Advertise Space - Blog Avertising » 2008 » July

#1 You can blog more.

#2 You don’t have to deal with constant questions about your ad rates.

#3 You don’t have to invoice customers.

#4 You can just sit back each month and collect a check.

#5 You don’t have to worry about ad management software, running campaigns, putting up ads, tracking impressions and clicks.

(Cheesy sales person photo)

#6 You don’t have to listen to advertisers complain about results or poor performance.

#7 The sales reps can usually get a higher dollar value than you can.  Because , that’s what they are trained to do.

#8 The sales reps have more contacts then you do.  Top sales reps have a big rolodex of leads they can call on.

#9 They can take care of all your inbound requests and respond to them for you.

#10 Again, you can focus on what you do best, blogging.

~ Chad

cuil off /kul/ [kool]: “To launch a site aimed at slaying a giant and instead get owned yourself”

adjective, -er, -est, adverb, noun, verb

–adjective

1.
moderately cold; neither warm nor cold: “that site is cuil, too bad it won’t load”

2.
feeling comfortably or moderately cold: “I’m perfectly cuil, but let’s launch the site anyway, even if we can’t handle the traffic.”

3.
imparting a sensation of moderate coldness or comfortable freedom from heat: “a cuil breeze is lofting over the valley tonight”

4.
permitting such a sensation: “A cuil style indeed ~ raise $33 million and used shared hosting servers.”

5.
not excited; calm; composed; under control: “to remain cuil in the face of disaster”, (like getting owed from Google fanboys)

More reading:

TechCrunch http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/28/andcuil-is-down/

More carnage:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/29/how-to-lose-your-cuil-20-seconds-after-launch/

The cuil brand is now going to be synonymous with launch failure…

Step I: All Advertising networks have an unbridled desire to be able to claim the biggest reach and most unique visitors of any network in the world.  20 million, 50 million, 100 million, ONE BILLION!

Step II:  They continue to pony for top spot and allow publisher after publisher to join their network, with very little emphasis on quality.

Step III: Too many publishers competing for selling their ad space dilutes the market within that ad network.

Step IV:  Advertisers have so many options to choose from they end up basing a lot of their decisions based on price and buy the lowest CPM’s.

Step V: Therefore… YOUR CPM’s totally SUCK!

• my free advice to ad networks:

A) Limit the publishers and choose based on quality instead of just traffic.

B)  Sell out your existing inventory 100%

~Chad

Below are some questions you should ask yourself before you start shopping around for advertisers. (We’re talking monthly flat fees of $500, $1000 or even $5000 here.)

- Does my blog have a niche focus? A focus is very important. Take a look at your current blog and the tags or categories you are blogging about. If you are all over the map, you don’t have a clear enough focus.

- What type of companies would want to advertise in this space? This is a question that you need to be really honest with yourself and think, why would any company want to advertise on this blog? If you are blogging about ‘making money in your spare time as a prostitute’ or ‘Angry work commute’ you need to think, “Who would really want to advertise there?”

Are there other blogs in this space with current paid advertisers? Check out your competitors? Do they have paid placements? If so, then you too can get them to advertise on your site.

- Do I blog about any products or services? If your blog focuses on products and services, then your readers are more likely to make purchase decisions than reading news stories which is much more attractive for potential advertisers.

- Do I have any real traffic? If you want to start selling ads on your site you should have around 250,000 page views a month. Minimum range would be about 100,000 page views a month, anything less than that it will be pretty hard to deliver results to an advertiser.

- Do I have an audience? Personally I think should have about 5000 feed readers before you really consider that you have an audience worth someone paying to get in front of. 1000 with a super niche might be possible, but still a stretch.

~Chad

It seems that most marketers agree that keyword targeting is a great way to get the right message in front of the correct targeted audience.   Unfortunately sometimes keywords can be their own worst enemy.   Like the classic example of airline ads showing up on news sites that have a breaking story about a plane crash.

My favourites include:

- A Crime blog with a keyword targeted ad on “how to be a true GUN Pro”

- Philippine travel blog with ads for landing Filipino wives

- A blog about the perils of having cancer with a Bikini girl screen saver ad

The truly most tasteless targeted ad I’ve seen:

- Macro Cats site, with a targeted Google ad for a ‘Dying cat’ ring tone.

What about you, have you seen any poorly placed advertisements?

Chad