Selling AD space direct - what do advertisers want?

[jost]

Im really sick of living under googles boot, in constant fear of being banned from adsense because 1 page out of 500,000 is in violation.
Their model is completely broken and the little push button monkeys they hire dont give a damn that they are ruining peoples lives when they carelessly turn off their AD's even though a site may be 99.9% in compliance.

So im going direct, its been a long time coming.

Before I start building an entire framework for serving my clients AD's, I need some feedback from people who sell direct.

WHAT do advertisers want most?
I dont think they are particularly happy with the way adwords works. Its too complicated. They have a monthly budget they want to spend, so lets make it real easy for them.

For the webmasters that sell AD space directly, what kind of terms do direct advertisers like to work with the most? What are the 3 most popular models of advertising?

Does anyone split up their AD packages by 1) squeaky clean sites 2) slightly mature content sites 3) soft #*$! , etc?

[RhinoFish]

they want reach, and that's very hard to do directly.

[jost]

Any idea what they consider reach? How many uniques per month?

[RhinoFish]

it's not about uniques, it's about platforms and time. if you have enough traffic, make a direct deal with an ad exchange or ad network. you'd have to have an enormous (read very unlikely) amount of traffic to justify the time it takes to go direct.

[jost]

Ive seen blogs with less traffic than my sites simple have a credit card checkout process where you can purchase X impressions and seem to do good business.

I get millions of people a month.

[RhinoFish]

Imo, selling "maybe" imps to a reacher, makes you less coin than selling convertible clicks (or actual sales) to a ROAS seeker. But that does most def depend on your traffic quality and niche relevance.

[RhinoFish]

Quality versus Quantity, both are legit, depends on who you are.
If you're Quality, don't sell on Quantity basis, and vice versa.
:-)

[Clarence]

Let me be Real, Advertisers Want Money, Sales, Conversions.

To get a new advertiser reach out and work on a commission only basis.

OR

Take the risk, and give them a free month of advertising, then charge them monthly.

Common sense: Advertisers want the same thing they get from Adwords, Paying Customers.

The plan is common sense: Reach out to advertisers related to your niche "and who are already advertising to your niche", explain your value "if they advertise on adwords on the content network, they already know your site from their reports", offer them either "Commission only deal CPA, or a Free month of advertising to test".

That's how Google and Facebook did it. Free Advertising Credits/Coupons. Let the Advertiser Test your site and traffic before they have to make a commitment. Since you're small try a free month or advertising and not a fixed value. Also selling flat monthly fee will definitely help you out.

[Leosghost]

For direct advertisers I give 1 or 3 or even 6 months free..and the ads usually run with "offers", or "promo codes" in them that the customers "redeem" or quote with their purchase from the advertisers..

Makes it easy to track "reach" for them..

[caran1]

For niche sites advertisers are looking for relevant contextual links.

[Planet13]

As an ecommerce owner I would agree with both Clarence and Leosghost above.

If you want one of us to advertise on your site, we want to make sure that doing so will convert to sales / revenue.

So, either a limited free / low cost introductory period, or a limited conversion-only period.

If you have a site and are looking for advertisers, the best thing I could recommend is KNOW who your visitors are and what they would most likely want to purchase. Then look for ecommerce sites that are geared toward that demographic and carry those products.

~~~~~~

There are advertisers out there that, on the other hand, are interested in having at least SOME ads that are primarily oriented toward brand management / name recognition. I am pretty sure that they would pay LESS for that type of advertising as opposed to ads that are geared for sales conversion / revenue generation.

Just my two cents...

[vik_c]

Sign up with Quantcast. Prepare a media kit. Use Google Ad Manager or a similar solution to serve ads. Approach advertisers/ ad networks. Shouldn't take very long. If you get over a million visitors a month, like you claim, this is a feasible approach.