The Online Advertising Discussion List Archives

To: online_advertising_at_interedge.com From: online_ads_at_interedge.com (Kevin Fadden -- Moderator) Subject: Online-Ads DIGEST #0003 Cc: Bcc: X-Attachments: ==================================================================== Online Advertising Discussion List ==================================================================== List Moderator: Supported by: Kevin Fadden InterEdge kfad_at_interedge.com www.interedge.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- March 27, 1996 Digest #0003 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ******************************************************************** This weeks sponsor: InterEdge (www.interedge.com) For more information on this fertile advertising ground, check out our rate card at: http://www.interedge.com/AdInfo.html ******************************************************************** In this Digest... CONTINUING ------- "Building Traffic" ~ Kevin Fadden "Search Engines" ~ Kevin Fadden "Sponsor advertising for discussion lists..." ~ Kevin Fadden "Advertising Revenue Models" ~ Kevin Fadden "Re: Online-Ads DIGEST #0001" ~ Kevin Fadden "Banner Ads - A Few Questions" ~ Kevin Fadden ~ Rehan Zaidi ~ G. Steven Kokinos ------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Fadden Subject: Building Traffic >I assume that anyone trying to sell advertising online would like >more trafic to their site. >I KNOW I would. That's why I'd like to suggest trading links with >fellow publishers. What does everyone think about having a section at the bottom that lists sites that are currently doing banner swaps? If you're interested in being listed here, let me know at: online_ads_at_interedge.com - Kevin Fadden (kfad_at_interedge.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Fadden Subject: Search Engines >I am currently doing research for a paper that describes how these search >engines (webcrawler, lycos, infoseek, etc) work, what they look for in your >web pages, how they will rank your pages according to key words. The paper >will also describe how to configure your pages to increase the likelyhood >of your page to come up first. > >A key to gaining an edge over your competitors is to have a your web site >come up first in a key word search. If you are interested in obtaining a >copy when it is finished, please email me at kfujinami_at_earthlink.net. A couple of comments: 1) Are you going to give us the skinny on using the to help get keywords to show up in search engines. My feeling is that a lot of people on this list may not be aware of that trick and could certainly use the info. 2) Be sure to post an announcement here when your resource is finished. - Kevin Fadden (kfad_at_interedge.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Fadden Subject: Sponsor advertising for discussion lists... >First, congratulations on starting this list. It will be a nice addition to >the others. I have recently started a list targeted at professionals in my >industry. I would like to develop sponsors for the list to create non- dues >revenue for our society, which will help us develop additional programs to >benefit our members. > >A few questions: Is there a rate model in use by other lists or is it >whatever the market will bear? I've set my sponsorship rate for this list at $150 per week, >What form should the sponsors ads take? which will take the form of a 4-5 line ASCII "ad banner" at both the top and bottom of the digest. I've set my company, InterEdge and our advertising rate card, as an example. >Is there any way to enhance the ads or give more value-added components? I can also couple a graphic banner ad to be placed on the FAQ page and archives that are housed on our web site, for an extra $100. >What is the most effective way to promote sponsor advertising? I'm hoping the way I just did ;). Seriously, though, as with most other forms of advertising, my thinking is that once you sell the first one, the rest come easier because they see it and want it. >Are there any minefields to be on the alert for? I'll keep you posted. >How can we help our advertisers get the >most "bang for their buck"? What types of incentives, if any, are used in >this business? The biggest reason to sponsor a list like this is that it is so *targeted*. That's "bang for the proverbial buck". The incentives are being able to splash an out-n-out plug for a product or service that may not make it into a digest un-edited right at the top of a posting that all Online-Ads readers will see. The same goes for your yachting list. Although I know nothing of your posting guidelines, at the very least the sponsor is assurred that every reader sees their message. - Kevin Fadden (kfad_at_interedge.