Advertise Space - Blog Avertising

Ok this is still one thing that really irks me. Every person that I’ve ever met from any ad network has the exact same pitch. “We have the best CPM’s in the industry” Wow, how is it that everyone has the highest rate? There can be only one number one. Give us a real CPM. What is a real CPM you ask? $10. Now that is a CPM. $1 is not. One dollar is what crappy remnant house inventory sells for. Zwinky quality. Don’t give me a buck. Give me at least $5, or don’t bother pitching me. Even AdSense has you beat if you want to pay $2 and then request frequency capping and/or pass backs on non-US inventory.

OK so what is the solution for these ad networks who all copy each other and all claim the same thing?

- Come up with a different model. Stop following everyone else and innovate.

- Pick a niche space and own it. “Go Green Ad Network” (Doesn’t exist, at least I don’t think so?)

- Raise your qualifications. Increase the quality of your publishers and you can charge a higher CPM’s. Stop accepting anyone into your network, just to raise you ComScore numbers and inflated fluffy reach.

- Sell ads at real CPM’s and then actually pay out a good percentage to your publishers. (Casale Media is doing 70% at the moment)

So who is actually at the top? That’s what I’d really like to know. Which ad network constantly out performs all others? Leave a comment if you’ve had any success and got paid real money from anyone.

3rd party services like Pubmatic and Rubicon will eventually answer this questions for all of us and settle the score once and for all and the cheap networks will fall…

OK the long overdue follow up post to my last year’s shit storm post on why I hate Google AdSense: 

- The Rich get Richer. Well it’s a joke really that the only ones making any money are the owners of Google. If you are the one actually producing any of the content that they get rich off of, most likely you are still a broke ass. It is the sheer gap of wealth from the amount of money being printed to the actual publishers that makes me the most angry. With a 200 billion market cap, they could pay their top ONE MILLION publishers $100,000 and still have 100 billion left over. No but Google Officers like Doerr are cashing in 43,475 shares for a cool $30,000,000. He must need a new set of rims for his hummer?

- The Poor get Poorer. Yes, you guessed it. If you have been using AdSense as your only source of blog income you now know that AdSense blindness is setting in on your readers and they are clicking less and even if they do click, CPC’s are down. The money you used to buy your daily coffee with is now only paying for the soy milk upgrade.

- Lack of customization. Color palette change, rounded edges. Wow. Some customization. In the gaming world it’s common place to be able to customize your character to look almost identical to you or anyone you like, and this coming from much smaller development companies, let alone a billion dollar behemoth. Too busy counting their money I guess. I mean when the geek sitting in the cube next to you is worth 4 million on paper, why work? He is too busy twittering and checking out his net worth.

- Loyal promoter? We don’t need you. OK so you’ve been doing a money making blog for years and sending tonnes of fish over to the big shark as an affiliate referral. They pay you a bounty and then suck millions out of your referrals, but now depending on where you live, they might not want your krill. edit  - (OK they fixed this since I wrote this post a while ago, but now they still don’t accept certain countries.)

- Still only a CPC model.  Wherever there is someone paying for a certain call to action there is a way to game the system.   Yes, click fraud is alive and well and Google really doesn’t care that much about it, especially since the buzz about it has died off over the years.  Why not let the publisher decide what format to charge?  CPM, flat rate?  Adify.com allows these options for publishers. I’ve always preferred flat rate, and you can’t game a fixed price.

- Follow our rules or else. Want to sell your own text links on YOUR own site. Forget it. Cutt’s will even get you to sell out your own mother down the river for making money on the side. Big G will come down on your ass like a Columbian Coke lord on a cocaine farmer for chewing on leaves…

(And kill it at the same time…)

1. Use a services like PayPerPost or sponsored reviews and pay someone to blog positively about your product but don’t worry if the blog is completely off topic to your market.
2. Sign up a bunch of fake alias in multiple forums, answer a few questions, and then start flogging your product to yourself.
3. Create a few splogs loaded with scrapped content and loaded with relevant keywords and then blog about your own product.
4. Spam all of your friends and ask them to Digg and stumble your blog posts daily until you have no friends.
5. Create a FaceBook fan club for your product and invite everyone you know and do weekly updates to everyone even if they didn’t join the group.
6. Offer your product for ‘free’ to prominent bloggers only if they write something nice about you
7. Buy a whole bunch of fake traffic and then put your site up for sale on SitePoint telling everyone how much major traffic you have, then cancel the auction and tell everyone, that you site is way too valuable to sell.

Got any more fun ones?   Add them in the comment field.

Newspaper advertising is in big trouble and  and in its current form it will die in the next 10-15 years.  The newspapers need to step up to consumer demands and adapt quicker.

“According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 — the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.”

Some of my suggestions to adapt:

- Come up with 2 different formats - A home version and a ‘travel version’.  Have you ever tried reading the New York Times on the subway?  UK newspapers are starting to get smaller and some major North American publishers have cut the size slightly to make it more manageable, but to truly get portable, have a power summary edition in a magazine size.  Smaller will be key especially with everyone going green and with the paper wastage.

Start Selling your product - Newspapers have just gotten lazy over the years, and think that people ‘need’ their product and that people will just buy it.  Start pitching it again.  Remember the paper boys that used to be on the street corners selling newspapers or the kid who used to come to your house once a week and collect the ‘paper money’?  How could you cancel your subscription from a pimply 12 year old trying to earn a buck.    Or even the homeless guys selling them at major red light intersections.  I used to buy one from them even if I didn’t really want one. 

