NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Re: HealthGate Guarantees click-rate
ONLINE-ADS>> Re: HealthGate Guarantees click-rate
Bob Wyman (bobwyman_at_healthgate.com)
Tue, 1 Oct 1996 10:59:01 -0400
Varun Arora <varora_at_giasbm01.vsnl.net.in> wrote:
>> The CPM should be tied to the historical yield of the spot
>> in which the impressions are to be generated.
>
> And what does one do for a new site?
HealthGate's method of guaranteed click-rates protects both you and
the advertiser in this case. Simply open up business by
"guaranteeing" base click-through-rates (probably 2%). Then log the
activity. As time passes, you'll get better data and you'll be able
to raise the CPM once you can show that your site consistently
generates more than the base CTR. Your "guarantee" to the advertiser
covers him/her against paying for ads that are on a site that might
not have the right demographics or design. You are able to
confidently demand industry normal prices since you can prove that
you'll deliver.
This is much better than what normally happens when a site comes up.
Two styles predominate today: one style is the company that comes out
with a strong sales team and convinces advertisers that they should
pay premium rates. (Often, the advertisers are disappointed). The
other, more common, style is the new site that offers its ads at a
very deep discount or free to the first advertisers. (This often
generates a windfall for the advertiser but leaves the publisher
unjustly giving away product...)
Rather than killing yourself in an effort to cajole people into
believing that your site is wonderful before it is up or kill you
budget by giving away your ads, simply guarantee the click through
rates and let experience show if and when you should raise your
CPM's.
> 1) Which analyser software are you using?
> Are you satisfied with it?
We haven't been able to find good analyser software yet which can
handle all that we need to do. Thus, I've had to build a system
combining the best publicly available software I can find with
HealthGate specific extensions. We use MarketWave's HitList log file
analyser for most of our basic Web site activity analysis and then
have our own extensions to handle the logs from our ad banner server.
You can get more information on the MarketWave system at:
<http://www.marketwave.com/>. MarketWave's system runs on Windows or
NT and stores into an Access database. Thus, if you need something
other than the hundreds of reports they can generate, it is fairly
easy to whip up what you need on your own. (With VB or Access...)
> 2) What do you think about what I said regarding design of
> click through ads? Are agencies in the US competent in such
> design? From what I've seen so far, and the debates in other
> related digests, it doesn't seem that way.
Our business is providing professional and consumer medical
information on the Internet and building the systems needed to
maintain sites like ours. It would be a mistake for us to get into
the ad design business since that would massively de-focus our
efforts and probably cause us quite a bit of trouble in terms of
maintaining our editorial independence from advertisers.
Additionally, I think it is clearly the case that while there are few
agencies who really know how to design banners today, many agencies
are learning fast. Thus, if we were to invest in ad design
capabilities, we would soon discover that the people who should be
doing it (the agencies) are doing it much better than we can.
bob wyman
----
<http://www.healthgate.com/>
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