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Fadden Subject: Advertising Revenue Models >I am a marketing consultant working with clients to develop an Advertising >Revenue Model for their web sites/services. I have been >reviewing media kits and rate cards from the most "successful" sites in >terms of generating advertising revenue i.e. Netscape, Lycos, HotWired, >etc. to get a handle on how they have structured offerings and rates as >well as the traditional media targeting identified consumer segments. I am >also evaluating Doubleclick's service of brokering banner space. Could you help point the rest of the list (including me) to Doubleclick? >I am interested in any thoughts on the "best approach" to defining a >model that makes sense i.e. is clear and comprehensive (much of what >currently exists on the web seems to be confusing at best, overwhelming at >worst), offers competitive pricing (the web and traditional media), will >attract quality advertisers and sponsors and appeals to the as yet rather >skittish Agency people. As a publisher, I am a proponent of a hybrid rate model, what I mean by that is that you have two rates: one is an impression rate (we use .02) and one is a click-through rate (we use .07). So, we charge advertisers 2 cents every time their ad is "impressed" on someone, and then each time that ad is clicked, they get charged an additional 7 cents. This is important, in my mind, for the following reasons: 1) A flat rate fee, such as $15,000 per quarter, works only with the big sites like Yahoo and InfoSeek that are getting over a million hits per day. And even still, only *major* advertisers are going to be forking over that kind of money. Sites like mine simply cannot perform (at this point) to a level that will give advertisers true value for money like this. 2) Direct marketers and smaller companies need to be looking at advertising on the "2nd tier", consisting of smaller and demographically focused content driven sites. 3) These content driven sites are essentially equivalent to magazines and newspapers. They need to be supported. They need to fund the development of their content. If they are not supported, they go out of business, and then their space is no longer available to advertise on. There are precious few sites who have truly gotten to this point as it is -- if too many of them go under all of the sudden, the amount of available ad space on the Web will drop considerably. 4) The "click-through" rate, which is usually 2-3 times the impression rate, is the fee that the advertiser pays for each time their ad is clicked and a user is transported to their site/offering. Most advertisers will tell you that they only want to pay for "hits". Of course they do -- I would too if I were in their shoes -- initially. This is where the advertiser truly "gets what they pay for". 5) The impression rate, which is usually quite low, is the "support" fee. Advertisers simply cannot expect the publisher to run an ad, serving it out on their pages and through their Internet server and pipe, without being compensated for their costs. There are two costs here: the first is the most obvious -- the mechanical serving of the ad. It cost the publisher money to lease his line and buy his computer, didn't it? The second cost is a bit less obvious, but certainly no less important: the cost of developing the very content of the page that the ad appears on. If it's a magazine-type article, the writer either had to be paid, or is expecting to receive a check soon. This is important because without the content, the ad has no "home". Also, it's not called "impression" for nothing. On TV, do advertisers pay CBS based on how many people actually came down to their store the next day? No, and in fact, would it be CBS's fault if no one came down to the store at all? Again, no. The very impression of a company's name on and individual is worth something -- and it's worth paying for. So, what we've tried to do here at InterEdge is come up with a compromise. For publishers, it would be ideal if all ads were sold on a 10 cent per impression basis, and that's that. For advertisers, if they didn't have to pay for impressions, they'd have no qualms about paying 10, 20 or maybe even 30 cents for each click-through. But alas, the content provider *WILL* out of business *tomorrow*. So, our rate model is an attempt to give the advertiser as much value as possible for their ad dollar and the satisfaction that they are paying a set, and very low, fee for each qualified lead that visits their site/offering; while at the same time, we are able to tally impression charges that help cover our costs and continue to develop new content and (hopefully) stay in business. You know, having something specific -- a product -- to sell has got to be one of the easiest ways to make money on the Internet. It doesn't matter what you are selling, as long as you market it effectively. Content providers and publishers have it rough right now -- it's only just now starting to produce a cash flow for InterEdge, and we've been in business for 15 months. But, we, and sites like ours -- content publishers of all shapes and sizes -- are the foundation of advertisers' marketing strategies on the Web (or should be), and that will become even more apparent in the next few months as more and more marketers start to roll out ad campaigns -- and I'm not talking about c-net advertising their new shareware site -- I'm talking about things like Pacific Coast Feather Company (one of our advertisers) trying to sell pillows and down comforters over the Web. Without sites like us, advertisers are left to try to come up with $15,000 every quarter to advertise on Yahoo. Am I making sense? I've just typed out a very long answer without really knowing it, so for brevity's sake, I'm going to stop there for now, but I'd be happy to answer any further questions (or criticisms) people may have about what I've just said. - Kevin Fadden (kfad_at_interedge.