RE: 3rd Party Ad Serving

From: Tom Stevenson <c-Tom.Stevenson_at_atlasdmt.com>
Date: Thu 13 Sep 2001 10:46:29 -0500

CHARLES MORAN <cfm3rd_at_hotmail.com> WROTE:

>I'm working with a company to develop an ad serving
>solution to serve the needs of webmasters beyond
>entry-level software. It seems, from the discussions
>in this list, many web masters feel the available
>chooses either offer limited functionality or are
>priced well beyond their reach. The solution we hope
>to implement would support all major rich media types
>and deliver all of the IAB supported ad sizes.

>It would also allow for targeting, inventory management,
>scheduling of ad campaigns based on impressions or
>clicks, optimization by revenue and frequency capping.
>It would have reporting features as well as a proposal
>and billing management tool. I think from scanning
>the archives that this is a lot what people are looking
>for, but am I missing something that hasn't been
>mentioned yet?

Chuck,
I saw your posting on the Online Ads Digest... I'm curious
about this as well. I dropped off of the newsletter for a
while but I'm back on. I'm curious to learn about good
offerings for this out there.

Avenue A has created software like this through it's Atlas
DMT division where I work. I'm not sure of the pricing,
but it's targeted to large-spending advertisers and large
networks. I think it's a great product, but unfortunately
might be out of the price range for many sites.

I think a tricky part about optimization based on revenue
is this requires the technology to be able to determine how
much revenue the advertiser is making based on this
advertising. In my experience, this has been something
that advertisers are reluctant to share. Avenue A has
been doing this for some time and I was amazed at the
results. For example, when I was working on a client
account, we found that one site was generating a lot of
revenue for the advertiser. The click-rate and even the
conversion-rate (conversion=sale) weren't up to par with
other sites and a year ago we would have cancelled the
partnership because based on those numbers alone it
wasn't performing well. But when you look at the revenue
from sales for both customers that had clicked on the ads,
or merely seen the ads and within a couple of weeks had
went to the advertiser's site and purchased, this site
had outperformed all others.

I think as an industry we'll thrive more if we can start
using this ability much more. It's good for everyone.
So I'm especially interested in if there is a product out
there that is affordable and practical for smaller and
medium-sized sites.

Tom Stevenson
Atlas DMT
http://www.atlasdmt.com



Received on Thu Sep 13 2001 - 10:46:29 CDT