Forum Moderators: skibum
Myself and a few other guys run a site based on supporting Microsofts IIS webserver. I've recently been charged with implementing PhpAdsNew as our advertising management server. Up until now we have not had any dedicated system to manage the few ads we have, and it's all been a bit of a overly complex manual system.
Anyway. As PhpAdsNew has no conversion tracking, and Max Media is not production stable yet I was planning on using some affiliate networks to offer customers CPA (I think that is the right terminology) style advertising. My first question is what affiliate networks are best used with PhpAdsNew that have merchants offering Windows, web and IIS related items?
My Second question is that as we won't fill up all our slots immediately, I was thinking of filling them with generic adverts from Affiliate networks with items from Merchants in related areas. Problem is it seems that most merchants only upload one or two banners for you to use. Are there any Affiliate networks where merchants offer a wide variety of IAB standard size banners?
My third question is do any affiliates/merchants offer details for geo targetting and delivery capping so that banners are only displayed to those who are more likely to actually click through and purchase something?
My fourth and final question is am I better off just loading up with many different affiliates and merchants, or am I generally better off using a smaller selection but really working on the targeting angle?
Most affiliate programs will offer standard banners. From amazon to cj to linkshare etc I've not yet seen a single affiliate which does not have IAB banners.
>> any affiliates/merchants offer details for geo targetting and delivery capping
You've got phpAds? Right? Use the delivery capping / geotargetting functions within it. UK visitors get banners from merchant A, US visitors get banners from merchant B.
>> really working on the targeting angle?
Target as much as you can. You can use phpAds pretty efficiently to find the best ads within your inventory by passing it keywords and configuring your inventory correctly with a lot of keywords.
Then, use default campaigns if and when nothing comes up.
I was planning to use the targeting functionality of PhpAdsNew, I was just wondering if any merchants new specifics of who their banners should be targeted to. Sometimes it is obvious for us as the advertiser, but other times for more generic banners/products it is not so obvious. If they knew in advance from previous campaigns where these non specific ads should be targeted to for best ROI it would save time and money for new advertisers as they wouldn't have to spend much time tweaking their banner delivery.
Also shri (or anybody), just wondering if you could give me a bit of advice on advertising structure. I am currently trying to put together some advertising plans for our site for businesses wanting to advertise through us directly (not nexessarily through any affiliate network)and was thinking of offering a multi tier system. The entry level plan would be quite cheap (something like a $1 CPM or 40c~50c CPC) but would offer no targeting, limited amount/type of banners per campaign and all campaigns/banners to be run at the lowest priority level. The next level would be the same except it is more expensive per CPM and CPC (pricing still to be determined after we run our pilot program) and all tageting/capping options are available with a higher number/type of banners allowed per campaign. The second highest level is a section sponsor level that would give the merchant exclusive advertising rights to a particular section of the site for a flat monthly rate. And finally the highest level plan being a site sponsor which gets exclusive prime advertising space near the site menu systems that are displayed on every page view.
Does this seem fundamentally sound as an advertising structure for merchants wanting to advertise directly with us, or is it getting too complex? I'm thinking of canning the entry level plan so that there are just three plan levels. The only reason I'm thinking of including it is to ensure that all our ad slots are utilised, but I figure if I sign up to enough affiliate networks there should be enough mechants (at least in the hundreds) out there with products/services very relavant to what our website covers (Microsoft IIS webserver) and our user base. At presnt I'm kind of sitting on the fence with this as I have no data or experience to guide me. Any suggestions/comments would be greatly appreciated.
A good option for us on sites where we get approached has been to tell users that they can target our sites using a site wide buy on Google Adwords and let the market set the rate for the lowest tier type advertising.
I thought about this for a second and remembered a conversation in our office.
Bottom line, keep it as simple as possible for your own good. Remember, if you have more than one option, you'll have to explain these options to the customer and now, not only do they have to figure out if they want to advertise with you, they have to figure out what sort of plan. Keep the decisions to a minimum... unless you're a car dealer.
On the site that we were discussing, we kept it simple.
