Monthly Archives: July 2006

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An Easy Way to Geotarget

July 30, 2006 12:33 am / Leave a Comment /

There’s been some recent articles and blog posts about how publishers can easy geotarget their advertising.

Geotargeting has been a strategy publishers have been using for a long time, but it’s recently come back into light due to Yahoo Publisher Network only paying for/allowing USA-only inventory. If a publisher doesn’t have a way to geotarget, they are serving ad impressions that not only aren’t making money, but could potentially get them in trouble with Yahoo.

There are additional reasons a publisher might geotarget, such as certain advertisers or ad networks paying different rates for different countries. And many publishers don’t even realize that some of the large networks are paying less for their international inventory or sending it to a default altogether.

So how does one geotarget? The article I mentioned above on WebsitePublisher outlines one method, and some ad servers have the ability built in. However, the easiest way I know of is to use the product my team just built called RMX Direct.

RMX Direct allows you to enter in any advertiser or ad network you’re working with and you can determine what countries you wish to show their ads.

Additionally, you can directly apply to and work with ad networks that are part of the Right Media Exchange. A few of those networks are located in international locations and are good at selling international ad deals, so it’s an ideal setup if you’re using the Yahoo Publisher Network. In this example you can traffic in the Yahoo Publisher Network and geotarget it to USA-only, then the Right Media Exchange networks can take all the international inventory. And this all happens through one set of ad tags, and you can see the reporting breakdowns per country. Pretty slick if you’re wanting easy geotargeting control. Plus it’s free.

Posted in: Ad Networks, Advertising, Direct Media Exchange, Random, Right Media, Yahoo

Great Movie Stub Idea

July 28, 2006 1:19 am / Leave a Comment /

In reference to this open challenge on Mark Cuban’s blog, Robert Young writing for GigaOm comes up with a great idea for using used movie stubs as a currency to get discounts to movies in the theaters. It provides an interesting twist, seems novel and fun, and balances out the viewership so that movies don’t get the majority of their revenue during opening weekend.

What kind of great ideas can you think up by giving yourself your own open challenge for your business? I’m getting my brain moving even more than it has been about the ways publishers can work with advertising. We’ll see if I come up with anything good.

Posted in: Random

Reddit Goes Cobranded with Social News

July 27, 2006 7:52 am / Leave a Comment /

Reddit has partnered with web magazine Slate to provide a social news interface for the articles published on Slate. You can see this in action at slate.reddit.com.

I didn\’t see any integration on Slate.com in a quick look, but this opens what could be an interesting way to drive more traffic and users to Reddit if they started allowing top publishers to have their own cobranded Reddit to allow users to socially vote on and interact with their stories. They\’d provide their technology and host the site like they are with Slate, and the publisher drives users to the tool. It could help Reddit get more exposure and new users who may have not heard of the social news site before.

A cool move, we\’ll see if they pursue this further with other top web publishers.

Posted in: Publishing, Random, Web 2.0

Google Adsense Reporting is Deceptive For Publishers

July 24, 2006 12:24 am / 4 Comments /

When looking at Google Adsense reports recently I noticed that the eCPM column is actually Page eCPM. No big deal right?

Well, it is a big deal.

Web publishers commonly use eCPM to compare performance between different advertising networks or advertisers. If a web publisher is working with Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, RMX Direct networks, Valueclick, Tribal Fusion, Burst, or some other ad network, one large factor in their decision is what eCPM that network is paying them. All those networks, as well as the hundreds of others that exist report to publishers on an eCPM basis, which is really how much a publisher gets paid per 1000 ad impressions. A single page view can have multiple ad impressions on it depending on how many ad units are on that page.

Google on the other hand is reporting Page eCPM, which is an inflated CPM value in comparison to what the rest of advertising world uses. It’s the money the publisher earns per page, opposed to each ad unit.

On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with Google choosing to report like that, but when you consider that every other network is reporting with a standard eCPM per ad unit, you wonder why Google does it differently.

