Advertising Like Its 1999
By Mark Daoust© 2006
Starting a website used to be relatively easy. Register a domain
name, get a virtual hosting account, setup a basic looking
website, then choose from the literally hundreds of marketing
agencies that were willing to send traffic to your site for a
relatively small price. A lot has changed since 1999 on the
Internet, and maybe nothing so much as the way we market our
websites.
Some may be tempted to say that marketing has become easier in
today’s Internet. We know more about user’s expectations and
are able to better target our ads to users who are interested in
our websites. Through programs such as Google Adsense and
Yahoo’s Contextual Marketing programs, we can be relatively
certain that the clicks for which we pay are from people who are
actually interested in our programs (of course there are issues
of click fraud, but that is not the focus of this article).
But because our advertising choices have been effectively
slimmed down to just a few major ad networks, finding a great
deal in advertising has become much harder. Every website owner
is rushing to the major ad networks which creates a scarcity of
ad spots. The result is that ad prices are being driven up – and
your profits are being driven down.
After a little research, however, I learned that the small,
upstart, great value advertising options had not died. It gave
me hope that the good things of the early Internet could still
be alive in today’s webbed world.
Advertising on Blogs
Blogs are big. There is no doubt about it – everyone is starting
a blog. My wife even started a blog last month
(http://www.thelazywife.com – please excuse the shameless
promotion of her blog) with the hope of making a little side
income. Blogs are relatively easy to setup and maintain, and
with so many people talking about blogging successes, they have
become an attractive option for those looking to bring in an
additional income.
This is good for advertisers. The blogging boom has created a
buyers market for advertising. Most bloggers are trying to make
money from contextual advertising and are seeing some levels of
success, but most would like to see more money from their blogs.
The result for the rest of us is that buying ads on blogs can
bring quite a bit of traffic without having to pay a great deal
of money.
If you need proof of this, just head on over to BlogAds
(http://www.blogads.com/). BlogAds is an invitation-only network
of blogs offering advertising on their websites. Each site is
categorized which allows advertisers to target their ads. The
best feature of BlogAds, however, is the ability to not only see
the site that you will be advertising on, but also the ability
to see the site itself as well as how much estimated traffic
that site will receive while your ad is live.
Some of the prices are more expensive, but if you choose wisely
and create a decent ad, seeing an effective clickthrough cost of
$0.05 to $0.10 is attainable. For my wife’s blog we purchased
several ads across a handful of targeted blogs. Currently we are
on pace to seeing an effective clickthrough rate of about
$0.05/click. That is effective advertising.
There are other blog ad networks besides BlogAds, and many blog
owners would be happy to accept an advertiser if you were to
approach them. The traffic on blogs is real, and with the number
and popularity of blogs, finding a good advertising deal is not
too difficult.
Finding Upstart Ad Networks
One of the beautiful things about the late 1990’s was the sheer
volume of upstart ad agencies. Although none of these groups
were able to generate the traffic that any of the mega agencies
of today are able to generate, these upstarts usually were able
to provide solid traffic for a true bargain in an attempt to woo
new advertisers.
Upstart ad networks, although a lot less visible today than they
once were, can be found in a multitude of ways. They usually do
not have a lot of press around them, and they probably have only
a few quality websites in their network, but they do exist and
they can be a good advertising outlet. More and more these
networks are focusing on vertical markets (such as an ad network
that deals only with Internet marketing). To find a network like
this, you should familiarize yourself with the major websites in
your industry. Pay attention to who is serving their advertising
(you can usually figure this out by viewing the source of the
page) and check the rates of advertising. Most of the time you
will find a major ad network behind the ad, but from time to
time you can find an absolute steal.
New Search Networks
With Google Adsense, Yahoo Marketing, and the upcoming MSN Ad
Center (in Beta), it would be reasonable to assume that search
engine marketing has turned into a virtual oligopoly.
Thankfully, this is not the case. Not only are there new types
of search engines being formed that will undoubtedly challenge
search as we know it, there are traditional search networks that
offer legitimate advertising options.
The ISEDN (http://store.exactseek.com/) is a group of smaller
search engines and directories that have banded together to
offer advertisers an alternative to the more expensive search
engine options. Although the traffic of the current 165+ search
engines that make up the ISEDN (Independent Search Engine &
Directory Network) is not at the level of the major search
networks, the group still boasts a fairly impressive search
volume of over 150 million monthly searches.
Most people would avoid advertising on a small search engine
like many of the ones found in the ISEDN because off the lack of
search volume as well as the question of whether the vendors are
offering legitimate traffic. However, as a group, the ISEDN is
able to leverage their traffic, remove the incentive of offering
bad traffic by offering their ads for a flat fee
($4/keyword/month – minimum 3 months), and offer an ad product
that can theoretically reduce an advertiser’s cost to an
insignificant level. This may be one of the reasons that the
network sees the majority of its advertisers renew after the
first three months.
In addition to search networks like the ISEDN, alternatives to
search engines are starting to gain steam. Websites such as
Digg.com, Del.icio.us, and Wikipedia are changing the way we
find information on the Internet. While these are not a pure
replacement for search engines, they are becoming a very popular
way to find new websites. Most of these new social network
websites do not currently offer advertising, but these could
provide a very good alternative to the major search networks in
the near future.
Be Crazy – Relive 1999
The web has certainly changed, and maybe nothing has changed
more than the way we advertise. The days are gone when
establishing a successful website was an easy task.
Paid advertising can be a quick shortcut to launching your
website. Many website owners avoid paid advertising because it
is usually expensive, and seeing a real return on the investment
can be tricky. But if you look around, be creative, and keep an
open mind, there are plenty of bargain advertisements that can
bring quality traffic to your website.
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Mark Daoust is the owner of Site Reference
(http://www.site-reference.com). If you want to reference this
article, please reference it at its original published location:
(http://www.site-reference.com/articles/General/
Advertising-Like-Its-1999.html)
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