I think it’s widely accepted now that inline placement of ads is really key for optimising Click Through Rate (CTR).

Bloggers instructions are as follows on this:

1. Log into your Blogger account at http://www.blogger.com.

2. Visit your blog’s Template tab and click on the Page Elements link.

3. Click Edit in the Blog Posts section.

4. Check the box next to Show Ads Between Posts. You can then select how often you’d like your ads to appear, such as once after every post or once after every other post.

5. Customize the ads and click on Save Changes when you’re done.

It is only possible to insert Google ads using this widget, and not AdSense for search boxes or referral units.

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Retailers have been doing this for years by using data collected on rewards cards to feed targeted promotions and ads to customers. Google has been experimenting with serving personalised ads based on search behaviour. Now it’s the turn of the social networking sites to tap into this ad man’s dream. 

According to Wall Street Journal, Facebook is planning to utilise personal profiles to offer up targeted ad delivery. This is surely where it’s at for social networking monetisation.

The WSJ reports says:

“The new system will let marketers target users with ads based on the massive amounts of information people reveal on the site about themselves, predicting what products and services users might be interested in even before they have specifically mentioned an area.”

Maybe a Minority Report future isn’t as far away as we think!

Current financial returns for Facebook are apparently showing around the $10 CPM. A shaped system of serving targeted ads should dramatically improve upon that.

Techcrunch say “There will be some who will question Facebook’s moves. Google has previously come under fire for delivering contextual advertising in Gmail based on the content of emails a user had received.”

Whilst I get a little bit jittery about the use of personal data I also accept that there is no such thing as a free lunch. There are so many widgets, services, software offered for free on the web that this has now become the expectation. I have to ask why this should be? Companies and individuals have to survive if they want to produce ever more wonderful products and quite frankly we should be thankful that they are only offering up some ads based on some spurious personal data entered into Facebook. Quite frankly, in the offline world we tend to reward good service or pay over the odds for products we enjoy, why shouldn’t we do the same in the online world or at least except the limited measures a company like Facebook is implementing to make their business viable. 

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The sooner the online nay sayers get a handle on that concept, the better!!

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In a marked development in the video ad field the YouTube ads will begin 15 seconds into each video appearing within 20% of the video panel.

Google said “the advert would then disappear within 10 seconds if the user had it not clicked to watch it.”

Having purchased YouTube for $1.65bn last November, it’s clear that Google are keen to start properly monetising the site. Video ads are a logical step in this process, although it will probably take a few incarnations to master a user friendly format as we’ve discussed in previous posts here and here. 

“The philosophy at YouTube is pretty much core to what we at Google do generally, which is that all the ads we serve need to provide value to the end user,” said Eileen Naughton, Google’s director of media platforms.

It is believed that News Corp, 20th Century Fox, New Line Cinema and Warner Music will be the first advertisers to tap into YouTube’s 130 million unique visitors per month. There is no doubt that more big names will follow with projections for US video ad revenues topping $4.5bn per annum by 2011.

It will be fascinating to see how this projected growth in online video ads affects TV ad revenues…

(Via BBC)

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Is it a shame that Facebook will rapidly become plastered with wall to wall ads? Not really in my opinion, it was inevitable, although the choice of monetising applications seems grow as every day passes.

Chitka say:

“This is the first ad service to create a Facebook compatible API allowing all Facebook Application Developers to monetize the traffic to their applications via advertising. With Chitika’s new Facebook compatible API, you will be able to easily integrate Chitika | eMiniMalls ad units within the pages of your application. This will allow you to monetize the traffic to your Facebook application while earning pay per click advertising revenue.”

Chitika won’t be the last to follow the Facebook gravy train - mark my words!

In fact we featured VideoEggs entry into the Facebook market here.

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However, VideoEgg’s core business is providing video functionality and selling non intrusive video ads. It’s amazing to think that they have been at this game since 2005 - and yet they are clearly regarded as one of the market leaders.

The thrust of the business model combines video advertisements and user generated content in innovative ways that enhance rather than disrupt the viewing experience for users.

VideoEgg call it “video advertising by invitation,” which includes the following features:

• Unique in-video ad units.

• All content is reviewed before an ad will ever run.

• Advertisers can run video or any type of flash content.

• Targeting from user profiles.

• Opportunities to run pre, post roll.

• Custom programs available.

• Reaches more than 12 million users each month.