The answer is because it’s a higher number. If a publisher has two ad units on a page, the Page eCPM as reported by Google will be double the actual eCPM. If they have three ad units, it could be three times larger. The more ad units you stick on the page, the larger the Page eCPM will be.

So why does it matter that Google reports a number that is made to look higher? The answer can be illustrated with the following example:

A publisher runs two ad units on their page and works with Google and Yahoo Publisher Network. They are trying to determine which network to send more inventory to, so they want to do a comparison. They look at their Yahoo Publisher Network results and they see that they’re making a $0.50 eCPM. Then they go to Adsense reporting and look quickly at the default report and see a $0.90 eCPM, and determine that Googie is paying them more so they send more inventory to Google.

Unfortunately for the publisher, they just misallocated that inventory as Yahoo is actually earning them more than Google because they really had a $0.90 Page eCPM with Adsense. Both ad units are contributing towards that eCPM total, while Yahoo is just reporting their eCPM for a single ad unit.
Now, you can find the actual Ad Unit eCPM in Adsense reporting if you do some customization, but it’s definitely not something they put out there that obviously.

The only benefit for using Page eCPM is for Google. When publishers are used to normal eCPM reporting and Page eCPM can easily be skewed up and down by just adding and removing ad units from a page. It’s helping Google get ad inventory it isn’t winning in reality. That’s deceptive when there is no real benefit for publishers to report Page eCPM, at least as the primary statistic.

A smart publisher will say “No big deal, I just look at my actual revenue”. This is great, but I’d guess a majority of publishers just look at the CPM numbers when comparing ad networks for performance and deciding where to allocate inventory. Revenue is also hard to compare when you can send more volume to one network than the other.

As Google themselves say in their Adsense Glossary: “From a publisher’s perspective, CPM is a useful way to compare revenue across different channels and advertising programs.”

It sure is Google! So how about deciding to stop deceiving publishers with reporting the subtle Page eCPM?

Posted in: Ad Networks, Advertising, Direct Media Exchange, Google, Random, Yahoo

RMX Direct Week One Is Over

July 22, 2006 12:48 am / Leave a Comment /

As I mentioned last week, we launched the web application I’ve been working on at Right Media called RMX Direct into private beta with a small group of publishers.

It was a grueling process getting ready for the launch, and it was a busy week fixing bugs, making improvements and talking to our beta publishers.  However, it was also a ton of fun to see real publishers using the application.

We also got our first mention in an outside blog, and have now started accepting email addresses for publishers who want to receive beta invites.  If you’re interested in testing out RMX Direct, go here and request a beta invite in the lower right corner.

Let’s hope week two goes just as well!

Posted in: Ad Networks, Advertising, Direct Media Exchange, Random, Right Media

Feedburner Acquires Blogbeat

July 17, 2006 1:16 pm / Leave a Comment /

Feedburner has acquired Blogbeat, and you can get the details from Feedburner’s FAQ about the acquisition.  Congrats to both parties.
It appears that Blogbeat will be integrated into the Feedburner’s Standard Stats service which is great being that it’s free.  All that it requires is the use of Feedburner to publish your feeds.

As I posted about before, I’d like to be able to use one application all my analytics, and I commend Feedburner for moving one step closer to that goal.

Posted in: Blogging, Random, Web Analytics

Getting Ready to Launch RMX Direct

July 15, 2006 11:10 pm / 3 Comments /

I’ve been spending the last few months heading up the building of a web application for Right Media called RMX Direct.

The application is primarily an ad network management tool for web publishers. It allows publishers to auction every ad impression in real time to ad networks that are part of the Right Media Exchange (RMX), as well as add in their own outside ad networks or advertisers to compete in the auction for their inventory. These could be networks such as Google Adsense or things like ad deals they sell themselves.

Anyway, we’re planning to launch the application to a small select group of beta publishers this Monday. Although that’s exciting, today was exciting as well as we served the first real ad impression through the application. Here’s a screenshot, click for full size:

RMX Direct Screenshot

Working with our team has been fantastic and there’s been great effort from a lot of talented people.  It’ll be very fun to start letting more people use RMX Direct.   You can also keep up with the product details at the RMX Direct Blog.

