RE: Low volume sites

From: Fred <DTGNews_at_aol.com>
Date: Wed 20 Oct 1999 08:06:17 EDT

IMHO...

The comments of Andrew, David and others concerning

STEPHEN JONES WROTE:
> What effect on ad rates should one expect from a
> low-volume inventory? My thinking is that it
> would tend to raise rates slightly,

Was right. Advertisers seldom give a hoot about anything
but click-through. This is unfortunate and has over the past
three years produced a generation of bubmling ding-dongs in
ad buying positions.

But Rob hit the nail on the head with:

ROB VANSLYKE REPLIED:
> The question shouldn't be
> "What effect on ad rates does a low-volume site have?"
> The question should be,
> "Which advertiser does my site cater to and is the
> nature of my site niche enough or high-quality enough
> to drive a higher CPM than other sites?"

Yet the ad execs and buyers still hold on to the "pairs of
eyes" mentality of by-gone years. And the advertising
industry was warned of this eventuality in late '93 and
early '94 when you could see the writing on the wall.

Yet today a newer concept is emerging with a great deal of
success for those with minds open enough to read the writing
on the walls for the next five or so years.

Content channel marketing is where it's all going. Today
the smarter buyer is saying "I'd rather have 100 readers
(click-throughs) who buy something than 10,000 surfers who
come once and wander off." It's working for me, and our
site(s) are all spam-free. No ads what so ever. The readers
like it, and the content channel partners like it because
their cash registers are ringing.

Problem is though, so many of those buyers are so intent on
keeping their jobs, they'll cling onto any adolescent who
wanders through the site clicking on anything that moves.
Just numbers they can deliver to the brass as a victory
song.

Adobe is one such advertiser. All their buyers can manage to
recite is "how many can you deliver."

They fail to understand that while we can only deliver about
179,000 per month -- over 78% of those represent Adobe's
ideal customer psychographic... and that more than 40% have
been subscribing for four or more years. Most of the sites
they advertise on haven't even been on the web that long.

This mentality has, in turn, caused the smaller, or
low-volume (but high quality) sites to suffer the ax.

Everyone in the biz should really study the most recent GVU
data, and watch for the new data which should hit late
november early december. There you'll find what people
really need and look for in web sites to align with. And
blinking ads it isn't.
Nuff said... my 2-cents worth.

Fred

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Received on Wed Oct 20 1999 - 07:06:17 CDT