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Do you find that self service ads pay significantly more than remnant advertising/ad networks? I know that a negotiated direct sale will pay several multiples o

by hooande 16y ago

Do you find that self service ads pay significantly more than remnant advertising/ad networks? I know that a negotiated direct sale will pay several multiples of what AdSense will, but do the self service ads come close to that?

buro9 16y ago
With adsense I was making a very poor return as click-through rates were quite low (it's a discussion forum). However I've got some advertisers really pushing to get in front of the audience for page impressions and exposure rather than click-thru. Basically the market I have is niche, and represents the largest site on a given subculture (fixed gear cycling). This subculture happens to be very cool at the moment so even beyond those wishing to advertise bike products to the community I've been approached by EMI Music, Adidas, Puma, etc all to put adverts on the site. I was going to just operate an intra-community rate to help support the cottage industries (sole traders who make custom courier bags for example) at a low rate. But now I've got very large brands wanting to put adverts on the site it's beyond the amount I can control, yet they are perfectly happy paying full market rate to get the brand exposure into this hard to reach niche crowd. So basically... for me, for my site, self-serving is incredibly lucrative. It's just that I have a full-time job, am doing an MSc in the evening, run several web-sites and am trying to keep a social life intact and a partner happy. So whilst self-serving is lucrative my trade-off is that time for my is very expensive. So I need as near to full automation as possible to take all this lovely money off the table and to put it into the community coffers. I'm estimating it's worth at a low-end GBP 500 per month, and at an upper end GBP 4k+ per month if all of the slots are purchased by large brands. So yes, it's way in excess of what AdSense click-throughs will generate, and all because those who want to advertise on my site value exposure and eyeballs more than click-throughs... we're just hard to reach.
- GBond 16y ago
  why not hire a salesperson and pay via commission?
  - buro9 16y ago
    Because I don't need a salesperson, I need an administrator. And what needs administrating is something that can be done easily by some software... so why demean someone by making them do a highly repetitive and dull task?

by hooande 16y ago

buro9 16y ago

With adsense I was making a very poor return as click-through rates were quite low (it's a discussion forum). However I've got some advertisers really pushing to get in front of the audience for page impressions and exposure rather than click-thru. Basically the market I have is niche, and represents the largest site on a given subculture (fixed gear cycling). This subculture happens to be very cool at the moment so even beyond those wishing to advertise bike products to the community I've been approached by EMI Music, Adidas, Puma, etc all to put adverts on the site. I was going to just operate an intra-community rate to help support the cottage industries (sole traders who make custom courier bags for example) at a low rate. But now I've got very large brands wanting to put adverts on the site it's beyond the amount I can control, yet they are perfectly happy paying full market rate to get the brand exposure into this hard to reach niche crowd. So basically... for me, for my site, self-serving is incredibly lucrative. It's just that I have a full-time job, am doing an MSc in the evening, run several web-sites and am trying to keep a social life intact and a partner happy. So whilst self-serving is lucrative my trade-off is that time for my is very expensive. So I need as near to full automation as possible to take all this lovely money off the table and to put it into the community coffers. I'm estimating it's worth at a low-end GBP 500 per month, and at an upper end GBP 4k+ per month if all of the slots are purchased by large brands. So yes, it's way in excess of what AdSense click-throughs will generate, and all because those who want to advertise on my site value exposure and eyeballs more than click-throughs... we're just hard to reach.

GBond 16y ago
why not hire a salesperson and pay via commission?
- buro9 16y ago
  Because I don't need a salesperson, I need an administrator. And what needs administrating is something that can be done easily by some software... so why demean someone by making them do a highly repetitive and dull task?