Re: Best Ad Network?

From: Bob Stewart <rstewart_at_vmirror.com>
Date: Thu 27 Feb 2003 20:13:43 -0600

At on time or another, I have been in just about every
ad network on the Web. Their heyday was 1999-2000, at
that time I could make good money just running ads for
the networks. And then, over the course of a year or
two, the higher paying ones all but disintegrated. Most
of the money going into ad network banners was coming
from dot-coms with more money than sense. The big
national brand advertisers were never a big part of the
customer base.

Now, the surviving and newer ad networks are all
low-rent affairs offering affordable advertising to
smaller businesses. The value is all based on response,
even if the ads are sold CPM. None of these are branding
ads. It's not the ad networks fault, it's simply reality.
Even Yahoo can sell only a scattering of branding ads.

Basically, the only sites that can make money on these ad
networks alone have lots of traffic and almost no
expenses. The ads tend to be obnoxious, they are always
pushing pop-ups, pop-unders, etc. That's why a lot of
sites just forgo them entirely, it isn't worth the small
amount of money they bring in to annoy your users.

If national brand advertisers ever do take to the Web in
a big way, we might see a revival of higher end ad networks,
but I would bet against this happening any time soon--maybe
in 4-5 years.

If you have a niche, you will be much better off selling
ads directly. Keep your rates reasonable and aim at the
smaller businesses. Believe it or not, they are much easier
to deal with. And many content sites now make good money
selling subscriptions and/or products.

Be prepared to continually adapt. At least three separate
times I have had to find a new principal revenue stream.


  Bob Stewart

  The Virtual Mirror
 





Received on Thu Feb 27 2003 - 20:13:43 CST