Overlooked factor in PDF Sales

[Bloodstone Press]

One would think this a disincentive to rebuy advertising.

Only a little.

Did you report the errors?

I did, to no effect. But that didn't bother me because my goal wasn't to generate click-thrus. My goal was to generate awareness. As long as the banner is displayed, that goal is met. Click thrus are little more than a curiosity for me.

Back in the late 90s I ran a business on the net selling T-shirts. I can remember banners that had 19% click thru rates. Those days are gone. The Internet has matured passed the "fad" stage of development and has entered into its role in our lives as a common tool.

If 2% is average then certainly you should expect more from a target-rich environment like EN World, where virtually 100% of visitors could use your product and use products like it on a regular basis.

True. However, remember that a lot of the people on this site are the same people everyday. You and me. Once you click on a banner, and see the product it sells, will you click again? Maybe, maybe not. But you will certainly continue to click around this site, driving up the number of page views. Now imaging a couple hundred or thousand of us all doing that all the time, everyday.

It is a target rich environment, but it gets tapped out quickly because it is composed of a lot of the same people day after day. That's why, if I did see banner click thru rates from this site, I'm guessing they would start out around 2-4% and taper off quickly until almost no one clicks on it anymore because they either don't care, or already clicked on it and have nothing new to gain by doing so again. Note that the LONGER your ad is shown, the LOWER your average click through rate becomes. I don't know if that is actually the case with EN World, but I know that is the case with similar environments on the net.

But again, my position on click thrus is that those days are long gone.

For instance, I think that big list of ads and links at the top is a huge detriment to banner ads, that are forced higher up on the page and farther from the actual content. Much like the Sticky forum threads get subconsciously glossed over because they are always there, I would bet that click-through rates would increase by placing the ads closer to the site's content.

I'm not sure I agree with everything you say here. I do agree that if you move the banners, perhaps placing them closer to the content, they would show a slight bump in click-thrus. However, you can only do that so long before people become desensitized to that as well. Then what will Morrus do? Change again?

I think I most disagree with the assertion that it is a "huge detriment." I estimate the detriment to be more on the scale of "small."

Often times, when trying to understand behavior, it helps to look at your own. I personally, almost never click on the banners at the top of the page. Is it because I'm desensitized to them? Or is there another reason? I think the fact that I am either not interested in what the banner says or, if I am interested, I already know about it, is a bigger factor than the fact that I sometime ignore the banner entirely.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that whenever a new banner is displayed, I *always* notice. My level of interest determines whether I click on it. After I've decided to click or not click, I begin ignoring that banner. Sometimes things happen that cause me to reevaluate that decision, but not often.

I think most people follow that pattern, and that's why Morrus talks about things like:

I've also seen some interesting strategies from people who have put some thought into their advertising which really paid off (for example, instead of using 1M impressions, have 4 separate ads simultaneously running at 250K impressions - that has worked very well for at least one publisher: 4 ad slots means the ads are appearing at 4 times the normal rate, and the ads vary frequently, preventing people from getting "immunised" to them).

A company that runs 4 different banners will cause me to make the "click or not click" decision 4 different times, especially if they each have vastly different messages.

 

[d20Dwarf]

Don't you agree that click-through is the easiest way of rating the effectiveness of a banner ad? Also, the effectiveness of the banner ad *placement* (read: which site it's at, and that site's treatment of the ad)?

As much as Morrus is trying to deny that his involvement has nothing to do with a banner's effectiveness, it most certainly does. If he decided to put banner ads at the bottom of every page, then I guarantee hits does not equal views. My point is that it's possible to maximize the value of every hit, not that we can magically induce people to click on an ad.

You do realize that ad-banner revenue has risen for the past 2-3 years after its initial explosion and then deflation, things are starting to rise again because people are learning to maximize each view with different techniques. All views are not created equal.

 

[HellHound]

As someone who once made a fair chunk of money through banner ads (www.ambient.ca 's advertising revenue back in the day was approaching 4 digits monthly), the 'rise in ad-banner revenue' in the past 2-3 years has been minimal. Banner advertising does -not- produce click-throughs anymore, and the price per impression, while double what it was three years ago, is still a mere fraction of what it was during the prime.

