from space online, Coca-Cola's online magazines, and Nike's free applications for performance tracking.[19] Advertisers are also embracing social media[23][24] and mobile advertising; mobile ad spending has grown 90% each year from 2010 to 2013.[1]:13 Example of display advertising featuring geotargeting Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.[25] As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed profile of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising. This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting.[26] Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear.[20]:118 Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.[27] Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting. A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region). The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.[28] For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers.[29] Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further.[28] Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page. Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs. Frame ads were the first form of web banners.[18] The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.[30] A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window.[31] A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.[1]:22 Pop-under ads and similar technologies are now advised against by online authorities such as Google, who state that they "do not condone this practice".[32] A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a preset time period. An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad.[33] Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space. A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks.[34] Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch.[35][36] Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.[37] "News Feed Ads", also called "Sponsored Stories", "Boosted Posts", typically exist on social media platforms that offer a steady stream of information updates ("news feed"[38]) in regulated formats (i.e. in similar sized small boxes with a uniform style).

Those advertisements are intertwined with non-promoted news that the users are reading through. Those advertisements can be of any content, such as promoting a website, a fan page, an app, or a product. Some examples are: Facebook's "Sponsored Stories",[39] LinkedIn's "Sponsored Updates",[40] and Twitter's "Promoted Tweets".[41] This display ads format falls into its own category because unlike banner ads which are quite distinguishable, News Feed Ads' format blends well into non-paid news updates. This format of online advertisement yields much higher click-through rates than traditional display ads[42][43] The process by which online advertising is displayed can involve many parties. In the simplest case, the web site publisher selects and serves the ads. Publishers which operate their own advertising departments may use this method. Online advertising serving process - simple publisher case The ads may be outsourced to an advertising agency under contract with the publisher, and served from the advertising agency's servers. Online advertising serving process using an ad agency Online advertising serving process using online bidding Alternatively, ad space may be offered for sale in a bidding market using an ad exchange and real-time bidding. This involves many parties interacting automatically in real time. In response to a request from the user's browser, the publisher content server sends the web page content to the user's browser over the Internet. The page does not yet contain ads, but contains links which cause the user's browser to connect to the publisher ad server to request that the spaces left for ads be filled in with ads. Information identifying the user, such as cookies and the page being viewed, is transmitted to the publisher ad server.

The publisher ad server then communicates with a supply-side platform server. The publisher is offering ad space for sale, so they are considered the supplier. The supply side platform also receives the user's identifying information, which it sends to a data management platform. At the data management platform, the user's identifying information is used to look up demographic information, previous purchases, and other information of interest to advertisers. Broadly speaking, there are three types of data obtained through such a data management platform: First party data refers to the data retrieved from customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, in addition to website and paid media content or cross-platform data. This can include data from customer behaviors, actions or interests.[44] Second party data refers to an amalgamation of statistics related to cookie pools on external publications and platforms. The data is provided directly from the source (adservers, hosted solutions for social or an analytics platform). It is also possible to negotiate a deal with a particular publisher to secure specific data points or audiences.[45] Third party data is sourced from external providers and often aggregated from numerous websites. Businesses sell third-party data and are able to share this via an array of distribution avenues.[46] This customer information is combined and returned to the supply side platform, which can now package up the offer of ad space along with information about the user who will view it. The supply side platform sends that offer to an ad exchange. The ad exchange puts the offer out for bid to demand-side platforms. Demand side platforms act on behalf of ad agencies, who sell ads which advertise brands.

Demand side platforms thus have ads ready to display, and are searching for users to view them. Bidders get the information about the user ready to view the ad, and decide, based on that information, how much to offer to buy the ad space. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, a demand side platform has 10 milliseconds to respond to an offer. The ad exchange picks the winning bid and informs both parties. The ad exchange then passes the link to the ad back through the supply side platform and the publisher's ad server to the user's browser, which then requests the ad content from the agency's ad server. The ad agency can thus confirm that the ad was delivered to the browser.[47] This is simplified, according to the IAB. Exchanges may try to unload unsold ("remnant") space at low prices through other exchanges. Some agencies maintain semi-permanent pre-cached bids with ad exchanges, and those may be examined before going out to additional demand side platforms for bids. The process for mobile advertising is different and may involve mobile carriers and handset software manufacturers.[47] An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load.[48] Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.[49][50] A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks. Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to advertiser's websites. Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing. Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.[51] Search engine marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query.[20]:117 Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results. Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords. Search engine optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms. Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers.[52][53][54] Many vendors offer SEO services.[1]:22 Sponsored search (also called sponsored links, search ads, or paid search) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords. Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords.[20]:118[55] In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints.[20]:118 Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids.[20]:119 Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.[22] Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.[56] Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers.

Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, "advergaming," or application sponsorship).[1]:23 Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general online advertising.[50] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons. There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively.[1]:14 The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers.[1]:14 In July 2014 Facebook reported advertising revenue for the June 2014 quarter of $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 percent over the second quarter of 2013. Of that, mobile advertising revenue accounted for around 62 percent, an increase of 41 percent on the previous year. Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message.[1]:22 Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in). As opposed to static messaging, chat advertising refers to real time messages dropped to users on certain sites. This is done by the usage of live chat software or tracking applications installed within certain websites with the operating personnel behind the site often dropping adverts on the traffic surfing around the sites. In reality this is a subset of the email advertising but different because of its time window. Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services. Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and online auction-based listings.[1]:22 Craigslist and eBay are two prominent providers of online classified listings. Adware is software that, once installed, automatically displays advertisements on a user's computer. The ads may appear in the software itself, integrated into web pages visited by the user, or in pop-ups/pop-unders.[57] Adware installed without the user's permission is a type of malware.[58] Affiliate marketing occurs when advertisers organize third parties to generate potential customers for them. Third-party affiliates receive payment based on sales generated through their promotion.[1]:22 Affiliate marketers generate traffic to offers from affiliate networks, and when the desired action is taken by the visitor, the affiliate earns a commission. These desired actions can be an email submission, a phone call, filling out an online form, or an online order being completed. Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blogs, news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides and more. Considering that most marketing involves some form of published media, it is almost (though not entirely) redundant to call 'content marketing' anything other than simply 'marketing'.

There are, of course, other forms of marketing (in-person marketing, telephone-based marketing, word of mouth marketing, etc.) where the label is more useful for identifying the type of marketing. However, even these are usually merely presenting content that they are marketing as information in a way that is different from traditional print, radio, TV, film, email, or web media. Online marketing platform (OMP) is an integrated web-based platform that combines the benefits of a business directory, local search engine, search engine optimisation (SEO) tool, customer relationship management (CRM) package and content management system (CMS). Ebay and Amazon are used as online marketing and logistics management platforms. On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other Social Media, retail online marketing is also used. Online business marketing platforms such as Marketo, Aprimo, MarketBright and Pardot have been bought by major IT companies (Eloqua-Oracle, Neolane-Adobe and Unica-IBM). Unlike television marketing in which Neilsen TV Ratings can be relied upon for viewing metrics, online advertisers do not have an independent party to verify viewing claims made by the big online platforms.[59] Advertisers and publishers use a wide range of payment calculation methods. In 2012, advertisers calculated 32% of online advertising transactions on a cost-per-impression basis, 66% on customer performance (e.g. cost per click or cost per acquisition), and 2% on hybrids of impression and performance methods.[1]:17 Cost per mille, often abbreviated to CPM, means that advertisers pay for every thousand displays of their message to potential customers (mille is the Latin word for thousand). In the online context, ad displays are usually called "impressions.

" Definitions of an "impression" vary among publishers,[60] and some impressions may not be charged because they don't represent a new exposure to an actual customer.[61] Advertisers can use technologies such as web bugs to verify if an impression is actually delivered.[62][63]:59 Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else's content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.[64] CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud," and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.[65]:1–4 CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad. CPC advertising works well when advertisers want visitors to their sites, but it's a less accurate measurement for advertisers looking to build brand awareness.[66] CPC's market share has grown each year since its introduction, eclipsing CPM to dominate two-thirds of all online advertising compensation methods.[1]:18[65]:1 Like impressions, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers. GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50% of clicks on static mobile banner ads are accidental and resulted in redirected visitors leaving the new site immediately.[67] Cost per engagement aims to track not just that an ad unit loaded on the page (i.e., an impression was served), but also that the viewer actually saw and/or interacted with the ad.[68][69] Cost per view video advertising. Both Google and TubeMogul endorsed this standardized CPV metric to the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it's garnering a notable amount of industry support.[70] CPV is the primary benchmark used in YouTube Advertising Campaigns, as part of Google's AdWords platform. The CPI compensation method is specific to mobile applications and mobile advertising. In CPI ad campaigns brands are charged a fixed of bid rate only when the application was installed. Main article: Attribution (marketing) In marketing, "attribution" is the measurement of effectiveness of particular ads in a consumer's ultimate decision to purchase. Multiple ad impressions may lead to a consumer "click" or other action. A single action may lead to revenue being paid to multiple ad space sellers.[71] CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPP (Pay Per Performance) advertising means the advertiser pays for the number of users who perform a desired activity, such as completing a purchase or filling out a registration form. Performance-based compensation can also incorporate revenue sharing, where publishers earn a percentage of the advertiser's profits made as a result of the ad. Performance-based compensation shifts the risk of failed advertising onto publishers.[65]:4, 16 Fixed cost compensation means advertisers pay a fixed cost for delivery of ads online, usually over a specified time period, irrespective of the ad's visibility or users' response to it. One examples is CPD (cost per day) where advertisers pay a fixed cost for publishing an ad for a day irrespective of impressions served or clicks. The low costs of electronic communication reduce the cost of displaying online advertisements compared to offline ads. Online advertising, and in particular social media, provides a low-cost means for advertisers to engage with large established communities.[56] Advertising online offers better returns than in other media.[65]:1 Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of the potential audience or actual audience response,[20]:119 how a visitor reached their advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually loaded within a visitor's view.[62][63]:59 This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns over time.

