Advertising Networks

Advertising Networks

by Xaviar Xerexes - 12/30/2005 - 22:53

I asked on the old forums about advertising networks and which ones were the best:

For regular banner ads I think Keen is using Burstnet and several Dumbrellistas are using Indie Media. I think Blank Label is doing it inhouse at this point. Anyone else worth thinking about?

I've used Google ads too but never made much back from them (nor gotten much traffic here from advertising on them elsewhere).

Manley has his http://www.openadnetwork.com/ but so far it's not generally available (or is it? that site is just a picture right now).

KrazyKow mentioned:

And Coz mentioned:

Since then D.J.Coffman also posted this A-Z of Ad Programs in his $ blog which is helpful info.

So is anyone interested in talking the pros and cons of experiences with ads and stuff? What's worked best for you?

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by LGraf - 12/30/2005 - 23:07

What are blogads?

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by Xaviar Xerexes - 12/30/2005 - 23:13

[quote:3db3c59e88="LGraf"]What are blogads?

See those rectangular ads on the right? They're served by a company called blogads - Nokia for example came to Comixpedia through them.

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by LGraf - 12/30/2005 - 23:46

Ah, okay, thank you!

Something to keep in mind when the time's right.

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by KrazyKrow - 01/02/2006 - 21:29

I should update that...

Fastclick is still the best, but the banner ad market sucks. My ad revenue has stayed constant while site traffic has increased about 10 times.

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by Tyler Martin - 01/02/2006 - 22:03

It's important to go with more than one ad banner provider. Sign up with a few of them and test them out yourself, don't do any exclusive deals. They all have their ups and downs.

Daisychain them. Put the one that is working best for you first, then for its default ads specify them to go to the second best and so on. Many sites run 3-5 ad providers in their chains to maximize their fill rate.

Keep track of current ad campaigns, remove annoying ones or ones that do not pay that well and make sure you are offering the right ad sizes for the ones that are.

A comic with a 1000 uniques a day should be able to see a $100 a month profit with ad banners if they want.

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by Tim Demeter - 01/02/2006 - 23:24

[quote:3668b791b9="TylerMartin"]A comic with a 1000 uniques a day should be able to see a $100 a month profit with ad banners if they want.

I'd be interested to know how many indy comic distributing via print do $1200 in profit a year, and then how much of that then is actual profit after overhead.

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by RanJado - 01/03/2006 - 18:22

While I do not do a webcomic myself, I do run a webcomics network that does over 1000 unique a day.
We'd like to run ads on our network header to cover server costs as well as maybe get some cash to publish a book.
We first started thinking about it when a shop approached us asking if we ran ads(as we've just ran banners to webcomics on the network). We weren't sure what to charge. I think we were thinking maybe $7-10 for a week. But then we were thinking we should charge per impression, suffice to say we didn't know which way to go and did not sell our header.

Is an advertising network better than getting individual sites to buy advertising space?

Anyone have a general rule as to how much to charge (a day, week, month, impression) per unique visitor? (Like "For every 500 unique a day, $X amount for a week")

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by Kiba - 01/03/2006 - 20:51

Here a neat idea: Make adversiter complete for ads space!

Adversiter: one cents!
Adverstier2: two cents!
Adversiter: threes cents!
Adversiter2: four cents!
Adversiter: five cents!
Adversiter3: 15 cents!
Adversiter: 16 cents!
Adversiter2: 17 cents!
Adversiter: 18 cents!
Adversiter4: 10 dollars!
Adversiter2: 10 dollars and one cents!
Adversiter: 10 dollars and two cents!
Adversiter4: 50 dollars!
*All the other adversiter give up*
Creator annouce banner space goes to Adversiter4.

Anyway...that the idea.

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by Tom Brazelton - 02/01/2006 - 16:23

I've been using a combination of Google Ads and ads from a company called Tribal Fusion. I've also been approved at Advertising.com and have been thinking about giving them a try soon.

My Google ads haven't been doing that great for me. I don't know where Tyler get's his stats, but I pull down between 4,000 and 6,000 uniques a day and am only seeing about $150 a month. I have one under the comic and one under the blog. If he has any tips as to how they can pay better, I'm all ears!

The Tribal Fusion ad I'm running pays a little better. At least more consistently about $5 a day. But the ads are far more annoying. Stuff like "YOU'VE WON A WAL MART GIFT CARD!" so I feel like I've sold a little bit more of myself than I've wanted to working with them. I'm basically waiting for my first paycheck before I cut them loose and try someone else.

I'm going to keep experimenting with ad networks to see if anything lock in. But I have a feeling that I'll eventually be led back to where I started - and that's selling ads one-on-one to other webcomics. My rates were really cheap, too. So I would get a bunch of people reserving spots. It's a more satisfying feeling because you know you're helping someone else out. Plus, you don't look like such a schill.

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by Tyler Martin - 02/01/2006 - 17:00

Well, you have to ask yourself the question. Do you want your site to just be cool and less commercial looking... or will you bow down to popups and flashing banners to pay for your readers free content? Most of these are readers that would rather have that than to have to pay for something.

There seems to be a range of traffic you can have, on the low end, it's not going to pay anything for advertising, and you are probably better to not have any to hopefully make your site more attractive and help develop readership.

There's the insane traffic point, at which you can have your own advertising, and just pick cool advertisers and maybe none because you make plenty of money off books and merchandise sales anyway.

But then there is the inbetweener, just making it up to the part of the website traffic curve where it starts to get steep. They have to make that decision of how much they want to ad up their site. Currently it seems to be the main revenue potential for their given traffic. So how much advantage are you willing to take of it to maximize revenue?

Tom, I'll offer my consultation services and if you don't at least double your revenue you get your money back!

Heh, I just had a Rockstar Energy Drink... I'm going to go do an infomercial now!

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by spargs - 02/02/2006 - 08:31

[quote:ab5d266d82="tombrazelton"]
The Tribal Fusion ad I'm running pays a little better. At least more consistently about $5 a day. But the ads are far more annoying. Stuff like "YOU'VE WON A WAL MART GIFT CARD!" so I feel like I've sold a little bit more of myself than I've wanted to working with them. I'm basically waiting for my first paycheck before I cut them loose and try someone else.

Oooh yes, the one you have at the moment is a particularly horrendous flashing abomination. But I don't think anyone's going to think less of you for having these ads, just the ad company.

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by Tom Brazelton - 02/02/2006 - 16:16

If I had my druthers, I wouldn't have any advertising at all. Except maybe a small spot that I could charge a cheap rate on to help promote other web comics. I see no reason why - as a genre - we shouldn't be able to help everyone get a leg up.

But yeah... like Tyler pointed out. I'm an in-betweener and the bandwidth costs are a killer. Can't really pick and choose. Can't slide backwards either.

Got your e-mail, btw, Tyler. I'll follow up with you there!

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