Ask HN: Direct advertising experience?
3 comments
Disclaimer: I'm going to speak about 'premium' ad sales. That means more or less fortune 500+ companies. This is my area of expertise so I won't speak to other types of sales.
I work for an ad network and have seen sites around your size flounder trying to do direct sales. Granted, there are a few (ala 100layercake.com) that are extremely focused on a very profitable genre (in their case: weddings). However, you're much better off bridging the gap in the short term.
Sign up for an ad network.
Figure out what your audience is like. How old? Male/female? Tech savvy?
Then go out and find a 'premium' network to fit your demo. For example, I work for Giantrealm.com and we serve 12-34 yr old males (our sweet spot is 18-34). We focus on Gaming/Entertainment/Lifestyle. Your blog would be a ... lifestyle blog I guess? If you're struggling with categorization, try thinking how you would be described by TV Guide. Lame, I know.
I've seen tons of sites try to get off google and go straight to direct sales. 99% of the time they fail because they aren't big enough to be on advertisers' radar.
Google CPM's (cost per thousand ad impressions): About $1.00 on a good day.
'Remnant' CPM's: $1.50-2.00
'Premium' CPM's: $4.00-12.00 depending on the unit and setup.
note: these prices are AFTER the standard 50/50 split with your ad network.
Although direct sales will make you more money in the long term, you have a number of items going against you by selling direct:
First and foremost, most advertisers won't blink an eye unless you're over 1,000,000 US unique visitors (the unit most advertisers think in). You can check this by looking at the separate box called 'Unique Visitors' on the Google Analytics dashboard and then segmenting by US.
Second: Advertisers usually work with an ad agency who takes care of most of the buying. Ad agencies are usually staffed by 'junior' account execs which are 20-24 yr old females (sorry to stereotype) that generally don't browse the internet beyond Facebook. They usually have no idea that your site exists and like to buy things they understand. They definitely don't understand your site. They don't understand most of our sites. It's the problem we face with 'niche' content that doesn't focus around Twilight video reviews and Lindsay Lohan paparazzi shots.
Third: Ad Agencies rely on an antiquated tool called Comscore. Comscore is like a database of nearly every site online and how big they are. Unfortunately, they rely mostly (this is changing nowadays) on panel-based metrics, which means that they call people on the phone, ask them if they would like to take an 'internet survey,' and then have them install a plugin on their machine to do so. You can imagine that most of your viewers probably won't be up for this. Most of our sites show up at 1/10th of their size on comscore. For example Gameriot.com, a site I worked on for a year, showed 800k unique visitors in Google Analytics. It showed up as 30k, 80k, 450k, then didn't show up. These are 4 consecutive months. I would try to find a friend to see if you show up.
Fourth: Advertising is alot of work. If you want to enter the true 'ad industry, you need to get used to what are called RFP cycles. Advertisers send out things called 'RFP's (Requests for Proposals) every few weeks that require you to do a TON of work (build a powerpoint deck that sums up your 'pitch') and fill out an excel spreadsheet in terms of 'media dollars' which is a convoluted way of saying "convert all dollars into banners, break it out by page, then give me a bunch of free stuff because I'm an advertiser and everyone else does."
Fifth: Advertising is all about connections. There's a reason that most sales people are given salaries that are directly based on their number of contacts. If you don't know anyone, you're going to have a hard time getting meetings. There are rumors about people buying football tickets, strippers, etc... No comment.
Ad Networks will go out and sell your site 'directly' (good ones at least) and pitch custom plans that your audience wil be excited about. Granted, sometimes they sell a load of shit and everybody hates it, but the best sales people sell campaigns that the site loves so users write positively about the brand.
The Ad Network model is to 'rep' a site 50/50 until the site becomes big enough (traffic-wise) to sell direct. At that point, they will offer you large sums of money NOT to sell direct :)
You'll also have a great idea of what sells on your site, what ads do well (use their campaign monitoring tools to see which advertisers keep buying you and what the click through rates are), so you'll be educated once you do start buying direct :)
Finally, if read all that and REALLY don't want to sign up for an ad network, you might try signing up for Google Ad Manager (Google's free ad server) and dabbling in ad exchanges. They use real-time engines to allow advertisers to bid against each other on your inventory. You can see rates of $2-6 this way if your site is popular.
If you have any questions about what ad units you should run (728x90, 300x250), how you should pitch your site, how ad servers work, or which ad networks to reach out to, I'm happy to help. E-mail is in my profile.