Advertisers have a wide variety of ways of presenting their promotional messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links. Unlike many offline ads, online ads also can be interactive.[19] For example, some ads let users input queries[72] or let users follow the advertiser on social media.[73] Online ads can even incorporate games.[74] Publishers can offer advertisers the ability to reach customizable and narrow market segments for targeted advertising. Online advertising may use geo-targeting to display relevant advertisements to the user's geography. Advertisers can customize each individual ad to a particular user based on the user's previous preferences.[27] Advertisers can also track whether a visitor has already seen a particular ad in order to reduce unwanted repetitious exposures and provide adequate time gaps between exposures.[75] Online advertising can reach nearly every global market, and online advertising influences offline sales.[76][77][78] Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately. The delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher's publication schedule. Furthermore, online advertisers can modify or replace ad copy more rapidly than their offline counterparts.[79] According to a US Senate investigation, the current state of online advertising endangers the security and privacy of users.[80] Eye-tracking studies have shown that Internet users often ignore web page zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called "banner blindness"), and this problem is worse online than in offline media.[81] On the other hand, studies suggest that even those ads "ignored" by the users may influence the user subconsciously.[82] There are numerous ways that advertisers can be overcharged for their advertising. For example, click fraud occurs when a publisher or third parties click (manually or through automated means) on a CPC ad with no legitimate buying intent.[83] For example, click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on ads to deplete its rival's advertising budget, or when publishers attempt to manufacture revenue.[83] Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites. In 2011, certain scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer, forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's knowledge.[84] As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers. To combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are developing ways to count online impressions credibly.[85][86] Because users have different operating systems, web browsers[87] and computer hardware (including mobile devices and different screen sizes), online ads may appear to users differently from how the advertiser intended, or the ads may not display properly at all.

A 2012 comScore study revealed that, on average, 31% of ads were not "in-view" when rendered, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen.[88] Rich media ads create even greater compatibility problems, as some developers may use competing (and exclusive) software to render the ads (see e.g. Comparison of HTML 5 and Flash).[89] Furthermore, advertisers may encounter legal problems if legally required information doesn't actually display to users, even if that failure is due to technological heterogeneity.[90]:i In the United States, the FTC has released a set of guidelines indicating that it's the advertisers' responsibility to ensure the ads display any required disclosures or disclaimers, irrespective of the users' technology.[90]:4–8 Ad blocking, or ad filtering, means the ads do not appear to the user because the user uses technology to screen out ads. Many browsers block unsolicited pop-up ads by default.[91] Other software programs or browser add-ons may also block the loading of ads, or block elements on a page with behaviors characteristic of ads (e.g. HTML autoplay of both audio and video). Approximately 9% of all online page views come from browsers with ad-blocking software installed,[92] and some publishers have 40%+ of their visitors using ad-blockers.[4] Some web browsers offer privacy modes where users can hide information about themselves from publishers and advertisers. Among other consequences, advertisers can't use cookies to serve targeted ads to private browsers. Most major browsers have incorporated Do Not Track options into their browser headers, but the regulations currently are only enforced by the honor system.[93][94][95] The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised consumer concerns about their privacy.[28][63] Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given an opportunity.[96][97] Over half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.[98] Many consumers have reservations about online behavioral targeting. By tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite well. Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to maximizing their abilities to track consumers.[63]:60[99][100] According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent.[101][102] Consumers can be especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such as financial or health status.[99] Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online persona's identity,[103]:1 leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to those from a well-known brand owner)[104] and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419" scam.[105][106][107] The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012, totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.[108][109] Consumers also face malware risks, i.e. malvertising, when interacting with online advertising. Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn.[110][111] For example, in August 2014 Yahoo's advertising network reportedly saw cases of infection of a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.[112] The Internet's low cost of disseminating advertising contributes to spam, especially by large-scale spammers. Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labeling to content filters, but most of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.[6] In general, consumer protection laws apply equally to online and offline activities.[90]:i However, there are questions over which jurisdiction's laws apply and which regulatory agencies have enforcement authority over transborder activity.[113] As with offline advertising, industry participants have undertaken numerous efforts to self-regulate and develop industry standards or codes of conduct.

