You may not realize it, but the banners you see at the bottom of each page on the Coolmaps Components Club (CCC) website are neither paid-for advertising nor revenue sharing linking services like FastClick. These banners are part of the CCC banner xChange service which allows members to put their very own banners on the Club site free-of-charge. In the last 3 years millions of banners have appeared resulting in thousands of click-thrus and hundreds of sales.
[ add your own banner here ]

A couple of years ago, we brought attention to this cool service by having members guess which of the banners in our rotation were getting the most click-thrus. Good banners were easy to spot. Many members were able to identify the floating cursor and Austin Powers as top producers.
[ see the results of the contest ]

Now in 2002, were are highlighting our banner program with an all new contest. We are challenging our members to create their own banners to tempt and tease unsuspecting visitors to the CCC site. We are seeing if, even in this world of popups, tower adds and ultra-spam, there are still some tricks that results in uncontrollable clicking.

Reality not required

Here's the fun part ... the banners don't have to be real. Truth-in-advertising is not a requirement! Your banners can advertise "Free Beer!" or "Free Money!" or "Lower Phone Rates!". You can even advertise "Free Bootleg Version of Fusion 7!", whatever it takes .... However, based up the spam emails we receive at coolmaps.com (we don't know how we got on all these lists), you might see that today it is even difficult to make eye-catching false claims. :-)

But there are some rules

Here are the basic guidelines:

• The banner must be the size specified for the xChange banner service.
• Members must be able to put the banner into the rotation and set the link all by themselves.
  [ add banner ]
• All banners must be PG or G rated - only stuff you could show your mother.
• All banners must actually link to a page on the member's site.
• If the banner is not real (false claim), then the page that banner links to must clearly state that the claim was false and that the banner the visitor clicked on was part of a contest on the CCC site. (Visitors should know what CCC is, because that is the site they would have been on before they clicked.)
• All banners must be submitted by July 1, 2002.
• Click-thrus will be counted from July 1 - July 15, 2002.
• Clicks will be counted on a one-per-IP-address and one-per-cookie basis. If we catch someone cheating, that person will be disquallified and publicly humiliated.
• Only one entry per membership.

Two Contests ... Big Prizes

We will be counting click-thrus on our server, and we will award the prize based upon percentage of click-thrus (clicks/displays). There will be two categories - fictional banners, and non-fictional banners. For each category, the following prizes will be awared:

First Prize
A CCC t-shirt, a CCC coffee mug, and
a FUSION 7.0 UPGRADE.*

Second Prize
A CCC t-shirt and a CCC coffee mug

Third Prize
A CCC t-shirt

All Others
An all-expenses paid trip from your computer to your refrigerator (computer and fridge not included)