Banner Advertising:
120x120 : $x/month ( max 10 advertisers)
120x240 : $y/month ( max 10 advertisers)
728x90 : $z/month ( max 10 advertisers)
6-11 months: 15% discount
12 months+ : 25% discount
Directory Listings: (mostly businesses without any web presence and thrown in free for any banner advertiser)
$a for submission
$b for premium listings
Newsletter subscriptions:
Number of addresses x rate x volume discounts
Unless your site is highly segemented -- visitors from one section do not go to another section at all.. don't split it.
Unless you're really large, don't bother getting into tracking issues initially. Sell monthly runs...
Make sure your advertisers know that the rates change every month and the only way to secure the rate is to book for a longer period.
Take the money upfront. Tell the advertiser that you're in the business of maintaining a website and not interested in chasing accountants for checks. Be ready to give a slight discount for upfront payments.
I think I will take your advice and try and keep the structure as simple as possible. We have all our long time supporters (since long before we offered banner ads) in our advertising pilot program at the moment (free advertising for 3 months for them, so why wouldn't they :-) ), so I'll see about bouncing some ideas off them as to what they think is easiest to get their heads around.
Here is what I have in mind for website advertisng only, notification e-mails, newsletters and others are to come.
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PLANS
Gold (Site Sponsor)- 2 slots available with exclusive 180 x 150 advertising area above page fold, and displayed on every page view for entire site. Unlimited banners and full direct control of campaign settings.
Silver (Section Sponsor) - 15 slots available with exclusive access to 336 x 280 (top of page) and 468 x 60 (bottom of page) advertising space and displayed on every page view for that particular section of the site. Limit of X banners and all targeting/capping and campaign/banner priority requests must be submitted to site management.
Bronze (Basic Sponsor) - Unlimited slots available with advertisements rotated in all positions with exception of those sponsored by site and section sponsors. Limit of X banners and all targeting/capping must be submitted to site management. No campaign or banner priority settings are available with this plan.
SUPPORTED ADVERTISEMENTS
180 x 150 (Site Sponsors only)
336 x 280
160 x 600
120 x 240
468 x 60
Text Ads in Forums
PRICING (Payment required prior to commencement of campaign)
Site Sponsor - $x per a month with price dictated by demand. Secure costing by committing to extended periods at a time as well as receiving discounts. 15% discount for 6~11 months commitment, and 25% discount for 12+ months.
Section Sponsor - $x per a month with price dictated by demand. Secure costing by committing to extended periods at a time as well as receiving discounts. 15% discount for 6~11 months commitment, and 25% discount for 12+ months.
Basic Sponsor - $x per a month with price dictated by demand. Secure costing by committing to extended periods at a time as well as receiving discounts. 5% discount for 6~11 months commitment, and 10% discount for 12+ months.
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Have just a few more questions :)
You said;
>>Unless your site is highly segemented -- visitors from one section do not go to another section at all.. don't split it
Not exactly sure what you mean by this. The only way our site is segmented is with things such as forums, articles, FAQ's, downloads, weblinks, etc. They are all based on the same general topic. Could you expand on what you meant by this further?
>>Unless you're really large, don't bother getting into tracking issues initially. Sell monthly runs...
I think you're right on this, but not sure if we count as really large. We are the large in that our website is the most popular for this particular topic outside of Microsoft, but I would hardly call us large on a global size (at least not yet :) ). We get around 80,000~100,000 visitors a month, with around 180,000~230,000 page views. What category would you place us in?
Thought you were going to sell sponsorships by section. What I meant was do not limit the sponsors ads to just one section.
>> What category would you place us in?
Depends on the category. If it was offshore banking or specialist hedge funds for example, I'd say you're HUGE! Do not have a good idea about IIS resources.
The point is, what is the overall inventory in the market like .. do you control a percentage of the daily inventory or user base?
There actually aren't that many active sites around dedicated to supporting IIS. Another thing we really have going for us is that all 4 of us involved with the site have been awarded an MVP (Most Valueable Professional) for IIS from Microsft. Mightn't sound like much but Microsoft has only granted 39 IIS MVP awards worldwide, so with 4 MVP's on staff we have over 10% of all the MVP's in the world helping out on the forums. We also have 3 or 4 other IIS MVP's that drop in and help out on the forums from time to time. Outside of the Microsoft newsgroups we are the biggest IIS community on the net...
Don't know specifics, but as the number of other community based websites dedicated to supporting IIS can be counted on one hand, I would have to say yes. One of our longest running advertisers has told us that we are in their top ten referers of all time.