IMO, mind you.

 

[HellHound]

Now, back to the orignal topic about web hits driving sales - I FULLY believe in this.

One of the reasons that I work with Russ now was because I was looking for a way to get my products on the ENWorld front page more often than I did. As it was, I could show spikes in my sales every single time that one of my products appeared on the front page here. And the day that Russ posted that he was going to BUY one of my products on the front page, I sold an extra 50 copies (January, 2002).

There are two VITAL things to do as an e-publisher - get your product on RPGnow (d20 products on RPGnow sell themselves in small numbers, even with NO publicity), and GET IT ON THE FRONT PAGE @ E.N.WORLD!


---
Heck, in 2002, I posted the invitation to my birthday party as a PDF with some d20 content and put it up for free, then got it advertised here. A lot of people downloaded my birthday party invitation.

 

[tensen]

Just a few quick thoughts
If he put one of your (or one of my) books on the front page in a similar way, we wouldn't see the same sort of sales, because some people would be dubious about the quality and content.

On one hand, it might not be a bad idea for Morrus to sell ad space like that. But, in a way he does that already with the banners. And, spotlighting books from other companies might diminish the perception of his own products when he puts them on the front page.

The answer to that is... he does. It is called a partnership. The Brood and Dark Quest both work in that manner. Although the price is a bit different than just money changing hands.

 

[The Sigil]

A company that runs 4 different banners will cause me to make the "click or not click" decision 4 different times, especially if they each have vastly different messages.

It's only anecdotal, I suppose, but I personally have completely "tuned out" banner ads... literally, I do not cognitively acknowledge their existence... they are filtered by my brain as I scan the page for text, not images. It took, oh, about 2 months after they were introduced for me to do this (my theory being that if I really *needed/wanted* your product, I'd already be googling for it so I won't waste time or brainspace with banner ads). Thus for me, I don't EVER make a "click or not click" decision - there's no decision tree... I just hop merrily along completely ignoring banner ads.

And of course, half the time I'm surfing in Mozilla with popups and images turned off anyway. :/

Again, it's anecdotal evidence, but I've always run my PDF publishing with the theory, "I'm going to act as though I were my own customer." Since banner ads are completely ineffective on me as a customer, I reject them as a publisher. Similarly, placing ads for my "other books" in the last couple of pages of my current book annoys me as a customer, so I never do it as a publisher (in fact, I often make it a point NOT to buy things advertised in such a way, even if I had been planning on buying the book before I saw the ad - on the theory that when I buy a book, I'm paying for the BOOK and I don't want the ads... and yes, I use Acrobat to excise ad pages in PDFs I buy so I never see them again, too).

Is this the "best" model for the bottom-line, business-wise? Maybe not. But I'm going to run my business the way I feel is "right" and if that costs me a little profit, well, so be it. At least I can look myself in the mirror and not say, "hypocrite, you do as a businessman what you hate as a consumer." I'm NOT saying that anyone here is doing that, by the way, I'm just saying there are certain things that I personally just don't do as a businessman because I get rubbed the wrong way by them as a consumer. It's an obsessive-compulsive thing, if you believe my wife.

Not sure why I contributed all that, just the comment about making a decision on a banner ad sparked it. I made my decision on banner ads about 2 months after they first appeared - "they're a waste of bandwidth and they annoy me, so I'm ALWAYS going to ignore them."

I understand why people say that "banner revenue supports {insert site here}" but my philosophy is, "think of your webpage as though it were your phone line or your P.O. Box - it's a business expense for communicating with your customers, and you should treat it as a utility expense, not as a source of revenue." In other words, expect to PAY to have a webpage, not to make money for having a webpage in the same way you expect to pay to have a phone line, not to make money just for having a phone line. It's the "stuff you're selling" - which does NOT include ads - that will "bring in revenue" (again, using the phone line analogy). Bad business? Maybe. But I for one basically ignore pretty much anything online any more that's not text.

