AdPav

Apart from sites with lots of traffic or high-quality traffic that enjoy the luxury of dealing directly with advertisers most of the publishers across the world use ad networks to fuel their inventory monetization. Historically, advertisers have spent little on non-premium sites, but in the last few years, there has been an upward shift in the percentage spends on ad networks which offer access to a large number of sites, premium and non-premium. 

 The increase in usage of ad networks by marketers is probably due to the following changes in the online advertising landscape:

1. Rising CPMs across the top portals and certain publishers.
2. Brands working towards ROI based campaigns
3. Increase in online advertising budgets

 In addition, ad networks bring the following advantages over individual publishers:

1. Efficiency: Ad networks are an effective and measurable way of reaching out to an audience. A brand here can reach a huge audience without paying too much and yet the marketer can measure it either as a branding or a lead generation exercise.
2. Reach: By using an ad network, the advertiser can reach out to sites that may not necessarily enjoy a massive degree of traffic, but have a constant flow of the same. Advertisers can reach out to the long tail of the publisher landscape without too much effort. For example, through MSN or a Rediff, the brand is only seen on 2 sites, while through a network the same brand could be serving on hundreds of sites.     
3. Better targeting: Ad networks give you the option of targeting sites according to the category or channel they fall under. This gives the marketer the advantage of serving before an audience which is relevant to his brand than just about anyone.   

   However, spends on ad networks may not always keep increasing due to certain issues that marketers may have with the networks. The biggest problem is the lack of control on where their ads maybe served. Many of the top brands need to know exactly where their ads are serving and many ad networks are blind and hence disappoint the marketer. Also, because many publishers and advertisers work with a multitude of ad networks, there is a possibility of audience duplication thereby reducing the value for the marketer.   In the end however, what really determines whether an advertiser chooses to work with an ad network is the quality of the brand that is advertising, the target (branding or response) and the audience it wants to reach. Given the various technological features that many ad networks offer today, a good balance of portal spends and ad network spends is typically the best way to move ahead.

There is a maddening degree of complexity when it comes to a publisher monetizing his inventory. His options are unlimited like models of revenue – CPA, CPC, CPM or affiliate, tens of ad networks and finally the ad tags on the page. The location of an ad, the number of ads on a page, the size of the ads and finally the colour scheme (for text ads) all determine the eCPM or Effective Cost per Mille (thousand impressions) that a publisher enjoys. The eCPM in turn depends, for ad networks that run CPC campaigns, on CTRs or Click Through Rates.

CTR is the percentage of clicks on a thousand impressions. Higher the CTR, better your eCPM (if the ad network is running mostly CPC ads) because the system is recording more clicks for every 1000 impressions. A very typical scenario of a newbie publisher in pursuit of monetizing his traffic, is to cram his page with as many ad units as possible hoping for all of them to be clicked as much as possible. But more often than not, I have noticed that excessive ad units on a page doesn’t necessarily mean higher revenues.

There are a number of factors that determine the CTR, including ad size, placement, relevance (or even irrelevance) of the ad to the content and the degree of blink in an ad. For obvious reasons, distracting ads tend to be clicked upon a lot. Ad units in the first scroll of the page generally see higher CTRs than the ones lower down. Also, horizontal banners such as the 728×90 and 468×60 tend to see higher CTRs than 120×600 and 160×600 skyscrapers. But, though these are generalizations, there are many exceptions to the rule.

The point  I am trying to make here is that there is no fixed rule for what works and what doesn’t to increase the CTR. But that is why publishers should experiment with different ad units, placements and colours to see what combination is the best fit for their site.

Publishers are trying to find new ways of monetizing their traffic and advertisers are ready to give every format a try. Text, Display, Pops, Video, and the list go on. Ad networks are sometimes launched with new formats of advertising and In-Text advertising is one such example. In-Text advertising refers to networks that place advertising links within your content. The links are placed inside your text, often contextually, and have a double underline to differentiate them from normal links. Once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. If the user clicks on the ad, the publisher will earn revenue.

Networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media are well known in this space. Their proposition is that in-text advertising is less intrusive than search or display, and offers better ROI for advertisers, especially when it is done contextually. It seems like a fairly good proposition but we need to keep in mind the fact that users come to a site for content and not ads. In my opinion, I feel that the potential benefits of in-text advertising and outweighed by the possibility of users unknowingly clicking on the underlined link.  There are two reasons for this: even though the publisher has made revenue from the click, the user may not appreciate being tricked into clicking an ad, and the advertiser will lose money on an erroneous/ fraudulent  click. While saying this, I do realize that the risk of clicking on the ads by error will not go down until users become more familiar with them, but the process of becoming familiar with in-text advertising seems painful and unnecessary. As it is, there seems to be too much advertising already – don’t you think so?

Typically, in-text advertising is seen among lesser known sites and individual bloggers or publishers who see it as an extra way of earning revenue. You will find very few big, branded sites embracing this type of ad serving. Maybe they realize that making a quick buck may result in short term gains, but will disappoint in the long term.

With the festive season going on starting from Diwali to Christmas and then the New year, marketers all around are on an over drive to ensure the best for their brands. This holds true for offline and online advertisers. Typically, companies record up to 40-45% of their sales during this 3 month period as compared to the rest 50% that comes from 9 months. Shops are decorated, malls almost transform into a picnic and consumers are ready to spend. But are festive changes apparent on websites?