- Give it away FREE - Create a free version that is super small and handed out at major hubs and subway stops.  Most major cities already have several small free entertainment or news type mini papers that are giving out free, the major players shouldn’t be giving away the market share to these small players.

- Customized newspapers - OK, we’re still away’s off with this one, but users should be able to fully customize the paper they receive.  Until the fully customization options are scalable, users should be able to at least pick and choose which sections or the current paper they receive.   My Dad only reads the sports section or the paper, I only read entertainment and business.  Why do we need 20 sections if we only read 2-3? 

Time is running out big boys, adapt or die slowly and painfully.

So why is it that the big blue chips just don’t get it when it comes to promoting their company via the latest social media? The main problem is that they don’t take the time to ‘learn’ the medium. You can’t just open a Stumble Upon account, give thumbs up to 100 random sites and then start requesting everyone to stumble your site or spam random bloggers, “hey, can you blog about my product? I’ve never read your blog, never commented, actually I don’t even know your name, but my company is a perfect fit for your audience.”

1) Learn the medium. The first step is not only to learn the medium, but use it. Become a power user of the medium before you attempt to exploit it for commercial use or self promotion.

2) Get an outside opinion. If you are OLD or un-connected to the trends, ask someone who is connected to review your ‘viral’ idea before you unleash it. (And before you flame me, I consider myself old. I don’t get why kids where their jeans half way down their ass, but maybe it is cool? But it also doesn’t mean you should!)

3) ‘In’ terms go ‘out’ Fast. If you think a term is ‘cool’ it is already too late and you can’t use it in your marketing pitch. (Example Gwen Stefani using the word ‘Mash-up’ in the HP commercial. Too late sounds corny)

4) Let others test it. If a new form of advertising shows up, don’t jump on the bandwagon to be cutting edge. Let others burn through cash to see if it works. (ie. Facebook advertising :)

5) Bribe with Caution. OK, everyone has a price, but most people have some level of morals, or at least think they do. So if you want to give something to someone in exchange for getting them to endorse your product - do it like the pros do. Sponsor them.

Other great articles:

Successful Social Marketing

I was at a great session at SXSW last week called “The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007″ and although I didn’t agree with all of their choices, (I thought the beer ad rocked :) I completely agreed with the overall message of the session; that you need to tread lightly when planning a ‘viral’ campaign as it can badly backfire and that you can’t force a conversation down someone’s throat if they are not listening to you.

The funniest one and the overall winner was a campaign gone wrong from HP where they had a women get her kids to take a actual hammer to the competitions camera and smash it. The kids were both toddlers which made the brainwashing even more horrifying.

My favourite (or least favourite) and also the runner up, was the Cisco ‘human network’ campaign. I’m really glad they chose this one, as I thought it was a painfully forced attempt at getting the blogosphere and Wikipedia users to want to talk about a slogan.

The panel consisted of Henry Copland, Steve Hall, Jeff Jarvis, Rebecca Lieb, and Charlotte Selles.I think they did an excellent job on this panel. It was funny, insightful and interactive and it was also refreshing that they actually brought and showed all the examples that they references. There is nothing worse than have someone go, “you remember that viral video, the one from Dove”, or” the one where that chick cut off her hair” and half the audience going’ huh’?

Stay tuned for my next blog post. “Social Media Advertising - Why big companies just don’t get it”

#1 Change up your creative often: This one is the most important, so I started with #1 first. ‘Ad blindness’ is a common fact with any type of advertising whether it is big billboard on the side of a building or an ad on the homepage of your website. Frequent visitors are going to notice something different about the site if you have a new advertiser with a new banner ad, once they have seen the ad several times or even several dozen times they will start to ignore it, moreover, actually not even see it anymore.

#2 Rotate different ads: This is an alternative to actually replacing an ad, try just rotation multiple ads in the one position. Most publishers should be able to rotate multiple creatives automatically for you within their ad server. Test out 4 different ads for a few weeks and use the one with the highest CTR on that site and others.

#3 Use tracking URL’s: If you’re not sure what traffic is coming from which ad, they you really won’t be able to tell which campaigns are effective. One simple software package is http://www.eztrackz.com/. At the very basic level at least create a reference tag (?ref=) for the URL you use for your ad campaigns. Anything after the question mark won’t affect the URL that the click goes to, but it will show up in your referral logs. (example: http://www.b5media.com?ref=advertisespace)

#4 Know the Blog: Make sure that the ‘readers’ of that blog are the right demographic for your product. Ask yourself ‘who reads this blog?” Sometimes the readers of the blog are more comprised of your competitors instead of your potential customers. Get as much information about the audience as you can.

#5 Get Above the Fold: Don’t get lost on the page, or way down the side bar. The majority of the blog readers are coming to the homepage, and reading the 1st post. If you can’t see your ad when the page first loads, neither can you customers.

#6 Don’t forget the value of branding: Every marketer is always so focused on clicks, CTR & CPC, but don’t forget about the ad impressions. Almost all forms of more traditional advertising are still about ‘how many people’ have actually seen your ad. Blog readers are a little more savvy than the average Internet user, so even though they may not be clicking as much, they do see your ad, and they are remembering your brand.

b5media Inc. Blog Advertising Network