I work for an ad network and have seen sites around your size flounder trying to do direct sales. Granted, there are a few (ala 100layercake.com) that are extremely focused on a very profitable genre (in their case: weddings). However, you're much better off bridging the gap in the short term.
Sign up for an ad network.
Figure out what your audience is like. How old? Male/female? Tech savvy?
Then go out and find a 'premium' network to fit your demo. For example, I work for Giantrealm.com and we serve 12-34 yr old males (our sweet spot is 18-34). We focus on Gaming/Entertainment/Lifestyle. Your blog would be a ... lifestyle blog I guess? If you're struggling with categorization, try thinking how you would be described by TV Guide. Lame, I know.
I've seen tons of sites try to get off google and go straight to direct sales. 99% of the time they fail because they aren't big enough to be on advertisers' radar.
Google CPM's (cost per thousand ad impressions): About $1.00 on a good day.
'Remnant' CPM's: $1.50-2.00
'Premium' CPM's: $4.00-12.00 depending on the unit and setup.
note: these prices are AFTER the standard 50/50 split with your ad network.
Although direct sales will make you more money in the long term, you have a number of items going against you by selling direct:
First and foremost, most advertisers won't blink an eye unless you're over 1,000,000 US unique visitors (the unit most advertisers think in). You can check this by looking at the separate box called 'Unique Visitors' on the Google Analytics dashboard and then segmenting by US.
Second: Advertisers usually work with an ad agency who takes care of most of the buying. Ad agencies are usually staffed by 'junior' account execs which are 20-24 yr old females (sorry to stereotype) that generally don't browse the internet beyond Facebook. They usually have no idea that your site exists and like to buy things they understand. They definitely don't understand your site. They don't understand most of our sites. It's the problem we face with 'niche' content that doesn't focus around Twilight video reviews and Lindsay Lohan paparazzi shots.
Third: Ad Agencies rely on an antiquated tool called Comscore. Comscore is like a database of nearly every site online and how big they are. Unfortunately, they rely mostly (this is changing nowadays) on panel-based metrics, which means that they call people on the phone, ask them if they would like to take an 'internet survey,' and then have them install a plugin on their machine to do so. You can imagine that most of your viewers probably won't be up for this. Most of our sites show up at 1/10th of their size on comscore. For example Gameriot.com, a site I worked on for a year, showed 800k unique visitors in Google Analytics. It showed up as 30k, 80k, 450k, then didn't show up. These are 4 consecutive months. I would try to find a friend to see if you show up.
Fourth: Advertising is alot of work. If you want to enter the true 'ad industry, you need to get used to what are called RFP cycles. Advertisers send out things called 'RFP's (Requests for Proposals) every few weeks that require you to do a TON of work (build a powerpoint deck that sums up your 'pitch') and fill out an excel spreadsheet in terms of 'media dollars' which is a convoluted way of saying "convert all dollars into banners, break it out by page, then give me a bunch of free stuff because I'm an advertiser and everyone else does."
Fifth: Advertising is all about connections. There's a reason that most sales people are given salaries that are directly based on their number of contacts. If you don't know anyone, you're going to have a hard time getting meetings. There are rumors about people buying football tickets, strippers, etc... No comment.
Ad Networks will go out and sell your site 'directly' (good ones at least) and pitch custom plans that your audience wil be excited about. Granted, sometimes they sell a load of shit and everybody hates it, but the best sales people sell campaigns that the site loves so users write positively about the brand.
The Ad Network model is to 'rep' a site 50/50 until the site becomes big enough (traffic-wise) to sell direct. At that point, they will offer you large sums of money NOT to sell direct :)
You'll also have a great idea of what sells on your site, what ads do well (use their campaign monitoring tools to see which advertisers keep buying you and what the click through rates are), so you'll be educated once you do start buying direct :)
Finally, if read all that and REALLY don't want to sign up for an ad network, you might try signing up for Google Ad Manager (Google's free ad server) and dabbling in ad exchanges. They use real-time engines to allow advertisers to bid against each other on your inventory. You can see rates of $2-6 this way if your site is popular.
If you have any questions about what ad units you should run (728x90, 300x250), how you should pitch your site, how ad servers work, or which ad networks to reach out to, I'm happy to help. E-mail is in my profile.
