Chris Petersen has a successful blog. He generates millions of page views monthly, which he currently monetizes with Google AdSense and a couple of other ad networks.

He also gets about 10 - 20 emails from advertisers every day. Requests range from “Send me your price list (or rate card in advertising lingo)” to “Can we get a 40% discount if we commit to advertising for 6 months”.

Poor (and I use that term lightly) Chris just wants to write content so he does a quick search on Google, and discovers a little tool called Trafficspaces. Great. Now, advertisers can just book their ads online and get their discounts automatically. Problem solved. Err, no.

It turns out that Chris doesn’t really know what price to sell his ad spaces - $10CPM for the home page leaderboard?, $0.10 per click for the text ads near the footer? To compound the problem, it turns out that his advertisers all have different opinions on what the “right price” is.

Solution - use an auction. Duh! Google does it, Facebook does it. Of course, it makes sense. Why didn’t I think of that before.

This story is pretty common, so we’ve added auction-based pricing to Trafficspaces.

Here is how it works:

1. You set up your minimum price, and the incremental amounts that advertisers are allowed to bid.

2. At checkout, the advertiser specifies their budget and their max bid price

3. For every impression that is served, the ad server runs an auction and the ad with the best bid and performance wins. Simple.

Now you have the elegance of Facebook and Google Auctions for a fraction of its price.

ShareThis

1. Increased Control/Transparency - With Federated Media or any ad network, there is a Chinese wall that shields Techcrunch from its advertisers.
   
   This may not look like a big deal when you are a small blog but as a growing business, it is important to understand your customers and build a relationship with them. Systems like Trafficspaces allow you to do just that. Our API even allows you to get a data feed of all registered users and integrate it with your own system.
2. Increased Profit - This one is quite obvious. Get your own self-serve system and keep 100% of your ad sales revenue. It makes economic sense especially during these uncertain times.

In summary, there is a clear trend toward systems like Trafficspaces. We see it in the quality and quantity of enquires that come in every day. We welcome it and are prepared to satisfy the demand.

With the help of our existing users, we’ve launched a simpler ad campaign workflow, flexible pricing, discounts, coupons, branded storefronts, direct payments into your account and lots more.

Thanks everyone and keep the feedback coming.

ShareThis

Coupons

Promotional Codes are extremely popular online. They offer a huge incentive to shoppers. They are particularly important now as shoppers (and advertisers alike) are looking for bargains online. According to a recent survey by Harris Interactive, 1 in 4 shoppers actively seeks out a coupon before purchasing a product. Everyone from Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Godaddy, Macy’s, Target, Travelocity, Dell, at&t, Norton, Home Depot and tens of thousands more use them to increase sales and reward customers.

In short, if you are not already using coupons, you need to start using them to drive sales. How?

With Trafficspaces, you can now create your own ad sales coupons. You can set the choose between flat rate and percentage coupons, expiry date (to create urgency), set minimum order value etc.

As shown below, when your advertisers are going through checkout, they can apply the coupon code and the system will give them the applicable discount automatically.

You can even use it to provide refunds to advertisers for cancelled campaigns. Cool, huh

For more information, see the 10 Guidelines on E-Coupons and Digital Discounts.

Discounts

To encourage advertisers to purchase large order quantities, we’ve added a new feature that allows you to give advertisers discounts when their order size gets larger.

For example, you can state that up to 50,000 impressions attracts a 5% discount and up to 100,000 attracts 10% discount, or as shown below, up to 3 months attracts a 5% discount and a 12 month order attracts 25% discount

Times are tougher these days and advertisers are hunting for good bargains online and these new feature will help you give potential advertisers exactly what they want. Get started now.

ShareThis

The sponsorship model usually has two key attributes -

1. a minimum time period and
2. an incremental time period.

For example, in selling their ads, the current Techcrunch advertising policy currently requires that advertisers order for at least a two month term, followed by a month-to-month plan.

If you would like to structure your ad sales in a similar way, Trafficspaces new has a new feature that allows you to achieve your goal - Minimum and Incremental Sales Quantities. You can find it in the Setup->Inventory->Pricing section.

It is a great way to standardise your advertising policy and even better, it is available on all Trafficspaces packages. Try it out.

ShareThis

Nowadays, it is increasingly commonplace to see an “Advertise With Us” link on many websites.

After all, short of a few paid subscription sites like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times etc, most web content is consumed for free, and is supported by advertisements.

Therefore, it makes sense to put up a link that helps potential advertisers get started.

Typical “Advertise With Us” pages usually follow one these formats:

1. The Classic Form / Email

This is the simplest approach. Put a form that submits to a script, which forwards the content to your email or dumps it in a database for retrieval later.

Alternatively, you can just provide your email on the page. This is a basic approach but by far the simplest to implement. An example.

Pros: Simple to implement
Cons: Emails may be picked by spammers. Yet another form to fill, can discourage impulse buyers. Provides no promotional material to the advertiser.
Example:    DeviantArt.

2. The Media Kit

Write a brief synopsis on the merits on advertising on your site(s). Specify your traffic stats. Describe your target audience. Perhaps, include one or two charts, or even a screen shot and you are done.

Pros:    Gives the advertisers a more compelling reason to advertise.  Professionally prepared PDF media kits can be very effective with brand advertisers.
Cons:    Traffic stats & charts need to be updated regularly.
Examples:    BusinessWeek, TechCrunch

As outlined above, both methods have their pros and cons. However, they share one common problem - the inability to convert the impulse buyer.

First of all, what is an impulse buyer. Simply put, someone who is capable and has a strong instinctive motive to purchase a product or service immediately or within a short period of time. The “period of time” is crucial because once it expires, the probability of selling  to the impulse buyer decreases exponentially.

To solve this problem, publishers need to provide at the very least, an online method of payment. Generally speaking, if you want to sell something online, you need to provide an online mode of payment. If potential advertisers have to call your phone or send you an email, it is very likely that you will lose a lot of advertisers.

Impulse buying is on an increase. You can observe it in how people purchase ringtones, songs (on iTunes) and increasingly in the purchase of books for the Amazon Kindle. Here is an extract from Fred Wilson’s review of the Kindle:

“Reading is addcitive on a Kindle. If authors and their publishers see that and make buying a book an impulse purchase (like a ringtone or a game on a mobile phone) they will see way more purchasing activity, more reading, and more addicted readers.”

The moral of the argument is that it is sales suicide to slow down the buying process or make it inefficient. It is similar to putting out a “Not Open” or “Not For Sale” sign.”

The common reason for slowing down the ad buy process is to maintain quality control. However, you can still maintain quality control if you use a system like the Trafficspaces Ad Manager. You have an option that allows you freeze any campaign from going out live on your site until you’ve approved all the ads in the campaign.

In summary, to avoid losing a stream of valuable revenue, you need to be prepared for the potential impulse advertisers that visit your website everyday.

To do this, provide them with the tools to make their final decision and act on it without leaving your site.

ShareThis