NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Banner bartering
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Banner bartering
e/y/e/s/c/r/e/a/m - Adam Boettiger (ab_at_eyescream.com)
Wed, 18 Mar 1998 09:11:19 -0800
At 08:12 AM 3/18/98 -0800, Kristine wrote:
>For example, if I'm a regular purchaser of ads from eyescream.com, paying
>$50 CPM for a bazillion hits/month and then I come to you and say "Hey,
>would you mind trading me some unsold inventory for some of my unsold
>inventory?" then you would probably say to yourself "Sheesh, if I do that,
>I lose her $50 per thousand on all those bazillion hits. I'm going to tell
>her NO!". In effect, by trading you start cannibalizing what would
>otherwise have been sold.
True, and it also let's me as a media buyer know that you
have a lot of unsold inventory. But as you point out, I was
not speaking of trading between media buyers and sites. I
was speaking of a straight trade between publishers. Many
times on smaller sites, however, they wear the same hat, so
you have a good point.
>Where this is NOT true is in cases like you mention, where neither party
>would ever have purchased ads from each other in the first place. It's
>interesting. Would you rather trade your unsold inventory or eat it?
It depends on what your objectives are. And by no means are
you "eating" it if you do not trade. What many sites are
doing is what I think was mentioned earlier in this thread
-- using excess inventory to promote other parts of their
site. This is a good cross-branding tool for sites that
have many sites or many microsites or sections within a very
large site. So, is this better than doing a straight
trade?
It depends on what your objectives are. If you want to
simply introduce
your current visitors to different programs or parts of your
site or other microsites, then yes, this would be a great
idea (to use exess inventory to promote these). But if
your objective is to use your excess inventory to introduce
NEW visitors to your site, then an outside straight trade
with a site that will reach your target audience and is a
noncompetitor may be the best choice.
>Would my traded hits do you enough good to
>compensate for the house ads you could have run on your own?
Well, you would be trading impression for impression most
likely. Whether it would compensate you or not is going to
be up to you to decide, and usually a test is a wise idea
before locking into any regular monthly trades for exess
inventory. Does your banner do well on their site? What
type of audience are those impressions reaching?
Most trades that I am aware of with the larger sites are
strictly run of site impressions, which normally don't
produce more than a 1% ctr. It is simply another way to
bring visitors to your site. If you have the excess
inventory and your staff is not selling it, you may as well
get something out of it.
You do bring up a good point, however with someone who is
initially an interested buyer and then wants to trade. I
still don't think it devalues advertising on that site,
however because it is not common knowledge that they do
trades. Just like impression buying, each buy is taken on
a case by case basis and nothing is written in stone no
matter what you may hear. If you have something to offer
them in trade that may get them to drop the cpm a bit lower
or give you additional impressions (same thing), then you
can always try it. The least they will do is say no and
stick to their guns. If they accept your trade, I don't
think that it necessarily means that their advertising is of
any less value than other sites who do not trade.
Business is business. You do what it takes to meet the
objective and use all tools available to you.
AB
------------ e/y/e/s/c/r/e/a/m, inc. --------------
Adam Boettiger - Vice President, Advertising & Marketing
eyescream interactive, inc. - mailto:ab_at_eyescream.com
Media planning, banner creative and targeted online campaigns
See our media kit online now at: http://www.exposure-usa.com/
Tel: (503) 296-0065 / (503) 292-6987
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