NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Contest Ad Dollars
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Contest Ad Dollars
Rafe Furst (rafe_at_pickem.com)
Tue, 15 Sep 1998 21:17:11 -0500 (CDT)
Jim Kulakoski" <jimk_at_contestworld.com> asked:
> I personally have found it very difficult to attract paid
> banner advertising to Contestworld although it would seem to
> me that our visitors are 100% targeted to contests and
> sweepstakes promotions and therefore highly likely to click
> through.
...
> Can I get some feedback?
I have never sold ads myself. But I can give you my
impressions as someone who is experienced in running web
contests/promotions and as someone who is potentially in a
position to purchase ads on a site like yours.
Approach: Who exactly are you approaching and when are you
approaching them? Is it the site whose name is on the
contest? Remember that in many cases the sponsors of a
contest may not be the ones building it or promoting it and
may not be very knowledgeable about what is needed to make
it a successfull promotion all around. You may want to be
contacting the companies who build/run/promote the contest
(like us!) rather than the apparent sponsor. Also note for
some contest types (presumeably not sweepstakes though)
timing really matters. For instance we run contests for
March Madness each year and it does no good to advertise the
contest once the tournament has actually started, since the
contest entry closes just before the first game. It's got to
be done well in advance, which means you want to identify
who is running a contest before they actually have anything
on their website. Clearly, this is not easy.
Preventing Canibalization: I am not all that familiar with
your model, but it appears that someone who pays for an ad
gets a banner or a logo which is presumeably higher profile
and on more pages than the links generated by your free
submission system. Is it possible that potential
advertisers decide that they would rather use the free
service and get "infinite" return on investment than pay for
something where they are not sure of how successful it will
be? Can you give assurances or charge per click-through?
Can you provide other value-propositions that make the
advertiser's contest stand apart more from your free
listings?
Email: I may just not have looked that hard, but I don't see
anywhere your visitors can sign up to get on an email list.
It seems to me that if your visitors are contest junkies
some portion of them at least would be interested in
receiving a weekly or monthly newsletter from you announcing
new contests. We know from experience that (solicited)
email is a great way to keep people interested and coming
back to the web site (i.e. more page views, more
advertising). Plus it provides another value proposition for
paid advertisers, since you can include text advertisements
from them in each message.
How To?: I don't see anywhere on your site that says that I
can purchase advertising or how to go about it. Since
presumeably the people who visit your site to put links to
their contests are the people who would be advertising, you
should have something prominent at least letting them know
it's possible and who to contact for more info.
Cheers,
--Rafe
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Rafe Furst .......Pickem Sports....... www.pickem.com
rafe_at_pickem.com Real Traffic - Real Revenue (650) 858-2711
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