Questions about selling ad spots

Webmaster Discussion
#1

This might be a bit of a long shot, but does anyone have any good sources of information regarding selling ads directly?

We’ve been using JuicyAds for a while and for a brief period we were making a good extra income serving their ads, but in the last few months it’s collapsed, and I mean down to $0.75 a day. I tried reaching out to them but they’ve ignore us (not big enough, I guess).

I’m thinking about selling these ad spots directly, but I really have no clue where to start with pricing or what kind of information a potential advertiser needs, what to hold back etc…

Does anyone have any good links to examples or trusted advice?

Cheers!

#2

In my own experience while there is companies looking for spots to buy it’s not worth the hassle. First of all meeting expectations is difficult and causes problems. It might be your own fault, i.e. not enough traffic but likewise if they don’t provide good enough adverts it won’t sell either. I tried for a while but in the end it’s just easier running affiliate banners, same amount of sales less hassle.

#3

Thanks Bjorn.
One of my biggest concerns was not finding the time to promote the site enough to keep stable traffic (writing for clients always takes priority over our own sites). Most of our traffic is organic now, but there are definite spikes when I can put the time in and promote via socials.

We do have a considerable newsletter, so do you think it might be worth trying that? I could offer an ad spot and be able to say with more certainty how many opens and potential clicks it might get.

#4

I’ve never used newsletters due to EU GDPR… to much hassle. But if you do have one that might be worth trying, probably better engagement if done right.

#5

The GDPR thing isn’t an issue, all subs are self-confirmed and we delete all unconfirmed accounts after a month. As long as you’re not holding information without consent it’s fine.

I think I might offer an ad spot in the newsletter and see how it goes. We do have a few contacts we can hit up to get started and ease into it.

Thanks for the help :slight_smile:

#6

Hello! Conran,
I am sorry you feel you’ve been neglected at JuicyAds and I would like to rectify that. We really don’t discriminate based on the size of the publisher so I can only assume there was a hiccup along the way.
I head up the sales and marketing teams here, and will be happy to take a look at your account and address any concerns you may have.
You can reach me at [email protected] -skype: raineystricklin telegram: @RaineyJuicyAds
Shoot me a message with your username or email used to set up your account at JuicyAds and I will investigate.
Thank you!
-Rainey

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#7

Thanks for your response.
I’ll get my partner to make contact as he was the one who set up the account.

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#8

I have always preferred to work directly with advertisers.

You need to know a few things:

  • The impressions (page views) your banners get.

  • The CPM price (cost per 1000 impressions) you would like to charge (you can look at historical data for this, and with some math, see what you should expect.

  • The term you would like your campaign to run for (usually monthly pre-paid, but if your traffic is growing, you can make some great deals to lock people in for 3 month terms).

Some other things:

  • The more aggressive the ad type, the more it should cost. Ie: pop under are worth more than on page banners. Partly this is because if you are using aggressive ads, there could be an impact on your traffic, so there is a bit of a trade-off you should expect to go after.

  • You’ll be invoicing directly across probably a few regions, so make sure you’ve got the sales tax expectations in line, or you could be on the hook to cover that and end up valuing your work.

  • Get a rotator server going that will let you run campaigns, and track impressions and click through ratio (CTR) for all your banners. Having the option to geo target will also open up what you can do. Allowing rotation for semi-exclusive impressions on one banner zone will also let you sell one spot to more than one client - especially useful if you have a lot of impressions and a month is too big for 1 person to want to buy out 100%. There are a few suites out there that will do this. Revive ad server (Formerly OpenX) can be tricky to get the hang of, but it is free.

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