--The Sigil

 

[Cergorach]

banners
To make a better analysis for placing the banner ad, i would suggest that you would start with tracking which resolution people use when browsing your site, what operating system, and what browser they use. At home i run at a reslution of 1600x1200 (XPpro, Mozilla1.5), at work at a resolution of 1024x768 (NT4, IE5.5). At work the banner ad is more present than it is at home.

@1024x768 the banner ad is in the top middle, big enough to be noticed instantly.
@1600x1200 the banner ad is in the top right corner and isn't all noticable at all.

One of the things i would suggest is to place it always in the middle top. The other is to add an extra banner placed under each day header, might generate some extra income...

page hits
Don't forget that this is more of an community site than a product site, so for example the forums wouldn't be as good a page to advertise as for example the news page or the review section. People generally look at the review section to seek a product they might find interesting, the main page is generally the news page, as a lot of the news is D20/OGL/D&D product oriented, chances are that people that look at the news are actually interested in new products. The forums on the other hand have a lot of people that aren't that interested in buying new products.

Maybe it would be interesting to document the click-tru attempts in each section of the site. Although i agree that the click-tru rates don't mean that much in general, there just isn't any other way to measure banner view time any other way. Also comaring click-tru rates on different parts of the site does indicate a certain concentration of interested potential buyers in a certain part of the site (or not). If things like this are measured you could ask a higher price for premium spots, and a lower price for sub-optimum spots. Hmm, looks like i'm back at the banners again...

banner software
I'm not sure what kind of software enworld uses, but it looks phpnuke like. I know that nukescripts.com has a decent banner client, maybe worth it to take a look? More information on stats and more control on the client side would probably mean greater revenues for enworld...

The answer to that is... he does. It is called a partnership. The Brood and Dark Quest both work in that manner. Although the price is a bit different than just money changing hands.

That sentence conjured up some imagery that would even make mr. Valtera blush... ;-)

 

[Cergorach]

It's only anecdotal, I suppose, but I personally have completely "tuned out" banner ads... literally, I do not cognitively acknowledge their existence... they are filtered by my brain as I scan the page for text, not images. It took, oh, about 2 months after they were introduced for me to do this (my theory being that if I really *needed/wanted* your product, I'd already be googling for it so I won't waste time or brainspace with banner ads). Thus for me, I don't EVER make a "click or not click" decision - there's no decision tree... I just hop merrily along completely ignoring banner ads.

'Tuned out' sounds good, but your brain still records the image, the record of it is still in your brain, and your brain will react to that information when you least expect it to (or want it to).

But you are right about the 'decision tree' most people don't have that anymore (or never had). I think it's more by accident that people look at banners than anything else, for example the see it when the rest of the page loads slowly.

And of course, half the time I'm surfing in Mozilla with popups and images turned off anyway. :/

That on the other hand would make banners pretty useless for you ;-)

 

[meatpopsicl3]

Practical Ideas

Well, I'd certainly be interested in hearing if anyone has any (practical) ideas re. advertising here. I've often tried to think of something to supplement traditional banner ads, for example, but I don't want to do anything which would distract from the site's basic functionality. Making things too intrusive just annoys people.

To answer Morrus' unanswered question, just off the top of my head I can think of a half-dozen different ways to do advertising that I believe are all practical:

1. Instead of a Banner, have a short product description (just a tagline - 1 maybe 2 sentences) with a download link for the demo and a More Info Link to the sell page on RPGNow. That would fit in the same space as the Banner Ad, but would "shake things up." The lucky first vendor who would be given the opportunity to do this would (I imagine) receive A LOT of hits just because people wouldn't be used to seeing that particular kind of content in that space.

2. Instead of a Banner, have a Review Quote. Same as #1. Again, I think this would be practical and pretty easy to do (if you know your PHP).

...etc... basically, just by mixing up the content, you are going to surprise a lot of people and I believe people will click just because they're not used to seeing that _type_ of content in that particular space.

By using the same physical space as a Banner Ad, it wouldn't be obtrusive or annoying.

IMO, of course.