You may have noticed, as I have, that many women highly value their long hair. They regard that aspect of their person as very dear. You can imagine how personal the articles, products, and ideas featured at LongHairLovers.com can be to that specific audience. It turns out to be an outstanding place to advertise hair care products.
Other ad networks go for hugely impressive numbers. ValueClick delivers ads to a global audience - including over 30% of Internet users in the US. Banners range over 10,200 sites before 14 million people.
In almost all cases, banners are served up on sites according to standard subject areas like Automotive, Business & Finance, Careers, and Consumer Technology.
Mostly I've been thinking of small business sites. If you are in charge of advertising for a larger corporation, you may need a more extensive and personalized campaign designed by an ad agency. Most top agency, especially those hailing from New York City, have either established their own Internet ad departments or acquired smaller firms specializing in developing online ad campaigns.
The big guys don't seem to have any special secrets. The current method is to search the Net for appropriate sites and negotiate a price. A recent report figured an ad agency worker placed dozens of calls and emails to get a campaign going. There are now efforts to build a database network that will speed up the process.
How To Measure Your Site's Audience.
Most ad networks pay according to cost-per-click (CPC--how many people click on a banner) and cost-per-impression (how many people see a banner, usually sold on the classic CPM model I mentioned earlier).
Before you get into the game, you need a good way to measure the number of visitors you get on each of your pages. Your numbers of unique visitors is most important.
Your web host may already have a hits measuring feature in place for you site. There are also software packages you can buy off the shelf and online services you can connect to.
Perhaps the most popular and full featured is the free service at WebTrendsLive.com. The basic service requires you put their button on every page of your site. You can pay more to go buttonless. You get real-time traffic analysis and a gaggle of reports on visitors, page views, ad campaigns, and revenues.
One trick radio and TV use is to take advantage of all those reports. When you can view your audience from every which way, you can bet there is at least one perspective that makes your site look extremely attractive to advertisers.
Maybe you don't get a whole ton of visitors, but those who come spend an hour clicking through every page on your site. That shows visitors value your content and don't mind giving up a considerable helping of their valuable time. That is a a quality that would mean sales for many advertisers.
In the end, you may find it's the MEASURING and not the ads that make you the most money. Keeping a constant eye on your site's stats lets you make better decisions on where you place content, what kinds of content you use, what products and services you sell, and how you run your own ad campaigns. This invariably helps your site make more money from the sale of products, services, subscription fees, and through more efficient spending.
Kevin Nunley provides marketing advice and copy writing for businesses and organizations. Read all his money-saving marketing tips at http://DrNunley.com/. Reach him at kevin@drnunley.com or (801)253-4536.
