Black Belt Web Marketing.pdf - Costa del Sol

5. Space Available: Another factor is how much space is available, or how many
advertisers the site already has. Few advertisers generally means that your ads will
have more exposure and won’t be rotated with a multitude of other sites’ ads. You
are less likely to negotiate favorable terms if a site owner already has a number of
sponsors.
6. Placement of Ad: Some control over the placement of an ad is important too.
Top of page banners generally generate more interest than bottom of page ones.
Exposure on the home page or on more popular pages is desirable. If you can
negotiate the placement of your ad, a recent study http://www.webreference.com)
found that:
Banner ads in the lower, right-side of the page, next to the scroll
bar, produced a 228% higher click-through rate than ads at the
more traditional top of the page.
Ads one-third of the way down the page had a 77% higher rate of
click-throughs than ads at the top.
This study not only identifies the most desirable location at a web site but it’s also
a reminder how much the effectiveness of an ad depends on its position on a page.
A site hungry for your ad may give you more say over where your ad will appear.
7. Performance of current and past advertisers: Although not always a reliable
Indicator because each ad campaign is different, you may find that the experience
of current and past advertisers is an indicator of how you will do. You may want
to consider contacting current advertisers to ask them how they are doing. Even
more important, see if you can get the URLs for previous advertisers. They may
have sound reasons for no longer advertising at the site being considered.
8. Willingness to Work with You: How willing the host site is to be flexible and
work with you is important. For example, what are the host site’s policies and lead
time regarding ad changes? For multiple ads? This is important if you wanted to
change ads every 150,000 impressions.
9. Independent Audit: When you start paying for ads, it’s important that the site
being considered is able to provide independent audit of traffic statistics. You
don’t want to depend solely on the traffic information provided by the web owner.
With third-party audits you can be confident of reliability.
In Exercise 11-1, you’ll learn the importance of analyzing traffic patterns. You’ll gain a
Lesson 10 Pg. 14