A Beginnerâ€™s Guide to Generating Online Ad Revenue

NewSunSEO

September 01, 2008


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As a new online business, you already know that one way to generate some much needed revenue is through online ads. But when you hear about all the different ways marketers promote their products and services - banners, social networks, contextual advertising, online videos, blogs, email, and the list goes on. There are innumerable ad sizes, formats, technologies, and marketing channels. But start with some basics and you’ll quickly learn how to be a savvy online advertising channel.

Creating Appropriate Ad Opportunities

A website owner’s most valuable asset is the site’s audience. Remember, advertisers buy audiences, not ad space.

If you’re a small site with a defined audience, you have a few immediate options: contextual advertising and affiliate marketing. Both tactics have a low barrier for entry and can quickly connect you with advertisers.

Contextual advertising (Google Adsense is the most well-known, but there are other providers like Context Web, Enhance Interactive (now known as Marchex Adhere), and Vibrant Media) delivers text based ads or graphic ads targeted according to the content of your site. The contextual vendors use technology to scan your site and dynamically place relevant ads next to matching content. Some vendors also allow publishers to customize the look and feel of the ads by font, color, and ad size.

Affiliate marketing starts by selecting advertisers from an affiliate networks (Commission Junction and LinkShare are two popular choices) rather than allowing technology to decide which advertisers appear on your site. You then earn a commission each time one of your users responds to the advertisement by performing a predetermined action - such as making a purchase or signing up for an email newsletter.

Once you site grows, you will have even more advertising options. Large sites have critical mass to sell advertising on their own. A good place to start is the mainstay of online advertising - the traditional display ad. Display advertising accounts for the majority of all online advertising spending, second only to search advertising, according to industry analyst eMarketer. Refer to Interactive Advertising Bureau’s most popular standard ad sizes (480×60, 728×90, 120×600, 300×250, and 336×280, among others) and create ad real estate throughout your website. If you don’t have an internal sales force, you can join an ad network like Advertising.com, Tribal Fusion, or ValueClick. These companies sell your inventory on your behalf and typically take a 40 percent commission. They also handle campaign management, tracking, and customer service.

Additionally, larger sites (and some smaller sites) can sell advertising in e-newsletters as a viable revenue source. Because newsletters are opt-in, they tend to have higher response rates than standard banner advertising, especially when they include text ads. Since people subscribe to read about matters of interest to them, a well-placed text ad can resemble editorial content and is not as easily ignored as a banner. Stand-alone email blasts, the cousin of e-newsletters, were once the rage amongst advertisers for objectives as diverse sales, generating leads, and building loyalty. However, due to do federal legislation (CAN-SPAM Act) and consumer backlash, email is not the Holy Grail it once was. Instead, focus your efforts on developing an e-newsletter.

Acquiring Advertisers

If you want to attract advertisers, you have to make your available. This includes using sound SEO principles to rank well on the search engines, as well as some self promotion. But before making your site truly available, be prepared.

Make sure you have a media kit. Though it sounds like a no-brainer, many advertising-support sites don’t have one or make it difficult to find. Be sure to include advertising opportunities, ad specs, rates, demographics, traffic stats, case studies, and contact information for sales and production. And don’t require advertisers to fill out contact info in order to download your media kit. Make it free and easy to download. Also, be sure to update your media kit regularly. You want to show advertisers that your site is growing and gaining market share.

As traffic grows and you build some momentum amongst advertisers, you’ll want to increase your visibility to attract higher tier advertisers. To that end, consider listing your site in Nielsen// Netrating’s @Plan database or ComScore’s Media Metrix database. These media planning research tools are used by interactive ad agencies to determine on what sites to run their ads, based on the highest concentration if their target audience. Bear in mind, publishers must have a minimum number of page views and unique users to get entered in the databases. Also, publishers don’t automatically get listed - they need to pay for the privilege.

Retaining Advertisers

There are probably hundreds of websites online very similar to your own. And that means you need to keep your advertisers coming back and prevent them from spending their budgets on your competitors.

Be flexible with pricing and open to new advertising ideas. You don’t want to give away the store, but getting a top-tier advertiser will be worth dropping your initial price to get them ini the door. This will encourage other large advertisers to follow suit. And some advertisers will want to try something a little different. You want to be able to accommodate.
Be responsive to customer service calls and follow up promptly. Nothing says “amateur” like long response times or incomplete answers.
Accept to Interactive Advertisings Bureau’s Terms & Conditions
Be flexible with optimizing a campaign to increase performance. Move ads from an underperforming site section to a higher-performing spot. If newsletter ads are getting better responses than 728×90’s on the homepage, work the advertiser to reallocate more weight to the newsletter. At the end of the day, view yourself as a partner, not a vendor.

Congratulations on starting your website. Work hard and you’ll soon find your audience. Then leverage that opportunity with some advertising - first in the simplest forms, but before long you just might find some of the biggest advertisers online banging on your virtual door to get some exposure.