Several United States advertising industry organizations jointly published Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising based on standards proposed by the FTC in 2009.[114] European ad associations published a similar document in 2011.[115] Primary tenets of both documents include consumer control of data transfer to third parties, data security, and consent for collection of certain health and financial data.[114]:2–4 Neither framework, however, penalizes violators of the codes of conduct.[116] Privacy regulation can require users' consent before an advertiser can track the user or communicate with the user. However, affirmative consent ("opt in") can be difficult and expensive to obtain.[63]:60 Industry participants often prefer other regulatory schemes. Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to privacy issues with advertising. The United States has specific restrictions on online tracking of children in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),[114]:16–17 and the FTC has recently expanded its interpretation of COPPA to include requiring ad networks to obtain parental consent before knowingly tracking kids.[117] Otherwise, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission frequently supports industry self-regulation, although increasingly it has been undertaking enforcement actions related to online privacy and security.[118] The FTC has also been pushing for industry consensus about possible Do Not Track legislation. In contrast, the European Union's "Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive" restricts websites' ability to use consumer data much more comprehensively. The EU limitations restrict targeting by online advertisers; researchers have estimated online advertising effectiveness decreases on average by around 65% in Europe relative to the rest of the world.[63]:58 Many laws specifically regulate the ways online ads are delivered. For example, online advertising delivered via email is more regulated than the same ad content delivered via banner ads. Among other restrictions, the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that any commercial email provide an opt-out mechanism.[113] Similarly, mobile advertising is governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), which (among other restrictions) requires user opt-in before sending advertising via text messaging.Shortly after the series' debut, fans started discussing the possibility of a relationship between Xena and her sidekick and best friend Gabrielle.

Toward the end of the first season, the show's producers began to play to this perception by deliberately inserting usually humorous lesbian innuendo into some episodes. The show acquired a cult following in the lesbian community. However, Xena had a number of male love interests as well, and from the first season she had an adversarial but sexually charged dynamic with Ares, the God of War, who frequently tried to win her over as his "Warrior Queen." Gabrielle herself had once had a male husband, and his death deeply affected her.

According to journalist Cathy Young, the quarrel between online fans of the show about whether there should be a relationship between Xena and Gabrielle had a sociopolitical angle, in which some on the anti-relationship side were "undoubtedly driven by bona fide bigotry", while some on the pro-relationship side were lesbians who "approached the argument as a real-life gay rights struggle" in which "denying a sexual relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was tantamount to denying the reality of their own lives".[23] She added:

In 2000, during the airing of the fifth season, the intensity and sometimes nastiness of the "shipping wars" in the Xena fandom was chronicled (from a non-subtexter's point of view) by Australian artist Nancy Lorenz in an article titled "The Discrimination in the Xenaverse" in the online Xena fan magazine Whoosh!,[24] and also in numerous letters in response.[25]

The wars did not abate after the series came to an end in 2001. With no new material from the show itself, the debates were further fueled by various statements from the cast and crew. In January 2003, Lucy Lawless, the show's star, told Lesbian News magazine that after watching the series finale (in which Gabrielle revived Xena with a mouth-to-mouth water transfer filmed to look like a full kiss) she had come to believe that Xena and Gabrielle's relationship was "definitely gay."[26] However, in the interviews and commentaries on the DVD sets released in 2003–2005, the actors, writers and producers continued to stress the ambiguity of the relationship, and in several interviews both Lawless and Renee O'Connor, who played Gabrielle, spoke of Ares as a principal love interest for Xena. In the interview for the Season 6 episode "Coming Home", O'Connor commented, "If there was ever going to be one man in Xena's life, it would be Ares."

In March 2005, one-time Xena screenwriter Katherine Fugate, an outspoken supporter of the Xena/Gabrielle pairing, posted a statement on her website appealing for tolerance in the fandom:

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The company produces, pursues and sells as a shipping company ships worldwide. China Shipping Group Company, founded on the 1 July 1997, is the holding company of China Shipping Development. Among the rest, the companies China Shipping Container Lines und China Shipping Haisheng also belong to the Parent company. The main business focus of the company involves coastal, ocean and Yangtze River cargo transportation, ship leasing, cargo forwarding and cargo transport agency, purchase and sale of ships, repair and development of containers, ship spare parts purchase and sale agency, consultancy and transfer of shipping technology.[1]

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