We’ve been using ad networks for quite some time now and average about $2k/day – which is great, but I know we’re missing a good chunk due to the networks taking their cut.
I’d like to get into direct advertising and cut the middle man out, but I guess I’m a bit unsure on how/where to start.
Any advice?
I think it’s a great idea to start selling your ads directly. we started doing this recently and we are making 10 times what we used to make with adnetworks.
what we did is adding an advertising info page where we ask potential advertisers to contact us and that’s how we sold ads on our website.
Take a look at isocket. They are the same people that icanhascheezeburger and techcrunch use. They charge a flat fee every month (starting at $20) and handle everything for you.
he is trying to cut the middle man.
alot of people think selling your ads dierctly is alot of work but I disagree with that. if you have a popualr site it’s really easy
I wouln’t call isocket a middleman (in the traditional sense). isocket is more like a credit card processor / payment system coupled with an banner rotator (probably an oversimplification).
You give them $20 a month, and you get 100% of the ad revenue. Plus, they handle payments, banner placement, pulling ads, etc.
The reason that I originally posted this is that I found selling ads yourself is alot of work. Finding clients, billing them, activating and deactivating ads can take a good bit of time (I would often forget to deactivate ads). I’m not affiliated with isocket, other than being a happy customer.
I agree strongly with you, if there is one thing I learned in my college days:
If it is NOT your core competency (ad serving), there is always someone that can do it better, faster and cheaper.
In your case your time is worth money and if you can cut out the time spent with advertisers by spending $20 or whatever the flat fee in your case might be, I’d say it’s worth it.
Even at their most expensive tier @ 399/mo, we would still stand to make much more using them than we are today. We push well over 25million impressions per month.
If today we’re making $2k/day – that means our 3rd party ad companies are at least making that from us, too. We cut them out and we’re only paying isocket a flat fee. I like it.
I’d rather spend my time coding and developing the site than selling and keeping track of ads. While you may see direct ad sales as easy, I do not as I have no experience with it and have no idea where to start. If isocket is my stepping stone to direct ad sales, then there is much value in what they do.
try them out for a month and let us know how it goes. best of luck!
I’ve been using them for some time now:
https://www.isocket.com/website/jeepz
and they are great to work with. I consider myself an advertising noob, and I was able to get setup pretty quickly.
I consider myself an advertising noob and this thread has been great, i have two websites , google adsence and amazon.com affiliates and i am making nothing really maybe €100 per month and I too want to get advertising directly, but i was thinking about wording an email and sending it on to certain companies would anyone recomend this ? or would adding an advertising info page be the way to go and if it is how would i go about doing it ? thanks for your time.
Hey guys, I’m John the Founder and CEO of isocket. I’m sorry to shill, but wanted to thank all of you for the love and add some helpful input to the convo.
To the OP - congrats on doing so well on ad nets alone!
Direct sales can be an amazing thing for the right publishers. But it’s definitely not for everyone - we reject about 85% of the publishers who apply to join. We look at things like size, vertical, brand safety, etc.
@kenmore: what we did is adding an advertising info page where we ask potential advertisers to contact us and that’s how we sold ads on our website.
That’s a great first step! But we encourage you to do better. For advertisers, a contact form can make them feel like jumping through hoops to do business with you. You MUST have your own .com/advertise page, but we encourage you to supplement it with an actionable profile on www.buyads.com through us.
If you’re interested, we did a blog post about great /advertise pages a while back
<snip>link deleted</snip>
Re @kenmore: he is trying to cut the middle man.
@terrymason’s description of us is spot on. We are not a middle man - we are a toolkit for publishers to control their own business. Publisher is in complete control of their pricing, who they do business with, etc. We just handle all the mechanically crappy parts, like invoicing.
From @yowen: If it is NOT your core competency (ad serving), there is always someone that can do it better, faster and cheaper.
Totally agree. It kills me when publisher’s ad sales people think that being “full service” or having “relationship driven ad sales” means forcing your customers (the advertisers) to do business with you in a much more painful way.
Your value as a human is in the relationships, the content you make, the community you build, etc. STOP WASTING TIME on silly stuff like 40 emails back and forth and duct-taping ad server tags together!
OK, important point coming…
@mschiano: If today we’re making $2k/day – that means our 3rd party ad companies are at least making that from us, too. We cut them out and we’re only paying isocket a flat fee. I like it.
