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If it's a typical sidebar widget ignore the 'talk to an ad network' suggestions. If standard IAB banner sizes aren't right for your widget (and I really don't
by gyardley 16y ago
If it's a typical sidebar widget ignore the 'talk to an ad network' suggestions. If standard IAB banner sizes aren't right for your widget (and I really don't see how you'd cram one into a widget), then ad networks have nothing for you.
Don't price this by the impression. If your advertisers are thinking CPM they'll rapidly start evaluating what this untargeted, run-of-network inventory is worth, which is likely close to zero. You won't get a $1.00 CPM if you price it by the impression. You'll be lucky to get a $0.20 CPM.
Instead, I'd try and sell a few sponsorships, Deck Network style, each sponsorship granting a share of the traffic for at least a month and for at least a four-figure sum each. The audience is looking at a Twitter widget, so your natural audience is Twitter-related businesses. Develop an unobtrusive text-based ad unit, something like the promos for Twitter clients that Twitter itself runs on twitter.com, and then pitch it to every Twitter-related business you can find.
Remember, high prices for a big share of a really relevant audience and do whatever you can to keep them from thinking about the inventory in terms of CPM, because five million ad impressions is not a hell of a lot when rationally priced. You need to do a lot of hand waving and sprinkle a lot of fairy dust ('reaching key influencers', etc.) to sell such a small amount of inventory for a meaningful amount.
- ggrot 16y agoOne kind of ad you could run that wouldn't have trouble with cramming into a widget is popups. Don't downvote me because you hate popups, so do I. It's a legitimate possibility that you might consider looking into. If it's a question of shutting down the service because of bleeding costs or running popups on 5% of pageviews, its an interesting question.
- tworats 16y agoSponsorships are a fair bit of work to setup (from a sales perspective) but result in higher revenue. Setup the widget so it gets deeply skinned with the sponsor's branding. Check out pandora.com for a nice implementation - the whole site takes on the look and color of the advertiser. The first few sponsors are the hardest to get, but once you get going others will find their way to you and you'll be able to have steady income.
- RBr 16y agoIf standard IAB banner sizes aren't right for your widget then use text ads. CPM is always the last choice. Regardless of CPM, CPC or heck even CPA, test your traffic using private run of network ads. You'll have complete control over them so you can see the honest to goodness truth and be able to relay that to the ad network sales folks for initial measurements and pre-sales.