

Ask HN: MixcloudAds, if we white-label it would you use it? - matclayton

Screencast: http://vimeo.com/9690050<p>Once we started running ads on the site, we very quickly realised the whole process of selling the ad, receiving the banner, invoicing the advertiser, receiving the money, trafficking the ad and reporting the progress back to the advertiser is very time consuming.<p>Therefore we set out to solve this problem by building a self-serve direct ad server – an entirely tech driven solution that enables any advertiser – large or small – to set up and serve an ad on Mixcloud within minutes. Sweet!<p>Since going Live 3 days ago, we are now selling a very significant % of our inventory through the new system, this could be a honeymoon period, could be a serious revenue source.<p>The good news is we built the system on Google AppEngine independent from our main code base, and with white-labeling in mind from day one. If we were to release this as a white-label product, would any of you actually use it? We would probably use PayPal Adaptive Payments and take a % of ad sales, so no win no fee kind of model.<p>Mat
======
sstrudeau
This sounds like something that would go high up on our evaluation list for
the company I work for -- for us, there's a big space between our bread-and-
butter high end advertisers and the remnant networks filled with advertisers
that would like to make sub $5k buys but take as much or more effort than
advertisers on the other side of that line.

That said, a pricing model as a % of revenue would probably be less attractive
than a cost based on some function of resource utilization -- we don't
necessarily need to give you incentives to figure out how to max our revenue;
let us worry about optimizing our pricing and maximizing sales; you focus on
providing us a kickass product.

Also, ideally we'd be able to traffic ads sold via self-serve into our
existing inventory (i.e., not a separate unit or zone) AND avoid overselling
impressions we don't have (e.g., we frequently "sell out" of certain
geotargeted metro areas) -- so it'd probably be best if it worked in tandem
with our ad serving software (currently Google Ad Manager/DFP).

------
lambdom
Presently, on the webpage of mixcloud, there's an ad that repeat itself
horizontally (Like a tile). That's the new kind of bug you can have if people
automatically upload a wrong sized image ;) But I like the idea and I'm sure
you can fix that bug quite easily.

~~~
matclayton
yeah we only just spotted that one, fixing it now :) Always amazed by the new
ways users find to break stuff. But that one we should have caught.

------
jfarmer
<http://isocket.com>

They've powered TechCrunch's ads since last May.

<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/isocket>

~~~
javery
It looks like the majority of TC is being run through Google Ad Manager with
lots of inventory going to them (notice all the google ads). I don't see
iSocket's ad script anywhere on their page, maybe they interface to Google Ad
Manager?

~~~
jorazzle
John here, Founder of isocket.

Part of the "open" approach we're taking is not forcing publishers to use our
ad server if they don't want to. We have one, but some publishers (like
TechCrunch) use our plugins with other ad servers like GAM.

So you won't see our tags on TechCrunch's page, but many of those ads were
purchased through our system.

Cheers,

------
natts
Yes, possibly, depending what advertisers you attract and how much control
they and I (the publisher) get about what ads get shown where, and what kind
of inventory it can serve.

~~~
matclayton
We are finding most of the advertisers are users of mixcloud, and are buying
ads to promote either their blogs or their own mixcloud profiles. The idea is
the users of your site, buy ads on it, so community based.

Inventory is currently a single fixed 300wx250w image but thats just for our
use case, and would need changing.

