Targeted rates?

Advice sought

[carlwright]

We're near the completion of development of a new search tool and are thinking about rates for advertising.

Now, obviously, the one main selling feature we can offer is keyword targetting (we are also going to auto-stem keywords which is something you don't seem to see often) - but what are the usual ballpark rates for this type of delivery?

We're predomoninantly going to fill excess inventory with affiliate links to start with but would at least like to get our rates online.

We'll also probably offer a top 10 listing to advertisers in search results as an added incentive.

We're banking on around 500,000 queries going through the database each month so will also have to couple keyword targetting with an element of randomised targeting.

If anyones got any good pointers then I'd be really grateful.

All the best
C

[Drastic]

You could look at Google's AdWords program, and use that as a ballpark starting point. You would want to be at least lower than half of what they charge. You can always increase rates later as your traffic increases.

I think AV had a similar program, but don't know if it is still live or not.

There are other smaller SE's that are doing what you're doing. I don't recall names/sites at the moment, but you will want to identify your competition and be competitive to their rates.