NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Finding an Ad Rep for a Web Site
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Finding an Ad Rep for a Web Site
Kevin Leathers (Kevin.Leathers_at_obgyn.net)
Tue, 25 Mar 1997 12:13:33 -0600
Bob Stewart wrote:
>I have a <snip> general gardening site <snip>
> I denfinitely cannot handle ad sales in-house.
>I'm looking into some of the places that want to sell packages of ads, like
>Infoseek, Adbot Adsmart and Flycast. But they're all pretty inflexible and
>the last three seem to have no track record at all.
>Has anyone had experience finding ad reps for a Web site?
Bob,
If you go through an online ad sales organization, chances are they will do
what most are doing; keep most of the profits themselves. Further the
chances that they have any media buying/advertising contacts in the
gardening industry is not likely. The best you could hope for through these
outlets is to get advertisers that don't see your market as their primary
demographic, but as just a small part of their entire market and they will
pay accordingly. You will most likely fall into a mass market CPM of about
$20-30. and share at least half of it with the ad broker.
If you want to get the maximum amount of money out of your site and DO NOT
want to handle it in house, you may want to look into the following two options.
1) Approach print publications that are in the gardening industry. They most
likely are not very Internet experienced and you can form a strategic
alliance with your site/skills (you can help get them on the Internet). What
you get is an existing sales force that has gardening industry contacts. The
CPM for their publication is probably much higher than in mass marketing.
The publication can offer customers packages that get the ads in their
publication and on your site, and will most likely be companies that provide
products more relative to your visitors interest. You will have to agree on
the % that the publication keeps, and possibly help train their sales staff
on the virtues of online advertising.
2) Locate a Rep. Firm that sells ads for gardening publications. Some
publications are not big enough to have their own sales force, so they hire
an outside agency (you can find some of them listed in SRDS "Standard Rate
and Data Source" at your library). They will be in the listing for the
publication. They will get a % of sales, but will most likely be much lower
than any online broker.
Remember that online brokers know online technology, but most don't have
established contacts in niche markets. "It's not what you know, but who you
know".
--
Kevin Leathers (512) 451-2842 PHONE
Director: PR, Sales & Marketing (512) 377-5626 FAX
OBGYN.net <http://www.obgyn.net> mailto:kevin_at_obgyn.net
Austin, Texas USA 78756