Across the world, publishers who are serious about their user experience and monetizing their traffic take into account a lot of factors such as the season, time of the year etc. For example, during Halloween, many US publishers have a site redesign or a modification wherein the user is once again reminded that the festive season is on, thus prompting him to make a purchase or an action. Indian publishers barring the few top ones do not seem to understand the importance of bringing a new dimension to the user experience. It is not always about the content or the quality. Sometimes going that extra mile becomes very important to have an edge over another publisher and hope for a repeat user.

A simple example is Google, whose home page logo changes for every important event that is happening around the world thus creating an edge over the others. The immediate reaction that a user will have when he visits your site is that he will be surprised that you have a splash ad wishing him the very best for the coming new year. He may not necessarily make a transaction that will directly monetize you, but you have built a brand before him, which in the long run will definitely pay off.

In a typical scenario brands spend money on buying inventory that is related to their product portfolio or the audience visiting that inventory is a part of their target group. As an example, a bank would want to be seen on a business/finance site while a movie promotion would serve on entertainment sites.

However, a growing trend is being established wherein brands are advertising on sites which are not in any way directly related to their product portfolio. There have been instances of advertisers enjoying a high degree of performance for their ads on a totally different vertical of sites. In a recently served campaign that we were part of, we noticed a job referral brand doing exceptionally well on the social networking channel. We would have expected the brand to be seen on job related sites, news channels and performing there.  The idea was to incentivize social networking surfers to refer their friends for jobs and in the process earn some money.

Currently the market is a very exciting time to experiment with different ideas. It’s up to advertisers and publishers to figure out niche segments to allure the audience to engage and connect, to ultimately result in performance. Cross advertising is a unique way of reaching out to the audience with brands that either they may not expect to see there or brands that are adding value to the time they are spending on that particular site. It may not necessarily work for all advertisers or publishers, but what seems to be interesting is to find cross combinations of advertisers and publishers.      

Online advertising in India is still at its nascent stage. Brands and marketers are still a little hesitant about going all out and splashing ads across the net like the newspapers or TVCs. Somewhere the ability of its reach and effectiveness is still being questioned. Yet, some advertisers are still showing an eagerness to experiment with the newest online advertising medium to hit India’s shores: Video advertising.

The reason is not surprising. With the proliferation of online banner and text advertising, many users have simply started ignoring banner and text ads. But video commercials placed before or/and after online video content are almost impossible to ignore, giving advertisers a captive audience.  Youtube, the big online video gorilla, has already introduced video ads. Others will not be far behind. On the home front, it will be interesting to see sites whether sites like Nautanki.tv take the plunge or not. Nautanki.tv in fact released a study recently which noted that most most of the video streaming in India is done during working hours, i.e., from offices. That is not too surprising since broadband penetration is still low outside offices. That in fact is one of the biggest obstacles blocking the growth of video advertising in India. The other significant one is that pricing models for video advertising are still not very clear.  

All in all, though it seems that video advertising is a much more attractive option than banner or text advertising for online advertisers, there is still some way to go before it becomes widely accepted in India. Broadband penetration and advertiser acceptance of premium rates for video ads will have to grow significantly before video advertising becomes the norm.

If there was a question that doubled as a trick statement as well, it would definitely be this one! What are advertisers looking for?

 If that had to be answered in a word it would be quality. But how do we define quality here. Is it users who convert or users who come in numbers? Is it users who are in a certain demographic group, or users who have previously indicated an interest in the advertiser’s product category? And in all these ifs and buts, where does the publisher play a role? According to us, an advertiser is ready to advertise on a publisher as long as a few things are taken care of. The most important ones are maintaining his brand’s image and driving relevant traffic.

For advertisers who are focused on conversions, the ability of a publisher to drive conversions becomes very important .Let’s try breaking this into smaller bits.A lot of sites out there are generating tens of millions of page views per month. Does this mean that an advertiser should be interested in advertising on them? Not necessarily. Advertisers are, in general, looking for a relevant target audience. For example, a finance advertiser will be much more interested in advertising on a site that caters to an audience with an interest in finance than one that is interested in toys.

At the same time, the advertiser also wants volume. No advertiser will advertise on a site that gives him 10 ad impressions a day despite the relevance of the traffic. Ideally, an advertiser will get a relevant audience (lots of it). But in a non-ideal world, advertisers often compromise on one of the two: relevancy and traffic.From our vantage point, we see that advertisers are much more willing to pay higher advertising prices in niche content categories than they are in general interest ones. For example, a finance advertiser will pay more for advertising on a finance site, an advertiser who wants to target NRIs will pay more for a site that gets a lot of NRI traffic. The lesson in this is that as a publisher, it’s not just your volume of traffic that is important, but the relevancy of it as well.

There is a lot of dope floating around the web space telling you what is working and what is not. Everyone seems to know a little about something. Its very easy to get lost in the crazy terminologies of the CPCs and the CPMs and more! Well, it definitely gets to us sometimes and thats when we decide to give our views on whats going on. Consider it a break from the routine!

No sermons, no white papers. Just our 2 cents on this industry coming from one of the largest ad networks in India. Read on and keep clicking. :-)