This was fantastic. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
endlessvoid94 just asked about which ad network he should choose. I'm cross-posting my e-mail here so others can hopefully make a good decision:
I'm not really sure how to estimate how much you can make. I don't work on that side of the business (I build products like video players and ad units that help people monetize their content more effectively) but I can tell you that unless you break out of 'traditional' units (ala start serving skins, interstitialls, pre-roll, etc), you won't make a decent living until you reach 2 million+ pageviews. Even at that point, you'll be looking at around $2-3k monthly revenue for a normal site.
I would suggest you start looking at the following providers: AdMeld - Will optimize your 'remnant' ads by signing you up for a FUCKTON of remnant providers (like Google, just different). This can lead to some short term revenue gain (your $20-30/day will probably be pushed to $40-50/day).
Google Ad Exchange - I haven't signed up for this in forever but I think the easiest way is to sign up for Google Ad Manager. Premium advertisers use whats called a 'small order system' (Like AdWords if you've used it) to buy on your site. If a few advertisers like you, they'll continue to buy. There's a ton of logic that goes into optimizing your inventory (example: you can adjust the minimum 'bid' you will accept until it's very low like $0.10 and a bunch of people agree to buy your inventory then you can jack up your floor to $3.00 and see if anyone forgets to change their 'bids.') and I used to work with the guys who run Pubgears.com which is a great resource. One of the founders is also a huge marijuana fan so that might help you :)
Federated Media / Brash / IGN / Crave Online / UGO / GorillaNation / Break - These guys are all our competitors. They hit 18-34 yr olds, just like your site, and focus on men. Talk to all of them. The one you choose should be based on your experience with the 'publisher support' (each company calls them something different) person you speak with. Generally it's hit or miss. Some of them are assholes, some of them are flighty. Get one that seems friendly and responds VERY quickly to e-mails. Some networks care about you and will talk to you on a daily/weekly basis to see what's going on with your site and if you have any cool promotions, events, etc coming up. Other networks will just ignore you once you sign up and that's the last thing you want to happen.
Collective Media / Burst / I-could-name-a-thousand-more - These are 'Blind' networks. So-called because they usually avoid site-specific buys. Instead they focus on selling a 'vertical' or a 'channel' like "Guys" as opposed to individual sites.They don't require their ad tags to be the first on your site so you can just throw them into your remnant chain ahead of google. If they serve you a premium ad, you'll see $2-3. If not, they'll just default to google anyway.
Also as an alternative... people were talking about selling stuff. Here's a company I'm working with for my side venture that might be cool: OpenSky - These guys hook up influential bloggers/sites with product manufacturers. For example lets say someone has a hemp necklace (apologies for the lame example) that they want to sell to people. Your site might be a good fit for that, so they'd introduce you and send you a free necklace. If you dig it, you make a couple posts about them and they give you some simple .js to place on your site which renders an e-commerce store selling the necklaces. You keep a split, the seller gets a split, and Opensky gets a split (known in advertising as a 'three way split).
I'm not really sure how to estimate how much you can make. I don't work on that side of the business (I build products like video players and ad units that help people monetize their content more effectively) but I can tell you that unless you break out of 'traditional' units (ala start serving skins, interstitialls, pre-roll, etc), you won't make a decent living until you reach 2 million+ pageviews. Even at that point, you'll be looking at around $2-3k monthly revenue for a normal site.
I would suggest you start looking at the following providers: AdMeld - Will optimize your 'remnant' ads by signing you up for a FUCKTON of remnant providers (like Google, just different). This can lead to some short term revenue gain (your $20-30/day will probably be pushed to $40-50/day).
Google Ad Exchange - I haven't signed up for this in forever but I think the easiest way is to sign up for Google Ad Manager. Premium advertisers use whats called a 'small order system' (Like AdWords if you've used it) to buy on your site. If a few advertisers like you, they'll continue to buy. There's a ton of logic that goes into optimizing your inventory (example: you can adjust the minimum 'bid' you will accept until it's very low like $0.10 and a bunch of people agree to buy your inventory then you can jack up your floor to $3.00 and see if anyone forgets to change their 'bids.') and I used to work with the guys who run Pubgears.com which is a great resource. One of the founders is also a huge marijuana fan so that might help you :)
Federated Media / Brash / IGN / Crave Online / UGO / GorillaNation / Break - These guys are all our competitors. They hit 18-34 yr olds, just like your site, and focus on men. Talk to all of them. The one you choose should be based on your experience with the 'publisher support' (each company calls them something different) person you speak with. Generally it's hit or miss. Some of them are assholes, some of them are flighty. Get one that seems friendly and responds VERY quickly to e-mails. Some networks care about you and will talk to you on a daily/weekly basis to see what's going on with your site and if you have any cool promotions, events, etc coming up. Other networks will just ignore you once you sign up and that's the last thing you want to happen.
