

What is the value of advertising space on my site? - zeke77

I am getting to the point with my web site where I want to switch from filling ad space with Adsense to some direct deals with advertisers.  My question is, how much do I charge and what metric do I use (page views, clicks, etc)?  I know the easy answers are "it depends" and "whatever market value is" but I need something more concrete to move forward with so I 1) don't lose value and 2) don't sound like a complete idiot.  Thoughts?
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dejb
I'd say about 1.5 to 4 times the CPM for each ad unit of whatever you are
getting from google ads would be an average starting point. Higher end for
smaller and/or targetted ad runs and lower end for large run-of-site ads. If
there are a reasonable number of relevant advertisers on google then it
servers as a decent market sample.

Page views are the way to go because some of the ads you get from customer
won't be good. I wouldn't look at committing to a significant campaign based
on clicks unless you actually had the creative of the ads and had tested to
see the click through rate. You are liable to get customers providing you with
'branding' ads that will achieve a very low clickthrough rates and return low
CPM.

You have to consider a number of issues

\- Commission and/or wages paid to the salesperson.

\- Cost of chasing the ads, fixing their mistakes, and putting the ads up.

\- Cost of billing + financial transactions

\- Reporting costs

\- Cost of collection the money. Some customers just don't pay.

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petercooper
I'm not sure comparing with Google Adsense is a good idea, otherwise following
your advice I'd need to charge somewhere in the $70 - $160 CPM range on one of
my blogs, which ain't ever gunna happen ;-)

Anyway, just to be contrary, and because I've had success with it.. if you
have a site that's visible in a particular niche, consider selling fixed rate
"sponsorships" instead of advertising. I've had very good luck with this on a
particular blog that totally FAILED with Adsense (as in < 1% CTRs - a few
dollars a month) and it now makes about a grand a month.

The trick to doing sponsorships, I've found, is to both be prominent in a
niche, and to have some sponsors already. This sounds like a Catch 22, but you
can do freebie deals with friendly people in the industry until you get real
sponsors. I didn't do this myself as I wasn't that smart when I started doing
this.. and got the first two sponsors over the first 2 years and then all the
rest came within a month after those two!

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dejb
Wow. You are doing about over $45CPM per ad unit. That sounds really good. I
wish I was in that area.

But I think the principle still holds - if you are going to be replacing ad
views that are automatically and reliably earning $45 CPM then you need a
reason to do it. The 2 good reasons I can think of are 1\. More money. 50%
more to make up for your extra costs 2\. You want to diversify your income so
if adsense ever went bad you would be in a better position.

Maybe if you had an automated ordering system where people payed you upfront
you could go lower but otherwise I just don't see how it is worth it.

I agree with the sponsorships idea though.

Let me know if you are keen to sell me some of that ad space for less than
google returns :)

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alex_c
It does depend, on (among others):

\- your visitors' age, gender, location. A highly targeted audience is usually
worth a lot more.

\- visitors' intent (are they researching a purchase related to your site and
the advertisers' product, or are they looking at pictures of LOLcats?)

\- the product being advertised (mortgages or facebook apps?)

\- how much the advertiser's willing to pay (some companies will pay a lot
more than it's actually worth, but they probably won't pay you more than they
pay Google)

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noodle
to try and weed out the "it depends on XYZ" type of answer, i'll go this
route:

if you're app has a lot of pageviews associated with it, go with CPM. if not,
CPC. figure out your average CPM or CPC rate for your adsense blocks, and
double it. start from there -- if you fill up your space easily, increase
prices a little each payment cycle until you're comfortable with the income.
don't get greedy and make sure the customers are happy.

