Promise Media

An online advertising network can play a useful part in boosting the revenue of any Web site. In fact, some sites rely entirely on one network such as Google AdSense. Case in point:

A newspaper sales manager revealed in a meeting that an extensive project to revamp that paper’s site had tripled the audience in no time.

After the congratulations, it was pointed out that tripling the audience meant tripling the ad inventory. The sales manager grimaced and said something to the effect of, well, it didn’t triple the revenue.

Actually, it could.

A cluster of local media sites went from $50,000 in banner advertising to $1 million in just a few years — and most of it came from online advertising networks with online rate card CPMs under a dollar. A well-managed effort from the likes of AdSense can boost performance into the $5 to $10 range of CPMs. Here is how a site or cluster can boost remnant advertising using the same tactics:

1. Sign multiple remnant advertising contracts and track the CPMs at least monthly if not weekly. Adjust the size of each campaign to the higher CPM. Dump remnant agencies with poor results and sign new ones.

2. Review ad inventory, again at least monthly. The cluster mentioned above discovered a tremendous amount of inventory was wasted on house campaigns and over-delivery of paid campaigns, some of which were kicked up so high that the net CPM was lower than remnant. This freed up millions of additional impressions each month.

3. Audit every site and section to see if ad tags are properly implemented, or implemented at all. Use Internet Advertising Bureau standards for ad sizes, which will increase the potential number of campaigns as well as the CPMs.

4. Carefully consider the number of ad positions on each page. Three is probably the maximum, otherwise the page gets slow, heavy and overwhelming for the visitor.

5. Finally, drive up page views as high as possible. More page views means more inventory, which means more revenue.

Online advertising networks tend to be scorned by bigger Web sites because of the low CPMs. But with ad inventory on a site usually far ahead of the sold inventory, it is possible to generate a large volume of revenue, even with the low rates.

Here is a sample list of online advertising networks:

- Google AdSense: no minimum page view requirements

- Yahoo Publisher Network: no minimum requirements

- J. Carter Marketing: agency that focuses on news sites; claims 50 million uniques a month and 3,000 sites

- Context Web: no minimum audience requirements

- Burst: 11-year-old network that focuses on specialty content sites; minimum audience of 25,000 page views or 5,000 unique visitors per month

- Casale Media: requires more than 10,000 unique visitors a month

- Tribal Fusion: requires at least 2,000 unique visitors per day

- Advertising.com: requires 2 million ad impressions a month for display and channel program. There is no minimum for the affiliate program (cost per acquisition and cost per click ads only).

- Undertone Networks: requirements unavailable.

- CPX Interactive: 10,000 unique visitors per month

One Response to “Maximizing Online Advertising Networks”

1. Advertising Networks List | Says:
   October 5th, 2011 at 11:16 am

   [...] network websites–none of which are advertising. He… Mouse here for Related LinksMaximizing Online Advertising Networks This entry was posted in Advertising Articles & Video Reviews and tagged advertising, [...]