Collective Media / Burst / I-could-name-a-thousand-more - These are 'Blind' networks. So-called because they usually avoid site-specific buys. Instead they focus on selling a 'vertical' or a 'channel' like "Guys" as opposed to individual sites.They don't require their ad tags to be the first on your site so you can just throw them into your remnant chain ahead of google. If they serve you a premium ad, you'll see $2-3. If not, they'll just default to google anyway.
Also as an alternative... people were talking about selling stuff. Here's a company I'm working with for my side venture that might be cool: OpenSky - These guys hook up influential bloggers/sites with product manufacturers. For example lets say someone has a hemp necklace (apologies for the lame example) that they want to sell to people. Your site might be a good fit for that, so they'd introduce you and send you a free necklace. If you dig it, you make a couple posts about them and they give you some simple .js to place on your site which renders an e-commerce store selling the necklaces. You keep a split, the seller gets a split, and Opensky gets a split (known in advertising as a 'three way split).
Wow, I'm speechless about your contribution! Thank you very much!
I'm the founder of VisualizeUs (http://visualizeus.com), a social bookmarking site for images, and we're in the same situation as endlessvoid94, so the information in your posts is extremely valuable. Right now we aren't monetizing all our traffic properly (900K unique visitors last month, 10M pageviews last month, 51% of the traffic is from US, and you'd laughed about the total revenues!). We have adsense and direct sale to small sponsors, but without any special work on selling the spots (two people just to run all the site).
We're looking for an ad network to monetize our traffic. As you can see our public is creative young people that loves pictures and visual culture, and thus not any graphical ad could fit on there. In fact, to prove that point, the two sponsors we have right now on the small spots, they have a huuge difference on clicks just because of the creativity and theme.
We've just applied to IndieClick, and I'll explore some of the options you mention in your post, including the adnetwork you're working at, as I think it fits into our public ;) I'd appreciate any tip or special suggestion from you, as your opinion is very valuable! Truth is, as a hacker, I'm so new to all this ad world, and feel kind of lost sometimes ;)
Also I'm open to share any info that can be helpful of course!
I'm the founder of VisualizeUs (http://visualizeus.com), a social bookmarking site for images, and we're in the same situation as endlessvoid94, so the information in your posts is extremely valuable. Right now we aren't monetizing all our traffic properly (900K unique visitors last month, 10M pageviews last month, 51% of the traffic is from US, and you'd laughed about the total revenues!). We have adsense and direct sale to small sponsors, but without any special work on selling the spots (two people just to run all the site).
We're looking for an ad network to monetize our traffic. As you can see our public is creative young people that loves pictures and visual culture, and thus not any graphical ad could fit on there. In fact, to prove that point, the two sponsors we have right now on the small spots, they have a huuge difference on clicks just because of the creativity and theme.
We've just applied to IndieClick, and I'll explore some of the options you mention in your post, including the adnetwork you're working at, as I think it fits into our public ;) I'd appreciate any tip or special suggestion from you, as your opinion is very valuable! Truth is, as a hacker, I'm so new to all this ad world, and feel kind of lost sometimes ;)
Also I'm open to share any info that can be helpful of course!
I have a friend that just left Indieclick. E-mail me (on my profile) if you want to speak with him for opinions :)
I would suggest trying to get signed by Federated Media. They're the leaders.
I would suggest trying to get signed by Federated Media. They're the leaders.
email me: dave [at] thathigh [dot] com and i'll send you an extremely useful list i've discovered :-)
Here's a thought, build a few products to sell yourself.
You have a super specific audience, one that skews to the younger end I imagine.
I bet some good t-shirts with short / popular slogans would do well, probably posters too.
A few years back CollegeHumor was selling $18.00 t-shirts at a 30,000/MONTH clip:
http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/3/collegehumor-guys-secr...
T-shirts, posters, etc are all extremely easy to fulfill via 3rd party and move internally when the model is proven.
If that sounds appealing start with a simple survey to try and figure out what your audience would be interested in.
You have a super specific audience, one that skews to the younger end I imagine.