Bearing in mind how difficult it is to get the right balance with video ads and content, VideoEgg have made a very good stab of producing something that will stand the test of time. However, they will have to work very hard to maintain market share in such a fast moving arena.

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Here’s what they offer.

• Creator of the video. Receives 40% of the revenue.

• Sharer or distributor of the video. Receives 20% of the revenue.

• Revver receive 40% of the revenue.

The system works by running ads at the end of viral videos. The process therefore works as follows:

1. Create a viral video.

2. Upload to Revver.

3. Publishers can share the video and make money for doing so. Alternatively, you can email a video with a send to friend button, embed them into your blog or social networking profile, or even download and share on a Peer-to-Peer network. As long as your a Revver member you can earn a revenue from distributing the video. 

A Revver Widget can enable you to put more than one Revver video on your page. This can help you share multiple videos at the same time.

In essence this sounds like a great way of monetising online video but can Revver really live with the likes of YouTube when they get their Video Ad act together.

Quite possibly in my view. YouTube are apparently heading down the road of contextual video ads embedded at the bottom of video content. This will rely on the viewer actively taking the decision to play a Video Ad - definitely some merit in that. However, the follow on ad method adopted by Revver could be very effective in carrying the viewers interest from the footage to a relevant ad. 

Both methods will undoubtedly survive along side each other - but obviously don’t bet against Google/YouTube adopting a variety of Video Ad strategies in the years to come. These are very likely to marginalise any competition. 

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A turf war is going on right now amongst startups and established companies trying to find the best way to integrate ads into online video content. It’s not an easy trick to pull off and solutions seem be diverse

However, the rewards could be huge with eMarketer predicting online video advertising to nearly double in 2008 to $1.3 billion.

The already dominant player in the field is of course Google’s YouTube. There appears to be nothing concrete at the moment and YouTube seem coy about where their heading on this one (in spite of various wide of the mark rumours). However, it is suspected that we will see clickable contextual text ads at the bottom of video content leading to a full video ad when clicked.

An apparent example is shown on NewTeeVee.

Looks a bit clunky to me - nonetheless I think we can all concede that these things are difficult to get right. Expect to see a comprehensive beta trial....

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According to TechCrunch the result is that VideoEgg provides functionality for 680 million video plays per month, from 23 million unique users.

The cutting edge sales team selling non intrusive video ads is now turning it’s attention to selling flash based ads into Facebook apps. Genius again!

This new ad network - aptly named EggNetwork will be competing with other networks like RockYou, fbExchange and Lookery. Judging by their previous successes I wouldn’t bet against them making a huge land grab in this field and knocking the competition sideways.

According to TechCrunch:

“They’ve been quietly active for weeks, testing the platform and gathering data. The Flash ad units (example) don’t do much until you mouse over it, and then text is displayed along with a video clip or interactive game of some sort. CEO Matt Sanchez says that they are selling at above $10 CPM. And they will split revenue from the ads 60/40 with the application providers (60% to the application).”

It’s going to be fascinating to see how this develops over the next few months.

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Techcrunch make the salient point that:

“Ad networks are the hot commodity this year, with AOL, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft all making big acquisitions. The size of those deals combined is nearly $10 billion.”

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Nonetheless, Glam Media (what I would term more accurately as a blog ad network) which gives prominence to women related issues has apparently been sounding out various parties in an attempt to raise a staggering $200 million in venture capital. This will be on top of the $18.5 million they raised in December 2006.

The funding placement document has apparently been doing the rounds all over the place and reveals impressive revenue growth of $21 million this year and a projected $150 million next year.

According to Techcrunch:

“The company is driving that revenue by selling ads for partner websites, not on their own page views. A minimal amount of research into their business shows that the company is an ad network, not a content site. In the private placement document, Glam describes itself in the first sentence as “Glam Media is a Web 2.0 distributed media company that is number one in reach for women as reported by comScore Media Metrix.” I believe this is a perversion of the term “Web 2.0″ and the company certainly is not the largest womens site on the Internet. While revenue growth looks good, Glam isn’t really a content site. They’re little more than an ad network that is claiming the traffic for all of its partners to make it look like a huge womens destination site.”

It’s an interesting insight into how traffic figures might be massaged for funding purposes. However, I’m not completely convinced that such accusations can be made without solid background evidence and Glam putting there side of things over on the debate. In particular, I really have doubts over the assertion “Glam isn’t really a content site” - even a cursory look at their sites would suggest there is rather alot of content being produced under their banner… Or is it?

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