Earlier in November, I commented on <a href="http://corfield.org/blog/index.cfm/do/blog.entry/entry/Adam_Churvis_thinks_you_are_not_important" target="_blank">Sean Corfield&apos;s Blog</a> about how I felt the both MM & Adobe had, to date, failed miserably in promoting ColdFusion as the application server of choice for web development. Sean replied with:


"Rey, what would you like to see in terms of promotion? Give me some realistic, concrete examples of appropriate ColdFusion marketing..."

Definitely a good question to which I offered lengthy feedback. Part of my reply was about the complete lack of ColdFusion-related ads on sites that are *not* CF-specific. I mentioned the following:

"Why aren&apos;t there any CF ads on sites such Red Herring or SitePoint? Oh, wait I did notice the nice Macromedia Studio 8 ad that Adobe is running on SitePoint so I guess in a roundabout way, CF is in there. And I sure see quite a number of those nifty flash-based Flex ads floating around. I mean its great to know that I can go to Adobe&apos;s site and learn how to make "My Business Flow with Adobe Acrobat". I guess I&apos;ll use that to build my intranet as well. :)"

Well, to further justify my comments about Flex getting more advertising monies than ColdFusion, I started collecting screen caps of ads that I see on various sites. Here are some screen captures that I found on a couple of prominent "Web 2.0" type news sites:

TechCrunch
(Same article just at different points in the ad transition)
<a href="http://www.reybango.com/images/flexads/techcrunch1.jpg" target="_blank">TechCrunch Image 1 (11/28/06) (pic of guy with laptop)</a>

<a href="http://www.reybango.com/images/flexads/techcrunch2.jpg" target="_blank">TechCrunch Image 2 (11/28/06)</a>

Read/Write Web:
(Same article just at different points in the ad transition)
<a href="http://www.reybango.com/images/flexads/readwriteweb1.jpg" target="_blank">R/W Web Image 1 (11/28/06) (red 125x125)</a>

<a href="http://www.reybango.com/images/flexads/readwriteweb2.jpg" target="_blank">R/W Web Image 2 (11/28/06)</a>

Tech Dirt:
(Two different articles)
<a href="http://www.reybango.com/images/flexads/techdirt1.jpg" target="_blank">TechDirt Image from Article 1 (11/21/06)</a>

<a href="http://www.reybango.com/images/flexads/techdirt2.jpg" target="_blank">TechDirt Image from Article 2 (12/1/06)</a>

Now let me clarify something. This is *NOT*, I repeat, this is *NOT* a dig at Flex in any way. Flex is an outstanding product. 

This is to show some proof that what I said is actually true and that Flex is getting much more ad time than ColdFusion in ad spaces that are catering to general web development and/or IT content. I realize the Flex is a newer product in the Adobe line but I see plenty of ads for Flash, Photoshop and Acrobat. So thats not justification for completely neglecting any ColdFusion in terms of advertising & marketing.

So Adobe, how about showing some love to one of the best application servers out there? How about asking your marketing team to really give some thought on how to get more press for our beloved ColdFusion?