Self-serve advertising

A little makes a lot?

[owillis]

I've noticed lately a few sites and small advertising networks (mostly in the "weblogging" community) are adding the ability to purchase ads with just a few clicks - payment processing often done with Paypal. Its sort of like Google's adwords...

I'm thinking of adding this functionality to my site as I feel a few "little ads" could add up to a decent sum.

[rcjordan]

owillis, welcome to WebmasterWorld. As a publisher who has a few years of experience in selling direct, I can tell you that there is an increasing market for targeted websites selling directly to small businesses. As a virtual business, there's nothing I'd like better than to put my ad sales on auto-pilot and get rid of that time-consuming process. Consequently, I'm very interested in this and will probably pursue it somewhere down the road. That said, as the market stands right now I have two concerns: #1- most small businesses I know aren't ready to use paypal or similar, they want to see an invoice and write a check. And, that problem is likely to get worse as the size of the client increases. I can't see a regional banking chain logging on and working through paypal, for instance. #2- The clients are going to need help with creative. Out of the hundreds I have dealt with, I can count those that knew how to make a banner on one hand and those that knew how to write ad copy on the other.

(BTW, the reference urls you listed were fine, but not really necessary to discuss the issue. Because they tend to set off -ummm- advertising moments in others who come to the board with the intention to promote, we ask that urls be avoided if at all possible. Thanks!)

[owillis]

No problem about the urls. My thought was both ad-types could supplement each other. You could do the usual route of getting larger, more corporate advertisers but also have an automated system which could basically sell your remnant inventory.

[rcjordan]

Another problem is the (absolutely, positively, 1000%) requirement that you have an editorial review process. Besides the obviously unsuitable stuff, you just wouldn't believe the junk some will try and put on the web. To combat increasing your overhead costs, I'd definitely suggest having a fairly substantial minimum buy.