Posted in: Direct Media Exchange, Random, Right Media

How Does A Web Company Know When They’ve Made It?

July 10, 2006 11:18 pm / 1 Comment /

If you’re a young web company, how do you know when you’ve really made it?

Is it getting Techcrunch’d? No.

Is it receiving a VC investment? No.

Is it actually earning revenue? No.

Is it generating a real profit? No.

Digg knows what it is.

It’s when you have people like Seth Godin who are not even related to your company trying to figure out better ideas for your business.

It’s when you have people trying to put you on the level of powerful media institutions when you’re actually not really there yet.

What does this all mean? It means people are thinking about Digg, a lot. They’re using it, and while using it they’re trying to think of ways to make it better. Why? Because they like it. I encounter lots of websites, and if a website is bad, I rarely spend much time thinking about how to make it better, I just go someplace else.

However, if I love a website, I think about ways it could even be better.

Digg has made it to that level where great thinkers are giving free ideas on how to make it better. And while I disagree with Seth Godin’s post because I think Digg loses value if it goes the route of gatekeepers who are taking paid submissions, the fact that he’s throwing out ideas is valuable. Does this mean Digg is a lock to succeed? No, in reality it doesn’t. Digg still is young, and although I’ve heard they are profitable, there isn’t any public information about their revenue and profit. Add in the quickly-changing landscape of the online world now, and nobody is really safe.

However, Digg has established itself with fantastic momentum, and it’s now a “king maker” with the traffic and respect it drives with its links.

The lesson here is to strive to please your users so much that they’re helping you improve and get better, simply because they love what you’re doing.

Posted in: Random, Web 2.0

Video Emails Could Help Conversion

July 9, 2006 12:06 am / 2 Comments /

Dan Tudor at LandingTheDeal.com discusses video emails and the reaction he’s had from using them.

While I haven’t tried out using video in email, it sounds like an intriguing idea. On one hand, it could potentially be very annoying because part of the power of email is how quick it is to read, write, and correspond. Waiting for video to download and kick in could be something that both friends and prospects don’t enjoy.

On the other hand, it’s been shown many times that putting a more human face on a website can help conversions. Why not email as well? How could it be used?
Ecommerce Newsletters

You could show off new products with real video and audio. That seems to be a surefire way to improve the amount of products you could sell.

Individual Sales Discussions

If your type of business involves having individual email conversations with prospects, what better way then to make a relationship if the customer can actually see the salesperson they’re working with?

Blog Updates

I believe one of the reasons blogs have been a success is because users get to really feel like they know the blogger. If your blog has an email update list, might as well communicate via video on occasion to grow that bond even more.

Content Sites

Again, breaking things up from the normal email newsletter could be a nice change of pace, and for some sites you could do some great educational stuff with video emails.

It seems worth a test on any account, and let me know the results.

Posted in: Ecommerce, Random

How Can Publishers Maximize Revenue?

July 8, 2006 10:34 pm / 1 Comment /

Along the lines of my analytics options post yesterday, publishers also have so many options for revenue generation now that it can be overwhelming.

Directly-sold advertising campaigns, CPM ad networks, CPC ad networks, CPA networks, affiliate networks, ecommerce, text ads, display ads, video ads,  co-registration, lead generation, and more.

I LOVE that publishers have so many options.  Websites are so different and their users are so different that there needs to be a big amount of revenue opportunities.

However, this doesn’t mean it’s easy to manage.  If you’ve got a site with decent traffic, you could be working with 5-10 ad networks.  That’s a lot of different places to login, a lot of systems to learn, tags to manage, reports to view, etc.

How can publishers possibly test all the opportunities to see what works best for them?  How can this process of working with so many companies be more efficient?

Posted in: Ad Networks, Advertising, Ecommerce, Random

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