There is definitely a powerful draw to driving traffic to your website and having an ad network do all the work for you. But it goes beyond appeal. There may be some significant benefits to going direct.
What are the main benefits of targeting direct advertisers?
- 100% revenue share
- Premium advertising rates
Ignoring your operating costs, your direct ad sales margins are 100%. That means 30% or more kickback is not required for Google or other big players. However, to be successful with direct advertisers, your ad sales will be primarily targeted at one niche.
What are the caveats of selling ads directly to advertisers?
The most obvious is the difficulty. Ad networks make everything look easy. Enter a code snippet and convert your traffic into revenue. But selling ads directly to advertisers requires selling. The redundancy in that last sentence is on purpose.
It is about selling.
That puts you responsible for many tasks: identifying advertisers, communicating, making the sale, providing support, and resolving disputes. All of this takes time, commitment, and skill.
How to set up your website for direct mail
# 1. Use a dedicated advertising page
If you have the traffic to start considering selling direct mail, you have potential advertisers visiting your site. Thousands of major advertisers have representatives who scan the web for niche advertising opportunities.
# 2. Create a media kit
Your media kit will complement your advertising page. While it won’t necessarily expand your PR reach, the media kit is still very useful for potential advertisers.
# 3. Get data on your audience
If you really want to perfect your media kit, target more user demographics that:
Human, 20 to 65 years old, with some kind of Internet connection and likes to buy things.
Remember, it is the niche sites that open the budgets of your advertisers. We will touch on this more in the next section on pricing. For now, I want to draw your attention to Quantcast. Running Quantcast will collect a large amount of data to help you break down the demographic segments of your visitors.
# 4. Make sure the price is right
Often times, your media kit will specify your advertising rates. This will be broken down for the different types of ad placements you offer. This is what will get you crawled on the spreadsheets of savvy advertisers looking for good niche sites. Like you, they will be doing numbers.
# 5. Get CPM data on BuySellAds
BuySellAds is a marketplace where some publishers sell their ad inventory. This is a great source to find out how others in your niche are pricing their CPM traffic.
# 6. Choose your ad server
Yes, this part would be something important. When you sell your ads, you won’t photoshopping or upload them one by one. At least we hope that’s not what you had in mind!
You will need to select an ad server. That will keep things running efficiently. However, our recommendation would be that you choose one that makes it easy to replenish your ad inventory. If you’re not selling enough direct ads, you don’t want any dead air (or the equivalent in digital ads).
When ad slots are open, you can fill this unsold inventory with AdSense or AdX ads. Remember, selling outright doesn’t mean you’re giving up ad networks forever. For almost all sites, ad networks will continue to be a major component of your inbound ad revenue.
# 7. Go for a modern design
Okay, to be fair, we occasionally see high-traffic sites that haven’t had a design overhaul since, say, 1992. If anything is a testament to the power of great content, it is.
Ensuring you have a modern design ensures that you send an immediate confidence signal. Says your site is professional. But remember, they are also evaluating ad placements. If you have a great looking site with quality ad placement real estate, you are going to win your business.
# 8. Responsive is modern too
We’re not here to give you a crash course in responsive design today. If you are not yet familiar with it, responsive simply means that the site is scaled to the size of the display device. And if your website is in any way on the internet, we know that mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are a major component of your inbound traffic.
# 9. Monetize beyond simple ad placements
Therefore, we do not discredit standard ad placements. They still generate income. However, there are all kinds of innovations in the digital advertising space. Therefore, you may not only find that you will earn more income from them, but they will be immensely attractive to your advertisers.
- Overlapping ads
- Hellobar sponsorships
- Pre-roll video ads
- Social media sponsorships
- Newsletter sponsorships
- Native Advertising Articles
- Integrated RSS ads
# 10. Fill empty inventory with “Advertise Here”
Now, before taking this suggestion as a command, remember that we are a continuous test team. So this suggestion is that you give this a try. What we are looking for is its impact on the recruitment of new advertisers.
# 11. Positive user experience
You have to send the message to your potential advertisers that you are a professional. They want to know that their users have a good experience. And they must also have a good experience. It’s about the impressions you make.
Ready to target direct advertisers?
If you’ve been thinking of different ways to increase your advertising revenue, one possibility is to go straight. As we indicated, it is not for everyone. You must have significant established traffic for it to work.
Whatever happens, as your site escalates in traffic, eventually going direct is an unavoidable necessity. The ad revenue share of over 30% across your ad networks becomes very significant as your traffic grows. Just remember, if someone asks, you didn’t hear it from us.