Self Service Tips for Publishers
Self Service Tips for Publishers
Self Service Tips for Publishers
In 2007 and 2008 Facebook and My Space, respectively, launchedself servicesystems forfor their advertisers to buy from. Other publishers watched as Facebook quickly won advertisers and earned significant revenue without the cost or difficulty of hiring a sales team.These publishers are now very interested in offering self service systems on their own sites.Self servicetechnology platforms can be built in-house or licensed froma third party (like an adserver or specializedsmall company).
Many publishers, big and small, want self service systems. Here at ZEDO we get manyemails each week from publishers that want to use one. Some will succeed and some will not. Here are some advantages to launching a self service platform in your site, and some tips to make it work.
For smaller publishers, Self Service can replace a sales team.
Small websites are generally managed by an individual or a small group of people. Hiring a dedicated sales teamto sell advertising is both an expensive task and difficult to do successfully. With self service smaller sites can earn some ad revenue directly, even without a sales team.
For larger publishers, Self Service can help your sales team expand demand .
Even if a site already has a dedicated sales team, self service can be a toolfor them, by helping to broaden their advertiser base. For example,Alexa.comis a well known site; It used to receive far more incoming emails about advertising than its sales team could respond to. With a self service platform, many interested advertisers no longer email, but instead click the "Advertise on this site" link at the bottom of the page. They create an ad, enter their credit card and start. As soon as an advertiser's spend exceeds a certain amount, a sales rep can contact her. In this way, small advertisers happily buy on self service and the sales team gets good information on who is big enough to engage with.
A simple UI keeps advertisers coming back.
Self service tools should have auser interface that is simple and straightforward; Advertisersshould be abletocreate campaigns within seconds. Some self service products also provide advertisers withbuilt-inadtemplates tochoose from. As a publisher you should select at least some very simple templates with few choices.(Simple is better: It's surprising how often advertisers who want to buy give up because they don't understand the choices.)
Deciding between standard and non standard ad sizes.
A publisher has to decide whether to use standard or non standard ad sizes. Non standard ones often fit better in to a site's layout. They also often get better CTRs as they can look more like content. However some advertisers may have existing standard sized ads and won't buy if they can't use these. So offering two dimensions is a good option. One tip is to offer both 300x250s for image ads and 100x80s for text ads. This gives you the flexibility to rotate 3 of the smaller units in a 300x250 space.
Be thoughtful about targeting options.
Self Service products offer a wide variety of targeting options. As a publisher you can set different rates per targeting parameter, (e.g. geographical location and gender). But don't go overboard. Too much targeting confuses advertisers and also reduces what they spend. If you offer city targeting someone may advertise only to people in LA and San Francisco. If you only offer state targeting, he's more likely to advertise to the whole of California. Consider the type of advertisers who are interested in advertising on your site, and offer a little targeting that they would want. A social network should offer age, gender and geo. A newspaper site might offer placements like home page, business section, travel section, weekend supplement and sports pages.
Maintain creative approval.
Be careful. Some advertisers will try to get terrible casino ads or even ads containing malware into your site. Therefore it is best to set up your self service system in way where the ads only go live after you have reviewed and approved them. To protect from malware it is safer not to accept flash uploads. If you really want to offer flash ads then offer customizable templates where the advertiser customizes the logo and the text but doesn't upload any flash code.
Promote your offering.
A last but important tip. When you go live tell all your site visitors on every page about the new, easy option to advertise on your site. Encourage advertisers to try it by placing an "Advertise Here" link under every ad. Even better, offer $20 of free advertising. Good promotion will get advertisers to test it out, like it and buy much more.
Self service systems are a useful tool. They should usually be used as a first step or to supplement other revenue streams as they won't provide sufficient revenue on their own. They are most successful if advertisers really want to advertise on your site because of its great content. Google sells billions of dollars per quarter with a self service system. While you might not be able to expect that kind of revenue, with a decent effort you can get some increased revenue, too.
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