We host many events that have corporate sponsors, and we are always looking for new ways to present these sponsors in a way that is attractive on the front end while also being easy to administer.
In the past I have made some changes to the core Joomla banners component to display banner ads as text/html rather than just a static image, and this allowed that site to display what are essentially mini articles but with the whole body text linked to the sponsor's site, with the impressions and clicks being counted as part of the core functionality of the component. The component also allows for multiple ads from each sponsor (Clients in the component), each with its own stats, and with compiled stats for all ads by that sponsor. Very handy.
The banners component also can be set up with a category tree, so that a new category can be created for each new event in order to track and display the ads for each event.
The shortcomings of this include:
- Manual creation of each ad category when a new event is posted
- No automated way to charge for each ad/sponsorship via credit card (or value of goods donated)
- No way to show or track the dollar amount paid for each ad
- No way to show or track the cumulative dollar amount collected for each event
The built in sponsors function of Events Booking does OK at handling #1 above, and at presenting sponsor logos and links to their sites, but that's about it.
We also use Membership Pro, and I suppose one answer would be to create membership plans that are basically sponsorship levels with associated prices. The Joomdonation team created a custom display for us that allows those who register for an event to upload a logo and add a link to their registration (
see here for example
), so this could in theory take care of 1-4 above, but we haven't tried this yet, and it would also not track impressions and clicks like the banners component does.
Another option might be the Joom Donation component, but at first glance I don't see a way to tie a campaign to a specific event in Events Booking, let alone a way to present distinct banner ads for each sponsor. Perhaps this is worth looking into further though.
Anyhow I will cut this short here and await some responses. Maybe some of you have other ideas, or at least can chime in on getting this as a new feature in future releases of Events Booking. I think it would be a major selling point for the otherwise excellent component!
