8 ms·

Ask HN: Dedicated advertising?

9 points by endlessvoid94 17y ago

How does a site move from something like adsense into getting dedicated advertising clients like comedy central, specific vendors, networks, or companies? How much do they pay?

dkasper 17y ago
Think of getting direct advertising like any other business sale you will make. You are selling the advertiser on the idea that getting their ads in front of your traffic will be valuable to them. This involves either you contacting them or if you are high profile enough them contacting you. There are lots of blog posts out their with more detail on how to do this. After doing this a lot you will probably start to see the value in a good ad network in a new way :-) The amount you will get can vary widely but CPMs can be very high $5-$10 is a pretty good baseline, but it varies depending on a number of factors such as how much traffic you get, how targeted and engaged the audience is, etc.
apowell 17y ago
The fact that Comedy Central is your first example of an ideal advertiser means that you're probably not in a high-CPM niche. That's okay, but it means you probably ought to be running a couple million impressions each month to make direct sales realistic. At lower volume (say, a 500k/mo+ impressions) you can investigate banner networks like Valueclick, Casale, etc. If you go this route, hopefully you're not turned off by flashing punch-the-monkey ads. It's not high-brow advertising. Also look into augmenting your income with the contextual link networks -- Infolinks, Kontera. It's decent supplemental income. For a general-interest entertainment-type site without a high page churn (that is, not a forum or social network), I'd aim for $2.50 overall page CPM. This might require lots of ad units and creativity, but you can make that happen without direct sales. (Apologies if I've totally misread your niche -- in that case, hopefully all this is useful to someone else.)
- endlessvoid94 17y ago
  This is totally what I was looking for. thanks alot for your input :-)
proexploit 17y ago
If your site generate a relevant amount of traffic, you shouldn't have any trouble finding advertisers (example: if you run a televisions comparison website with a healthy readership, Samsung should come to you). As far as payment, it's going to depend whether they're paying by the amount of views their ad receives, the amount of clicks there ad gets, or the amount of sales they receive (you could start affiliate advertising for large companies today depending on the niche). The more info you can provide on your users, and the more targeted they are, the more they are worth.
- endlessvoid94 17y ago
  Thanks for your input. Do you have any idea how much I should charge? My website is www.thathigh.com and it's growing pretty constantly, sometimes exponentially. It's a fairly niche website, but I've never negotiated with advertisers. Should I offer $50 and work them down to $20? Or is that too many? (we're talking eCPM here, i guess?) are there any other types of payments out there (monthly for an ad or anything like that?) thanks, i'm a complete newbie with advertising, i've been thrown into a really good challenge and have alot to learn.
  - proexploit 17y ago
    Unfortunately, the "stoner" niche isn't known for having a lot of money (or at least spending it online) so it can be harder to find advertisers for. In your case, it would depend on the number of visitors you're receiving and where they come from. Visitors from search tend to do well with adsense or similar advertising. You may want to try buysellads.com or a similar service. Also helpful could be reducing the number of ads on the right side, focusing on the more relevant ones with hire payouts and present them as something more than advertising. Write a blog, make it a sponsored post like textsfromlastnight.com does, etc.
    - eliot_sykes 17y ago
      proexploit, exactly the information I've been looking for, I'm in a similar situation, very timely, thank you. Do you know of any other services like buysellads.com?

9 points by endlessvoid94 17y ago

How does a site move from something like adsense into getting dedicated advertising clients like comedy central, specific vendors, networks, or companies? How much do they pay?

dkasper 17y ago

Think of getting direct advertising like any other business sale you will make. You are selling the advertiser on the idea that getting their ads in front of your traffic will be valuable to them. This involves either you contacting them or if you are high profile enough them contacting you. There are lots of blog posts out their with more detail on how to do this. After doing this a lot you will probably start to see the value in a good ad network in a new way :-) The amount you will get can vary widely but CPMs can be very high $5-$10 is a pretty good baseline, but it varies depending on a number of factors such as how much traffic you get, how targeted and engaged the audience is, etc.

apowell 17y ago

The fact that Comedy Central is your first example of an ideal advertiser means that you're probably not in a high-CPM niche. That's okay, but it means you probably ought to be running a couple million impressions each month to make direct sales realistic. At lower volume (say, a 500k/mo+ impressions) you can investigate banner networks like Valueclick, Casale, etc. If you go this route, hopefully you're not turned off by flashing punch-the-monkey ads. It's not high-brow advertising. Also look into augmenting your income with the contextual link networks -- Infolinks, Kontera. It's decent supplemental income. For a general-interest entertainment-type site without a high page churn (that is, not a forum or social network), I'd aim for $2.50 overall page CPM. This might require lots of ad units and creativity, but you can make that happen without direct sales. (Apologies if I've totally misread your niche -- in that case, hopefully all this is useful to someone else.)

endlessvoid94 17y ago
This is totally what I was looking for. thanks alot for your input :-)

proexploit 17y ago

If your site generate a relevant amount of traffic, you shouldn't have any trouble finding advertisers (example: if you run a televisions comparison website with a healthy readership, Samsung should come to you). As far as payment, it's going to depend whether they're paying by the amount of views their ad receives, the amount of clicks there ad gets, or the amount of sales they receive (you could start affiliate advertising for large companies today depending on the niche). The more info you can provide on your users, and the more targeted they are, the more they are worth.

endlessvoid94 17y ago
Thanks for your input. Do you have any idea how much I should charge? My website is www.thathigh.com and it's growing pretty constantly, sometimes exponentially. It's a fairly niche website, but I've never negotiated with advertisers. Should I offer $50 and work them down to $20? Or is that too many? (we're talking eCPM here, i guess?) are there any other types of payments out there (monthly for an ad or anything like that?) thanks, i'm a complete newbie with advertising, i've been thrown into a really good challenge and have alot to learn.
- proexploit 17y ago
  Unfortunately, the "stoner" niche isn't known for having a lot of money (or at least spending it online) so it can be harder to find advertisers for. In your case, it would depend on the number of visitors you're receiving and where they come from. Visitors from search tend to do well with adsense or similar advertising. You may want to try buysellads.com or a similar service. Also helpful could be reducing the number of ads on the right side, focusing on the more relevant ones with hire payouts and present them as something more than advertising. Write a blog, make it a sponsored post like textsfromlastnight.com does, etc.
  - eliot_sykes 17y ago
    proexploit, exactly the information I've been looking for, I'm in a similar situation, very timely, thank you. Do you know of any other services like buysellads.com?