How much to pay for online advertising?
I started really taking notice of the internet in 1995 after seeing a major company use a web address on a billboard in the middle of no-where. For me this was like the branding strategy of Coke – just blast it everywhere you can. (Not a strategy that many business can afford to do). However what really got me thinking was the fact they they had taken the effort to put the web address on the bottom of this 20 foot billboard.
Why? …. what did they know or expect was going to happen.
Well fast forward to today. Advertising online is a given now, not just on billboards, magazine ads, golf balls, pens, condoms (well … maybe not yet) but you get the idea.
The question is – what is this worth?
I mean literally. What is it worth to advertise on seek compared to My Career (2 Australian job site), or for that matter, what is it worth to advertise on a smaller travel portal in 6 different key regional demographics that suit your marketing strategy.
This is an area that has bugged us here at White Space Media because we really want the sites we represent to get maximum dollar for the space on their site and at the same time we don’t want our customers that are placing the ads to get the short end of the stick. so we have spent the last 6 months working on a set of rules and algorithms that will provide a website with a unique score.
This score is known as an AQR™ or Advertising Quality Rank™. We use data supplied from some bots, analytics and metrics and the human factor (mainly for the aesthetics of a site) to combine a score out of 100.
With this score we are able to standardise what a site is worth to advertise on, and for the advertisee (the company/person that owns the site) how much they are able to charge for certain positions.
Obviously there are more factors involved in this, but you get the general idea. We really are pushing for an industry standard that allows any business to view a list of sites that suit their demographic marketing strategy and place ad positions with confidence that this is the correct rate.
Now the real fun comes when we want to store large lists of suitable sites and allow the general public to browse by industry, geographic location, or price per ad and then book the spaces that suit them, pay and upload their creative.
Oh and of course we need to effectively deliver the ads and provide reports on CPM and standard metrics for both parties so they understand exactly how effective their ads/ad spaces are.
So that’s where we’re at… almost. A few more weeks and we should have something really exciting to show you. Stay tuned.
We all know internet is a very effective media to let the world know our product. Thats whay advertising cost are hugely invested here. My expenses range on advertising about usd 1000-1500/month since, i run small business category.
I expect this will be increasing 20-30% next year as my business grow up.
Here is an interesting concept I read about that might be a solution to the problem of keeping both your advertisers and webspace clients happy. Develop yoru inhouse system to include RSS Feeds directly into your client sites. Then let the Advertiser manage the RSS Content. This way your sites are free from the burden of constantly sourcing, you control both sides of the equation, and the Advertiser is free to test as they see fit.