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davids -> RE: Banner Ad Serving Software and Companies (10/1/2003 11:30:13)
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Amen to that. I ran a site a few years ago that was extremely well-targeted and visible, had 50K pageviews per month and click-through rates of 2%. At first we got $80 per 1000 views, but banner rates dropped to $40, $30...
The main issues for me are customer understanding, selling costs, and inventory. Too few customers understand what banners are, what rotation means, or how to evaluate their ROI. Selling costs end up being very high because you can go through a lot of effort to reach an agreement on 5000 views, but that might only be worth $100. On top of that, if you have 50K pageviews, your total inventory is limited.
Banners related to affiliate programs (per click, per sale) are just as difficult. I've never been involved in an affiliate program that paid for the time I took to set it up.
So what's the solution? Get involved in the actual sales process. In our case, we figured that what our customers wanted were pre-qualified sales leads. We captured the visitors' information and requirements and sent it by email to them, with a charge per lead. Unfortunately, processing hundreds of leads requires time or programming.
In the end, I sold the site and took the lessons and moved on.
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