Setting up advertising for a website
Discussion
Can anyone recommend the best way of setting up advertising on a forum? The site has very healthy uniques and page impressions, we are looking at ways of generating a revenue stream from paid-for advertising.
What are the best methods of going about this? Google's delivered a wealth of information but it'd be good to have a heads-up on methods and/or recommendations for companies that perform well. There's a lot of info out there and help making head and tail of it would be appreciated!
Google AdSense is an obvious start point, but I wonder if there's better options out there?
What are the best methods of going about this? Google's delivered a wealth of information but it'd be good to have a heads-up on methods and/or recommendations for companies that perform well. There's a lot of info out there and help making head and tail of it would be appreciated!
Google AdSense is an obvious start point, but I wonder if there's better options out there?
I use AdSense, have been approached by several alternatives over the years, most recent a couple of weeks ago, tried a couple but none deliver like AdSense. Depends how targetted your audience are, mine are very international so I guess I benefit from AdSense's IP targetting of ads and their global brand/advertisers.
If your audience are very targetted and traffic high, you might like to try approaching advertisers directly, those who use other networks might be a starting point - that way you get 100% of revenue instead of sharing it. I have done some of this too, but the extra effort wasn't worth it, so AdSense it is - though ppc is a minority of my monetization.
If your audience are very targetted and traffic high, you might like to try approaching advertisers directly, those who use other networks might be a starting point - that way you get 100% of revenue instead of sharing it. I have done some of this too, but the extra effort wasn't worth it, so AdSense it is - though ppc is a minority of my monetization.
The idea of approaching companies on a CPT rather than PPC appeals. For info, last month we had around 30,000 uniques and a shade under 10m impressions globally. The bulk of the user base is in the UK. Given this, selling on a CPT makes more sense as we can guarantee delivery of high visibility and it allows us to keep 100% revenue. Selling 1m impressions to 5 large customers appeals more and should be easy to manage?
Edited by Funk on Thursday 7th August 23:16
Sounds good Funk. Do you have a retail section at all? It's always worth having ads to your own site too, if you rotate them, then have one that says "Go here and buy our great new blue widgets" amongst the paid ads. Afraid I can't help with getting it started as I put my revenue generation into other avenues and have only ever been approached by alternatives. If you don't have a retail section, then why not start one? Traffic is the start, it's what you do next with it that makes your site viable or not.
No retail section at the moment, it's purely a forum. There is a merchandise shop section, but at present it's used for selling events tickets and club membership. Merchandise is something that's being worked on at the moment, but wouldn't be something we'd attract people to the site with really. Your suggestion makes a lot of sense.
Presumably there's no issue with combining both approaches though? Direct ads (perhaps a skyscraper) with an AdSense box further down the screen underneath?
Presumably there's no issue with combining both approaches though? Direct ads (perhaps a skyscraper) with an AdSense box further down the screen underneath?
I'm thinking of affiliate marketing, implementing a datafeed or two to merchants that might fit with your visitors. The forum drives traffic and visitors, the AM feeds section is like the shop on the way out that you really want to buy something from.
AdSense has a whole range of ad types and sizes that can fit in with just about any page layout. They used to have rules about other contextual advertisers (not sure if they still stand - never been relevant with me), but that doesn't sound like an issue anyway. AdSense works best "above the fold" I think the main success is for people who came to your page by "accident" and then see an AdSense ad that looks more likely as a place they want to go to. Your own advertising fulfills a different function. You can slip in a 768 wide single line AdSense ad line quite seamlessly almost anywhere.
Give it a go and play about, they have good stats to see how many impressions and how successful your varied placements are.
AdSense has a whole range of ad types and sizes that can fit in with just about any page layout. They used to have rules about other contextual advertisers (not sure if they still stand - never been relevant with me), but that doesn't sound like an issue anyway. AdSense works best "above the fold" I think the main success is for people who came to your page by "accident" and then see an AdSense ad that looks more likely as a place they want to go to. Your own advertising fulfills a different function. You can slip in a 768 wide single line AdSense ad line quite seamlessly almost anywhere.
