Forum Moderators: skibum
Any continual decreases?
Any banner brokers worth joining right now?
I throttled back to the minimum delivery (250,000/mo) and really haven't paid much attention to default rates lately, it's just not worth my time.
As for who to join.... none of the majors seem to be accepting new sites right now. That's probably the responsible thing to do given the fact that they are not selling their current publishers' inventory. What about FastClick? I see them mentioned as a good place to dump the defaults.
Any words of warning or praise for engage from those who have used them in the past would be appreciated.
Also any tips or tricks for what to be wary off or looking for when dealing with pay per impression brokers would be helpful.
Regards
Mick
When you get in, be sure to spend some quality time on (A) your media kit and (B) blocking banners that will cost you visitors.
From what you say it appears one should work in an opposite fashion to cpc banner servers. There you want banners well tuned to your target audience to get those clicks.
CPM you want untargeted banners so viewers will not click but stay on your site and view a few more which they don't click either.
Is that the basic idea? :)
With the likes of engage who offer cpm payments, how exactly do they perform in reality. Currently I serve about 500,000 impressions a month. They quoted rough cpm rates of £3.50 to £10 suggesting I may be near the higher end as I am well targeted.
Gut instinct tells me that the true picture may not be so rosy as outlined above.
For example are they likely to turn round later and say we could only sell 1000 impressions at £1 ?
Are there questions I should ask them before signing up or do I just go yipee and jump in?
Regards
Mick
>Is that the basic idea? :)
No, you always want to deliver. Sites that can't deliver get weeded out when campaigns get optimized. Sites that can deliver stand a better chance of getting regular advertisers, and possibly of higher CPM rate in the future.
Just a matter of looking at it from their point of view. Those who pay them will want to see return for their money.
Engage have a duty to them to place their adds on the most responsive sites.
That said larger companies will tend to consider the benefits of brand exposure in addition to just hard clicks.
Given a choice however I am sure they want brand exposure and clicks.
Mick
Right. The idea is to attract media buyers that are willing to pay a higher CPM (a category buy, for example) to be on your site. If you deliver the CTR, they'll tend to stick around.
>the true picture
The true picture is that just about any ad network will be delivering a huge quantity of "defaults" or unsold ad space, this will likely cut your "effective" CPM (after their commission) to $1 US or less. For instance, I have some media buyers paying over $20 US to be on my sites, but after all is said and done my 250k banners bring in $125, for a .5 CPM.
>just go yipee and jump in?
From what I've seen going on, any brokered CPM deal is likely to prove to be the most attractive in terms of $$. I'd jump in. You can always worry about generating revenue with the defaults later.
What is the term of the contract before it goes month-to-month? It used to be 3 months, I believe. Also, what is the minimum threshold now, still 250K impressions per month?
re Ad Blocking
I went in and killed pop-ups and pop-unders, Punch-the-Monkey, and some industry categories that I felt would offend my readers.
Below is a summary of what I have picked up so far. Anyone with past experience please correct me where appropriate.
You sign a contract to serve a certain number of banners for them.
They then try and sell the space which they are very confident of doing pre contract at a high cpm. If they pull this off they pay you some dosh.
Having a highly targeted site in the right sector can increase the chance of their success.
After signing the contract the most likely scenario is they don't actually manage to sell much of your inventory but you still have to serve their default banners.
These defaults banners you do not get paid for serving.
Despite the problems it is still the best way forward in terms of generating add revenue for a medium sized home run site.
Would that be true or have I picked things up incorrectly.
Mick
Appreciated.
At least I meet them tomorrow with open eyes.
Michael
Burst!, for example, allows you to serve one ad of each creative type from their servers or redirect the defaults to whatever server you want. That's good business on their part because it pretty much guarantees that member sites will send inventory to them in preference to ad networks which don't provide that feature.
