Tags: Direct ad space sales bring in some of the highest revenues but also require the greatest effort to arrange. In Scott’s recent interview, Jeremy from Shoemoney describes how he sells ad space on his blog using a fixed price monthly tenancy rather than using CPM, CPC or CPA rates.
We surveyed the OpenX community to find out how they package their inventory for direct ad sales:
- 45% charge on a CPM rate (payment based on the number of times the ad is displayed)
- 38% sell a tenancy (payment based on displaying ads for a fixed period of time, regardless of the number of impressions)
- 13% charge on a CPC rate (payment based on the number of visitors who click on the ad)
- 4% charge on a CPA rate (payment based on visitors which click on an ad and go on to purchase a product / service)
Have your say… What’s the best way to do direct sales? What factors affects your choice?
Related links:
OpenX blog: How to set up your site for selling direct
OpenX forum: How do you price direct ad sales?
Early results are in, it seems that tenancy is quite popular accounting for almost 50% of the all responses.
What the main reasons for choosing to use tenancy? I suspect that for small publishers it’s a matter of practicalities. It requires less sophisticated measurement performance measurement tools and makes the number of contracts more manageable.
What do you think?
Comment by Oliver George — August 17, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
The best option would be to offer all options and let the advertiser decide how he or she wants to buy advertising. And let the publisher be able to set what advertising options he or she wants to offer.
Comment by Fahd — September 29, 2007 @ 12:36 am
Fahd: my experience is that advertisers/buyers don´t want too many options, so I wouldn´t opt for such a modell in order not to scare them away
Comment by Italienaren — August 22, 2008 @ 6:39 am
I agree that advertisers want things simplified. For many of them, such as my local advertisers, even a basic CPM based ad structure is too complex. I recommend tenancy if your target advertisers are not experienced buyers of online ads.
Comment by Barry Parr — October 22, 2008 @ 7:30 pm
I agree that advertisers want things simplified. For many of them, such as my local advertisers, even a basic CPM based ad structure is too complex. I
Comment by Ricky — August 27, 2009 @ 1:45 am
This is so true, they are the hardest to arrange but in many ways they can be the most profitable. A website launched recently called Bidswamp at bidswamp.com allowing advertisers and site owners to directly interact and transact the problem is not many site owners are getting involved in the process as the site currently isn’t popular enough. Hopefully one day many will make the switch.
I myself see the SEO industry going into recession in a few years if it’s not almost in recession now as industry niches become completely saturated as we have seen in the adult industry and SEO “experts” will have a much harder time optimizing and charging more. There will be a greater demand for direct banner ad placement as not everyone is fan of a PPC Ad network campaign as they say “It’s all sweet until the money runs out”.
Comment by Ad Space Auction — October 16, 2009 @ 5:14 am
Hello I am new here finding my way around, but it looks interesting and the comment by ad space auction, definately caught my attention!
Comment by Sean — November 1, 2009 @ 10:56 pm
,..] blog.openx.org is one interesting source of tips on this subject,..]
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