Give it a go and play about, they have good stats to see how many impressions and how successful your varied placements are.
Thanks for your input so far, it's given me some good stuff to think about. We do already have a small degree of direct advertising in the form of a handful of companies who're related to the subject of the forum and pay a nominal annual charge to have a banner ad and their own section of the forum. I was envisaging having 'non-related' adverts for things like lastminute, easyjet, Virgin, Sky, car hire firms - that kind of thing - on a CPT basis alongside the forum sponsors. This means we wouldn't have any cross-over with them or be showing competitor products or companies (and hence why the idea of direct CPT with a small number of advertisers appeals, as it allows us to retain control of who's shown on the site).
Would AdSense have issues with the adverts that are already in place, or would it happily sit alongside those? I don't want to upset the sponsors we have already, although it may require a re-visit to the way we advertise them and/or the costs they pay. Currently I believe they're paying too little for the exposure they recieve but they're a legacy hang-over from the early days who supported the club as it started and grew and therefore are valued on a level greater than purely a financial one.
The aim ultimately isn't to become millionaires from it, but rather to secure the financial future of the forum so that we can continue to grow and invest back into the club with things like server upgrades, bandwidth, features and merchandise.
Would AdSense have issues with the adverts that are already in place, or would it happily sit alongside those? I don't want to upset the sponsors we have already, although it may require a re-visit to the way we advertise them and/or the costs they pay. Currently I believe they're paying too little for the exposure they recieve but they're a legacy hang-over from the early days who supported the club as it started and grew and therefore are valued on a level greater than purely a financial one.
The aim ultimately isn't to become millionaires from it, but rather to secure the financial future of the forum so that we can continue to grow and invest back into the club with things like server upgrades, bandwidth, features and merchandise.
What information do you know about your users? i.e. when they sign up, do you capture their interests, salary range, job title or anything similar? Essentially this info is gold dust to advertisers. They are much more likely to sponsor a newsletter going to a small number of tightly targetted readers who have a better than average chance of responding, than a scattergun approach.
e.g. Canon will pay you more to sponsor an email to 100 photographers than they will to send an email to 10,000 random punters.
e.g. Canon will pay you more to sponsor an email to 100 photographers than they will to send an email to 10,000 random punters.
The forum is a one-model enthusiast forum. We have only basic demographic information about the users such as locations and age groups, nothing further. However, what this means is that for companies that sell products relating to that car or other products that are likely to be of interest (eg. insurance, car-care etc) that there's a marketplace of enthusiasts for that product. Rather like Pistonheads, in fact! 
The only restriction with AdSense is they don't allow other contextual ads that work like AdSense does i.e. by spidering pages for keywords to trigger relevant ads.
"General" ads give a really poor return and I don't give them any screen real-estate (I have tried in the past). Connected and relevant ads are FAR more effective, I agree entirely with the 100 targetted impressions v 10,000 untargetted. You also have the likes of Amazon and Art.com to try as they have products for just about every site, but are also much more used than some. I'd look for merchants who sell relevant stuff and don't be afraid to go off on a tangent, you'd be surprised how some products sell on apparently irrelevant sites, I see it as about setting an ambience that encourages people to click.
Forums are notoriously difficult to monetize, I think an attached retail section would do better without seeing your site or what it is about. The beauty of doing this online is that you get detailed almost real-time stats to monitor what works and what doesn't. Don't write anything off until you've run it for at least a month though.
"General" ads give a really poor return and I don't give them any screen real-estate (I have tried in the past). Connected and relevant ads are FAR more effective, I agree entirely with the 100 targetted impressions v 10,000 untargetted. You also have the likes of Amazon and Art.com to try as they have products for just about every site, but are also much more used than some. I'd look for merchants who sell relevant stuff and don't be afraid to go off on a tangent, you'd be surprised how some products sell on apparently irrelevant sites, I see it as about setting an ambience that encourages people to click.
Forums are notoriously difficult to monetize, I think an attached retail section would do better without seeing your site or what it is about. The beauty of doing this online is that you get detailed almost real-time stats to monitor what works and what doesn't. Don't write anything off until you've run it for at least a month though.
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