Re: Branding, etc

From: Leo Sheiner <leo_at_netcomuk.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 18:38:33 -0600 (CST)

RAMON RAY <RAYRAMON_at_NYFCCS.COM> WROTE:
>I still hold that branding doesn't work that well for small
>biz/low budget banner ads. If millions of people are getting
>to a site and your ad is being rotated every x amount of
>times, that means X times million people are NOT seeing your
>ad! For the small biz person, banner adv on some big name
>site may not work out that well. I think advertising on
>Ezines is the most effective method. Of course buying a word
>search or category would also work well.
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I also read the article but was somewhat mystified and felt
the content did not live up to the headline. The headline
appeared to suggest that it would be possible to measure the
longer term result of branding with banners but then no
mechanism was suggested to substantiate the claim. Of course
it is sometimes possible to infer the effect of branding but
measurement implies a direct causal measurement and I
thought that was implied by the headline.

Coming back to your own doubt. I can tell you from
experience this month that branding does work. We run an
advertising banner network that specialises in aggregating
high volume low cost traffic. We tend to supply advertisers
who are cost concious and have long term needs. So our
campaigns run for very long generally. We needed to grow
inventory faster than the 20% month on month which we
currently get. Despite having 18,000 members at the
beginning of this month and despite getting a steady 1,800
new member applications each month our advertisers wanted us
to grow faster. We decided to run a new recruitment campaign
for a month based on $1 CPM.

Apart from the last three days of this campaign we have the
results. On just over 3 Million impressions we got just over
13,000 click throughs and only 60 directly attributable
registrations recorded. On that basis our cost of $50 per
member acquisition would make this campaign a miserable
failure. However there is a branding effect here which it so
happens we can infer. Our membership applications rose from
1,800 per month to 3,000 per month. That increase of 1,200
is almost certainly primarily if not entirely attributable
to a short term branding effect of running this campaign.
That changes the cost per member acquisition of this
campaign to $2.50 which is entirely satisfactory.

Having said that, we will be bringing this campaign to a
close at the end of this month because we will be launching
a new affilliate campaign. Our affiliates will have the
opportunity to share the lifetime earnings from either new
advertisers or new member sites they introduce. This is
almost an ideological move in the sense that Safe-Audit was
originally launched almost two years ago as the first pay
per action network. It is my view that the affiliate model
(providing it shares lifetime revenues) is the win win
model. Even though it is clearly more expensive for client
acquisition since one is paying forever more rather than
just once it has clear benefits to all parties and the
greater expense is at least directly tied to the bottom
line. One benefit of course can be greater volume. If you
pay well you get more traffic. But perhaps the greatest
benefit is that it fosters community because your affiliates
now share an interest in the long term welfare of the
venture.

In conclusion let me suggest this to you. It isn't the
constraints of budget that are at issue when considering
what small business should do to promote themselves. It is
the quality of the proposition. If you have an "also-ran"
product then branding with advertising doesn't help that
much. It you have a clearly differentiated product to offer
then the web offers unending possibilities even if you have
limited budgets. And in my view, subject to the
attractiveness of the affiliate proposal - return on
investment, credibility of the product and certainty of
getting accurate and timely payment - that is a very strong
way to go forward even or especially if you have limited
budgets. But the key is the product offer.


21,000 member host sites and 250 Million impressions a month
Tracking the quality of visit. Advertising with guaranteed results.
http://safe-audit.com mailto:leo@global-m.com +44181 346 0770


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Received on Fri Feb 26 1999 - 20:03:03 CST