Can Someone Else Please Buy Some Adverts!

[Nonlethal Force]

Can I ask a purely honest question without implying that anyone istrying to be a crook?

If Supporter accounts are driven by time frame, why can't adverts bethe same? I mean, surely someone has to be able to know how many impressions hit in any given month, so then just find the average and charge that per month. Or, divide it by 30 and chargethat amount per day. So, advertisers could pick how long they want the advert up and pay for the time, not the number of impressions.

The upside is that in lean advertising months you get a bang for your buck. You advert is shown often because few others are being shown. Butit doesn't matter how often because itis a time-based thing.

The downside is that in peak advertising months you get less bang for your buck because they are more people advertising. But surely that would even out, no?

Anyway - an honest question, not trying to imply any hidden motivations or anything. Just curious, that's all.

 

[Melhaic]

Another sell. I was convinced when the player that was off in mind Oz didn't realize the idiot player had taken back his stupid action back.
Twice.
You must know most of the people I've gamed with.

 

[Morrus]

I'd be interested in advertising, but as has already been pointed out, the sheer speed at which banners get burned up put me off. Back in 2006 or 2007, I bought the small package of ads - I think I burned through it in under two days. I found it too expensive for that brief exposure.

A few people have brought that up before, and I've always been curious. You'd adveretise here because it's busy, yet the observation you've made is that it's too busy. If length of time is what you're after, for example, there are a gazillion sites on the net that get looked at at a rate of about once per year - 10K banner ads would last a loooong time!

 

[Morrus]

Well to be fair, it costs Morrus the same to serve a page with my ad on regardless of whether or not someone clicks on it.

So this way, the risk that my advert might not be compelling (either through ad design, or for being for an unwanted product) is borne my me; I pay to have it served to the user and it's my problem if they then ignore it.

If I'd paid per click, then Morrus would be assuming my risk, which wouldn't really be fair.

Google AdWords only charge you per click, but that's because they evaluate both the content of your ad (comparing it to the destination page) and the success rate, and then disqualify it if they deem it not good enough. They can do that, because it's purely text based.

That's exactly my view. While I'm happy to offer my - unprofessional! - opinion on whether an ad or a product is any good, if I were to only sell ads to which I was prepared to risk myself and guarantee clicks, I'd be very selective about who I allowed to advertise; I would not be willing to give away ad space to ads that I did not think would be effective.

As it is, I can't afford to be selective, because very few people actually advertise, so the only way I can make money on it is by impression.

If I was overburdened with advertisers, sure, I'd consider such an option; and I'd be rejecting a lot of custom because the ad wasn't up to standard or the product just wasn't appealing enough.

All that aside, I wouldn't consider myself any more competent to judge the viability of an ad campaign than the advertiser themself. I've picked up a few tips, though, over the years, all from my own personal experience selling ads:

1) Animated ads get more clicks.

2) It's better to show an ad to one person 10 times than 10 people one time each.

3) The biggest determinant of the success of an ad campaign is - quite simply - whether the product is attractive and whether the ad communicates quickly what that product is and why it's attractive.

 

[Morrus]

Can I ask a purely honest question without implying that anyone istrying to be a crook?

If Supporter accounts are driven by time frame, why can't adverts bethe same? I mean, surely someone has to be able to know how many impressions hit in any given month, so then just find the average and charge that per month. Or, divide it by 30 and chargethat amount per day. So, advertisers could pick how long they want the advert up and pay for the time, not the number of impressions.

The upside is that in lean advertising months you get a bang for your buck. You advert is shown often because few others are being shown. Butit doesn't matter how often because itis a time-based thing.

The downside is that in peak advertising months you get less bang for your buck because they are more people advertising. But surely that would even out, no?

Anyway - an honest question, not trying to imply any hidden motivations or anything. Just curious, that's all.

Software limitations. EN World II will be much more powerful on the ad flexibility side.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Software limitations. EN World II will be much more powerful on the ad flexibility side.

Thanks for the reply, and I hope that the flexibility of the future version of EN World will make advertising more manageable and relistic for the siteand the advertisers.

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

When we started to take advertising, we took a number of soundings as to what people would want to see/tolerate (note: obviously the results are particular to YSDC). Almost universally people didn't want animated ads and said they would ad-block everything if we offered those. In our case I can understand that as we have an animated forum topic scroller and two different pieces of animation on the same visible page which is too much for my brain to feel comfortable with; but then people were unhappy with the idea of turning off the forum posts scroller, so hence our ad offerings are static.

I think the most effective advertising we offer is within the podcasts. People who download it, want to listen and we're talking directly into their ears (those poor souls)! The podcast ads also stay in forever, and are indefinitely archived.

Has ENWorld ever thought of doing its own podcast?

Paul

 

[Bacris]

Russ, if you transitioned to a cost-per-click vs a cost-per-impression, even at it costing significantly more (for example, instead of 10k impressions costing $15, or whatever the current formula is, you buy 100 click-throughs for $15), I would be extremely interested in advertising.

The problem I noticed when I did the ad was that I burned through those ads and had less than 1% click-through rate. Part of that can obviously be on my side for a bad ad, but when ads get burned up at such a fast rate, that level of security would be nice.

If ENW2 can do that, I'll be in for advertising

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

In a way, ENWorld is already offering that, as it currently has Google Adsense graphic banners running at the bottom of the page.

The onus does shift, and so costs per click can range from five cents to $30 (Legal/Medical), depending. $0.50 - $1.00 not being uncommon.

 

[I'm A Banana]

An ENWorld Podcast would be a godsend.

It could highlight community events, popular threads, ENPublishing news, trends in gaming from a 3rd Party + WotC stance, I could listen to it while browsing the boards, and, heck, it could even have personal moments like "Better Know a Poster" or even allow members to buy up time to say whatever they want....

I would be all over that like stink on a hobo.