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Fadden Subject: Re: Online-Ads DIGEST #0001 >Being a moderator is an important function in that you pick and choose what >is news. In that light, it is important to know your perspective about >online advertising, your background, and your current job. Well, I think I just "gave away the farm" so to speak as far as my "perspective about online advertising" goes. I have no qualms about being up front about it -- I have a vested interest in profiting from running the forum, by way of the fact that many of you will hopefully become interested in advertising on my site. But it's really bigger than that, and I am only here to play a role. You'll notice that, as moderator, I do not reply to posts when I compile digests consisting of new topics. I do reply to ongoing threads, but I do that later, usuallly the next day, and I do it not as a moderator, but as just another user. There's a lot of truth to that, although no doubt some people will put a lot of weight in what I say just because I am moderator, as I started this list just as much to be able to use it as I did to be able to profit indirectly from running it. What spurred me to want to start it is this: In the post right before this in this digest, you see how long-winded I can be (need to be) when it comes to espousing the virtues of the hybrid ad rate model such as the one we use here at InterEdge. Well, with each potential advertiser that I have dealt with, I have had to go through this "dance". As you can guess, it became very time-consuming. But it was through that process and talking to some other people who sell (not buy) advertising, that they were having to do the same thing with each potential advertiser they dealt with, that I saw the need for a forum where common issues such as "but you, as advertiser, *have* to be willing to *support* my publication, not just personally benefit from being a part of it." Advertisers too, have been complaining that "each site is different" or "I just don't understand all this" or something along those lines. Before this list, each of us was on an island -- now we can come together, hash things out, and hopefully come to some kind of "standard" structure for online advertising that benefits us all. Ideally, even when there are differences between two sites' ad structures, it would be nice if there were enough similarities that advertisers could go from one site to the next, and that they could learn about the site's ad rates quickly and efficiently, without making anyone spend twenty minutes composing "sales pitches". It doesn't have to be that hard. HTML (although liberally adhered to) has standards. So should our "industry". As far as my background goes, I'm a young man. I'll be 24 in May. But I'll tell you, I feel much older than that (probably look it too), as I've been doing the 16-18 hours per day gig here at InterEdge for about 8 of the 15 months that we've been in business. I bet 50% of you are younger than me, anyway. I never went to college. When I got out of high school I started working at a glorified convenience store chain (QuikTrip, for those of you living in KC, Wichita, Tulsa, Atlanta, St. Louis or Iowa) and became a Store Manager at the age of 19 (I turned 20 two months later). Since getting burned out and quitting (coming up on three years ago now), I started a lawn care business in my first summer out of that job. That winter, I took up custom database programming, and began working as an independent contractor in said capacity. This kept me busy, and in fact eventually led to, the founding of InterEdge on Jan 1 95. InterEdge started with the sole intention of providing a promotional machine for the band I was playing in at the time, and for other bands and record labels here in the Lawrence/KC area. We still do that with InterEdge Music, and we've also set up to do the same thing for artists and galleries with Art on the Wall. A few months agow, we launched Over The Edge, an ezine that covers all manner of topics, including: music, art, politics, social issues, health & human interest, sports and literature to name a few. Our most recent project is the InterEdge Top 40 (and its associated sub-charts of the Top 10 Music, Art, Commerce, Media and Family sites), wherein we set out to rate and rank the 40 best sites on the Web. What I do as President of InterEdge is somewhat of a mystery, even to me. Suffice it to say that I had a hand in the design, implementation, programming and interface of every single facet of, and page on, the InterEdge server. I just do what needs to be done, and whatever others can't or won't do. And I do make all the decisions. Currently, I pretty much handle all business aspects of InterEdge, so potential advertisers and sponsors or anyone who wants to talk about InterEdge should contact me. I hope that gives you all an idea of who your moderator is and why he chose to start this thing. Next week: "Was it a good move, and do you regret taking on yet another project?" The answer, for all of us, lies ahead. - Kevin Fadden (kfad_at_interedge.