Unfortunately brother it doesn’t work that way =(
The ad network middle men are good because they bring you the “demand” from advertisers. Thats why they make a big cut. You should probably keep running those ad networks - and isocket makes it super simple to do so. We just layer on top of them, so whenever you have a direct order through us we override the ad network. Which means there is no risk to you, keep making that $2k/day in the mean time!
The benefit of direct sales is you make a lot more per unit. If you’re making $0.50 eCPM now, you could make $10 CPM on direct orders. And what’s better is you control who is showing up on your site (everything is approved or rejected through isocket)
But it’s very important to know that direct sales is not some guaranteed stream of money. We make you no promises about if or what you will sell - that’s up to you. We do everything we can to help, short of going out and acting like the same old middle man.
isocket is no risk.
It’s free to start, and you only start paying the monthly fee once you’ve sold your first ad.
Want to give it a shot? We’re still a small startup but we’re growing like a weed, and we’ve got some killer new releases going out in the next few weeks.
Shoot me a note at <edited></edited> if you’d like to chat! Cheers
Thankyou for joining us. I certainly learned alot from your post. looking forward to read some more.
I must say I’m impressed with your websites. well done! you certainly have quality sites in your network.
I wish i knew about your service 3 months ago when my boss asked me to run a campaign for my companies website.
if my boss is to ask me to run a new campaign I certainly will use your network. I love it!
I noticed some sites are asking for at least $25 CPM, don’t you think it’s a bit high?
can an advertiser ask for a lower rate?
I think isocket is a good option however i think they have a lot of business that they may not be able to handle your ads as you want. So again i would advise you to limit yourself to individuals. My experience with companies is really not good.
Luke
Thanks for the kind words Kenmore. We’re in the early phases of the company but working hard to build kick ass products.
If you ever need to run campaigns again, please give us a ring. We provide completely free help to marketers, like a “concierge” for your marketing plan. We don’t make a commission on those sales, so there’s no weird incentives either.
Regarding $25 CPMs - it’s a fair question, but yes I do think those are appropriate for the properties that charge them (like TechCrunch and Mashable)
I should note that we (since we’re aren’t a middle man) don’t price inventory for our publishers. It’s totally up to them.
If you think about TechCrunch and Mashable, those are the publications of record for the tech industry. Modern day Wall Street Journals with a specific audience that is 10’s of millions large. There is a scarce amount of that kind of premium ad space in the world, and $25 CPM is way lower than the comparable authority channel in any other media (print, radio, etc)
What do you mean?
i just signed up to isocket there, thanks for this post was good for me wouldnt have heard of them without it thanks guys.
don’t you provide advice for publishers? let’s say a site been with you for 6 months and he has yet to sell one campaign mainly because the rate is high, don’t you think you should advice them to lower their rates
Oh yeah we’ll definitely offer advice when asked, and will sometimes proactively give it if we see a situation like the one you described. We also put some guides together to help first timers figure out pricing (I’d link here, but the moderator already scolded me)
If someone is 6 months in and they haven’t sold anything, I’d personally look at a couple things:
Have they properly promoted their “products” - it’s amazing how many publishers want to do direct sales, but you go to their site and there is zero mention of it. Its no dif than selling any other product… you have to let people know you’re open for business, and capture them well. Good /advertise pages, completed profiles on buyads.com, etc.
Pricing. Many inexperienced sellers overprice because they see the TechCrunch $25 CPM. Continuing the “selling a product” analogy above, the goal at the beginning should be to generate sales and build a customer base before worrying about profit maximization.
They might not just be right for direct sales. Other than standard stuff like size, vertical matters too. Some verticals have a large pool of demand (like tech blogs), while other verticals have little to no direct brand advertisers (home finance, for example)
i like to see your page about how to figure out pricing. please moderator do not delete it
I wont link here, but here’s some high level tips:
If you have no idea where to start:
First and foremost, talk to your potential customers (advertisers) and do price discovery. Throw out dif prices, gauge reactions, etc.
If you have a good track record with ad networks, take your eCPM from something like AdSense, and double it. Decent starting point.
You can also look at what sites very similar to yours are selling through sites like buyads.com
You initially want to price your inventory low enough where you are super confident if you spent an hour calling/emailing potential advertisers, SOMEONE would be like “well yeah at that price, for sure!” Your goal is to get the sales going and build a customer base, then you can increase the pricing.