Re: UKNM: Re: UKNM Digest V1 #383

[Ray Taylor]

Charles Linn <

charles [dot] linntpd [dot] co [dot] uk

> said:


 >A friend of mine who works for a large contract publishing house have a web

 >property, which has about 700,000 page impressions a month, and they sell

 >all of the inventory at rate card of £20 CPM, much to my surprise.  The

site

 >does not currently make money, but it is not far off.  If they had 50% more

 >pages (hardly an ambitious target), then they would be making money.

 >Needless to say that site makes money for the holding company hand over

fist

 >in share prices - plus ca change!  <<<<


It's not unusual for a good niche market site to sell out in this way. There

aren't enough of them. And presumably the publisher in question already has

the contacts to sell the ads to.


Creating 50% more ad impressions can hardly be a problem since all they have

to do is spend some of the ad revenue on ads on other sites to bring more

customers in and do some basic online marketing (slower but often more cost

effective). Alternatively, allocate some of the impressions (but not too

many) to exchange with other sites.


I know of one or two of the majors who are happy to exchange banner

impressions, one-for-one, with smaller sites in order to make use of their

own unsold inventory to build up their own traffic for seasonal peaks.

Honour forbids me from saying which, I'm afraid.


 >What I would like to know is how

 >prevalent is this situation of;


 >1. Selling all you inventory at rate card or very near

 >2. not having enough page impressions

 >3. nearly breaking even


This happens. But more to the point, there is a complete absence of quality

sites in many areas and we end up putting more advertising with the major

portals for lack of specific/niche sites. The most glaring to my mind is the

gardening and home care department, though soon to be fixed by those

wonderful people at Designercity.


Anyone up for launching a decent offering for the oldies market?


 >Looks like the future could be rosy for the advertising model after all.

 >Needless to say I have a few suggestions for this friend as to how to build

 >his traffic, which will be exchanged for a few beers.


Nothing wrong with the advertising model at all. So long as you create a

good site where there is a need (rather than being a "me-too" merchant) and

have lots of advertisers waiting to spend money with you. As I said, if you

are a publisher, you probably already have advertisers. If you are not,

where are you going to find them? This is not a rhetorical question. It's a

question you should ask at the business planning stage, not post-launch.


I only wish I had a fiver for every telephone call I get saying "we've just

launched a site and wondered if you can sell our advertising for us."


Ray Taylor

020 8249 6313

eyeconomy online advertising www.eyeconomy.com 



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