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Fadden Subject: Banner Ads - A Few Questions >I am thinking of placing some banner adverts for our web site on various >places but I've got a few queries which someone on this list might be able >to help me with: > >1) What size (in pixels) should the logo be? This seems to vary widely >between the sites I have come across. I am using a freelance graphic artist >and it would be quite expensive for me to create lots of different sized >adverts for every resource, ideally I would just have one (or a few >)advert(s) that can be used everywhere. My experience is that if your ad is "close" to the size we proclaim to accept, we'll take it as is. It's just a guideline really. >2) What is the best way to advertise? I have come across a few sites which >will only place your banner when a certain keyword is searched for. This >sounds like an excellent idea, but does this really offer more value for >money than just a normal banner? Certainly, and as a publisher, I'd love to figure out a way to make this happen on my site. With the general lack of demographic info right now, keyword advertising is as close as you're going to get to your "target" market. >3) Is there any way to be sure that a certain site has your target audience >or do you just have to take their word for it or make your own assumptions >based upon what you see there? The auditing of users of web sites seems to >be quite rare (which isn't surprising as it is very time consuming for the >user to fill in a huge form before they get access to something that >they're not even sure is worth looking at). Content, Content, Content, Content. That's the best wasy (right now) to determine the demographics of a site. It's generally foolproof, in my experience -- there just aren't any nifty charts and numbers to back it up. But, you can tell what kinds of people are going to be looking at a page. Ask yourself "If this page were a TV show, what kind of audience would it have, and what time slot would it be in?" I've found it to be a "no-lose" formula. - Kevin Fadden (kfad_at_interedge.com) -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rehan Zaidi Subject: Banner Ads - A Few Questions Tim Hukins (eborcom_at_eborcom.com) asked a few questions about banner ads... >1) What size (in pixels) should the logo be? This seems to vary widely >between the sites I have come across. Actually, the banner sizes are quite similar on many of the large sites on the Web. For example, Netscape, Infoseek, Lycos & Point all use a banner of 468x60 pixels. Yahoo and c|net are slightly different, with 460x55 and 476x54 respectively; but a change from 468x60 to either of these is not a significant matter usually. >2) What is the best way to advertise? I have come across a few sites which >will only place your banner when a certain keyword is searched for. This >sounds like an excellent idea, but does this really offer more value for >money than just a normal banner? Targetting a focused audience will often produce a better click-through rate than advertising to a general audience. In most cases, the increase in advertising cost is low enough to warrant this type of banner placement. Although these types of banners are relatively new, I'm sure plenty of information has been collected about their success rate...perhaps inquiring with one of the sites that uses them would give more insight? >3) Is there any way to be sure that a certain site has your target audience >or do you just have to take their word for it or make your own assumptions >based upon what you see there? The auditing of users of web sites seems to >be quite rare.... But it can be very useful, of course. On our site, we have a lengthy survey, yet it has been filled by hundreds of our readers...and it provides excellent information for us and for potential advertisers. If you want to advertise at a site that does not have solid data about their users, you should take some precaution; the results may show that it's better than they say, but there is the other possibility also. Good luck with your banner ads. Rehan PS - Here's another big Thank You to Kevin Fadden for getting this list going! -- rehan zaidi | phone: 613.763.3836 / 613.721.1317 mailto:rehan_at_cyberus.ca | http://cyberus.ca/~rehan/ For weekly comp.lang.java newsgroup summaries, read: Digital Espresso | http://www.io.org/~mentor/DigitalEspresso.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "G. Steven Kokinos" Subject: Banner Ads In response to eBorcom's question about banner ads. Each site you advertise with will have different requirements as to the size of your banner ad. There are a couple of ways you can deal with this. The way I do it is to get a basic format for the graphic. If the size is only slightly different you can simply resize the image. The catch is to create an ad graphic that is easily resizeable, so you can change its shape without have to re-layout the entire thing. The Psychic Center - Excellence In psychic information! Come visit our website at For live readings call 1-900-93FUTURE ($3.99 minute / 18+) mailto:gkokinos_at_dev-com.com -------------------------------------------------------------------- ==================================================================== Online Advertising is moderated by Kevin Fadden. 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