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The prices probably depend on how targetted the site is. Obviously a site more targetted would charge more, because there is likely to be a higher click-through rate. Unfortunately, I could not determine how targetted these sites were.
My site is an informational resource for a particular region, so I'd like to sell advertising to businesses who's target customer is the type of person to visit my site.
I'd like some input on ideas to determine how much to charge per impression. Thanks!
2. The affordbility of the audience. In a b-to-b market for example you can be charging at the high end. Students - very little.
3. The reputation of your site. If you have a good brand, advertisers recognize they are riding the wave of your own reputation.
4. The susceptibility to clicking of your readership - some demographics click a lot; some never.
5. The size, exposure and positioning of the ad, and whether it incoporates graphics which can help make it stand out.
6. The amount of automated customer support you give advertisers in terms of reporting and "panels", and/or your personal case-by-case customer service.
7. The "quality" of other advertisers on your site.
8. The number of ads per page.
9. Whether you can guarantee "exclusivity" to an advertiser for a certain product class or service. some will pay just to make sure that their competitors dont advertise once you have created a strong brand in a demographic.
10. Most importantly are your visitors "primed to buy or action", or are they "free information seekers". There is a big difference there.
For a b-to-b established site in a very specfic area, one of our sites sells at a CPM of 80c to $3.90 depending on volume and how long the ad will appear (people who are advertising an upcoming event for example pay more for good coverage over a few weeks). We are only talking about 7,000 unique visitors daily and 8,000 to 15,000 ad views. (We only include ads on high traffic pages but often have 3 or more small ads on each of these, unless the advertiser specifically requests a certain page.)
We tend to base it on what it would cost in Adwords. As a general principle we are testing - we assume the estimated Adwords cost translated to "impression costs" (CPC by say 0.05 CTR) sets close to the maximum as search engine listings are the best targeting you can get, - only your site branding to your specific audience can add value for your site ads.
You can also increase the cost over and above the Adwords cost for such benefits as:
1. also including the ad in email newsletters
2. officially "endorsing" the advertiser as a quality advertiser and reviewing their product/service.
3. calling them a sponsor rather than an advertiser and creating a special "sponsor page" with their links and an editorial/advertorial from you.
As a specialist site we dont have a rate card but just publish "ranges". We negotiate with each advertiser separately and personally. This will not be do-able for a site with more than a dozen or so advertisers.
Im sure people have other ideas, but these are what we are working with now.
<We tend to base it on what it would cost in Adwords. As a general principle we are testing - we assume the estimated Adwords cost translated to "impression costs" (CPC by say 0.05 CTR) sets close to the maximum as search engine listings are the best targeting you can get,>
How do you determine this? What I mean is, the ads displayed on my site are not dependent on a particular action taken by the user like they are on a Adwords. So how do you determine which Adwords keywords you're going to use when figuring out the Adwords cost?
yep our calculation is pretty rough!
We are only interested in on-theme advertising, and indeed that only makes sense for our advertisers. We just find out what the average CpC is for the type of words that people would use to search for their own site product or service in OV or Google. There is not a great many.. We find out those Adwords/OV CPC's as a base.
We assume Adwords is a competitor (As is Overture) but of course on a much much different basis and extent! So we need to remain competitive with other ways that advertisers can advertise. Then we can also sell them on what we see as the advantages of advertising on our site - branding, better placement, more flexibility in wording, no competitors etc. Of course we are looking for unique advantage or people will ask - Well wouldnt it be easier just to advertise on SE PPC!
Thank you much.. that helps out a lot, and in doing the math that way it gave me a very fair figure, and sort of legitimizing something near what I had already thought might be a good start.
