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:
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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.
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.”
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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.
]]>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:
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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 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.
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:
]]>2. Place a prominent “advertise with us” link on your blog. I like to then offer a fairly comprehensive form asking for the advertiser’s requirements.
3. If you have no example banners on your blog, keep some samples to show your advertiser what can be achieved.
4. Make your site stats readily available.
5. Highlight special offer ad placements.
6. Know your audience demographic and make appropriate data readily available.
7. Give some background about you and your blog.
8. Make sure your spelling and grammar are up to scratch. I know someone who was refused a lucrative deal on the basis that his blog was riddled with poor grammar.
9. Ensure that your blogs functionality is up to scratch. Are there links that don’t work, or text over spilling the site boundaries.
10. Keep your blog focused. Being all things to all men may just preclude you from the more lucrative ad deals.
]]>Here are my key suggestions:
]]>This one was recently mentioned on Problogger.
There’s nothing really significant about this other than to say that they look like a cross between a link unit and a normal ad unit. My gut feeling is that this development isn’t going to rock contextual advertising, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
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Use channels within your control panel or install Google Analytics to get a comprehensive grasp of what your traffic is exactly doing on your site. Work with that to see where your ad units are best placed.
Yaniv of Fixya.com says:
“There’s an added value in providing contextual ads in highly focused positions once you’ve gathered sufficient information on what the user is actually interested in, such as through a search query.”
Great advice…
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