I bet some good t-shirts with short / popular slogans would do well, probably posters too.
A few years back CollegeHumor was selling $18.00 t-shirts at a 30,000/MONTH clip:
http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/3/collegehumor-guys-secr...
T-shirts, posters, etc are all extremely easy to fulfill via 3rd party and move internally when the model is proven.
If that sounds appealing start with a simple survey to try and figure out what your audience would be interested in.
This is a great idea, but I'm unclear of the particulars on how to pursue it. I don't have very much money, and I can't afford (currently) to just order 500 tshirts and spend 1000 bucks on it.
Are you suggesting something like Cafepress? I'm terrible at graphic design and not sure what to put on the tshirts other than a logo...
Are you suggesting something like Cafepress? I'm terrible at graphic design and not sure what to put on the tshirts other than a logo...
In my experience http://www.zazzle.com/ or http://www.cafepress.com are the best.
Since you have the traffic, and you're a hacker and can set this up, I'd suggest that you run a T-Shirt contest.
Pay $100.00 for the top design and promise to promote the designer from your home page - let your audience vote on it.
Prior example: Shoemoney is a master at getting people to design all his stuff for free eg:
http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/05/29/design-my-new-business-c...
Good examples of sites doing this:
http://store.theonion.com/category/mens-tees-hoodies,4/big/
http://www.bustedtees.com/
Even CNN played around with this model:
http://www.cnn.com/tshirt/#headlines/allshirts/2010/6/1
I actually think the CNN-type model could work well for you - let people pick their favorite saying, make the contest about building a template / format for the t-shirt
Since you have the traffic, and you're a hacker and can set this up, I'd suggest that you run a T-Shirt contest.
Pay $100.00 for the top design and promise to promote the designer from your home page - let your audience vote on it.
Prior example: Shoemoney is a master at getting people to design all his stuff for free eg:
http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/05/29/design-my-new-business-c...
Good examples of sites doing this:
http://store.theonion.com/category/mens-tees-hoodies,4/big/
http://www.bustedtees.com/
Even CNN played around with this model:
http://www.cnn.com/tshirt/#headlines/allshirts/2010/6/1
I actually think the CNN-type model could work well for you - let people pick their favorite saying, make the contest about building a template / format for the t-shirt
i LOVE the idea of getting your users to design the shirts...
Also, given your market (pot smokers), you should look towards impulse buy items.
T-Shirts are fantastic -- marijuana supporters love to buy "420" and "legalize it" type gear.
As someone running that site, don't you have some insight into what your target market likes? Beyond the "ice cream" level stuff.
Alternatively / complementary, couldn't you sign up for an affiliate program with one of the online glassworks shops? I bet you'd make more money that way than doing adverts for other people.
Your site is so targeted, and with such a well defined user in mind (the "stoner" image is self-applied and identifying for users) that you should 100% be doing affiliates for online glass works, or t-shirts and knick-knacks (just think of things that would "blow people's minds" for under $10).
Also, given your market (pot smokers), you should look towards impulse buy items.
T-Shirts are fantastic -- marijuana supporters love to buy "420" and "legalize it" type gear.
As someone running that site, don't you have some insight into what your target market likes? Beyond the "ice cream" level stuff.
Alternatively / complementary, couldn't you sign up for an affiliate program with one of the online glassworks shops? I bet you'd make more money that way than doing adverts for other people.
Your site is so targeted, and with such a well defined user in mind (the "stoner" image is self-applied and identifying for users) that you should 100% be doing affiliates for online glass works, or t-shirts and knick-knacks (just think of things that would "blow people's minds" for under $10).
Checkout this post in our series on How to Sell Ads Online.
http://www.trafficspaces.com/blog/2010/01/13/how-to-sell-ads...
It talks about setting up an auction instead of a fixed price. It is an efficient way to find the market price for your ad space.
http://www.trafficspaces.com/blog/2010/01/13/how-to-sell-ads...
It talks about setting up an auction instead of a fixed price. It is an efficient way to find the market price for your ad space.
My site is extremely targeted: http://www.ThatHigh.com
Some stats:
May 2010: 300,000 page views
June 2010: 600,000 page views
July 2010: 400,000 page views (so far)
Always about 4 pages per visit with a very long length of visit (anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes).
Thanks for your help. Email me at [email protected] if you have any questions or private inquiries :-)
EDIT: Do I need to be incorporated to accept money from direct advertisers?