The Inquisitr » blog advertising

Background advertising: the best way to test it is by doing some

Duncan Riley — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:51:10 +0000

If you hadn’t noticed today, The Inquisitr is running a campaign for the Jeopardy iPhone application (a screenshot above for future reference.) It involves the use of a background ad along with a traditional banner placement.

Background advertising (also known as “skinning”) has been a popular form of advertising in the celebrity blogosphere and on some news sites, but they’re otherwise rare outside of those spaces. The idea of such campaigns is to break through the noise on the given site, so the ads can’t be missed. Visually, they aren’t always pretty, but many swear by them as an effective way to reach an audience.

We won’t know the results of the current campaign until tomorrow, but likewise if you can see the background ad now, we’d naturally encourage you to click and visit the sponsor; it also helps that we feel comfortable promoting the application, and we think it’s a great product.

Set up

The problem coming into this campaign was setting it up. Background advertising is offered by a few ad agencies, but isn’t widely available. From what I could find, there was no off the shelf easy to use solution (such as a WP plugin) to implement the background ads either. The only solution was to hard code it, but the fun didn’t stop there.

Because theses ads aren’t overly common, there’s a wide variety of often conflicting advice on how to implement them. No doubt some will say that it’s easy to do X way, but I could find a Y, Z and A, B and C version of how to do it as well. Then it’s finding something that 1: works with a WordPress blog, and 2: is compatible across all browsers. The second point was one of the hardest: in our testing, we’d get these great solutions working, only to find that they failed in cross browser tests.

In the end implemented a combination of CSS (for the image) and a javascript call for the click side. As of last night, this was working in all browsers…until this morning we were notified that it possibly wasn’t working in Google Chrome.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, Chrome is more of a pain in the arse code wise than IE6, well at least for me, because I know most of the IE6 hacks. It does prove a point though: you can never test across browsers enough.

Bugs

We know there’s one bug with the implementation: in some browsers, if you click on whitespace you get the ad as well. From an advertisers perspective, I’d rather have overkill with click areas, then miss some, but for any future campaigns, it’s something we’ll need to fix.

Overall

This form of advertising is going to become more common as advertisers seek to maximize exposure and clicks. We’re grateful to the agency who placed this ad with us, and for being patient as we worked through the issues described above.

If you’re interested in advertising on The Inquisitr, be it a background placement like this, or similar ad spots, drop me a email.

And don’t forget to Play America’s favorite quiz show today! Here’s the official spiel on the app:

This…is…Jeopardy! Put your knowledge to the test in this exciting new game created for the iPhone and iPod touch! Pick a category and dollar amount and answer clues written by Jeopardy writers. Buzz in quickly and answer correctly to watch your earnings rise, then hum along with the classic Final Jeopardy theme music while you respond to the final clue.

Key Features

· Use the touchscreen to write your name on the podium, just like a real contestant on Jeopardy!

· Play in Landscape mode so that you see the contestants and the categories on the same screen

· Includes real sounds from t he game, including the class Final Jeopardy Music!

· Listen to the famous voiceover “This…is…Jeopardy!” from the famous Johnny Gilber when the game starts

· Create your own custom contestant

· Packed with over 1500 clues, enjoy hours of entertainment

Entrecard launches Paid Ad Network

Duncan Riley — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:40:07 +0000

Blog ad sharing network Entrecard is entering the paid ad space with the launch of a new CPM based ad network.

According to Entrecard, 50% of shared ad impressions will be open to third party advertisers. Currently all ads in the network are shared between users with a credit system in place to allow for specific targeting; not dissimilar to a system like Bartercard. With the new paid ads, Entrecard will buy impression credits from existing members, allowing them to convert credits to cash.

Entrecard notes that the inclusion of paid ads will overcome a fundamental flaw with the current system: credit inflation.

The Entrecard economy has been in a state of inflation since day one. Every day, more credits are created than are deleted. As of writing this, there are 44 million credits in the Entrecard economy, and we’re adding more each day. This is not sustainable, and so it has become clear that we need a more efficient way than advertising taxes to eliminate credits from the economy. The good news is that if this works, we’ll be able to lower the advertising tax.

Allen Stern at Centernetworks notes that some users aren’t happy with the change “because they won’t be able to approve or decline ads in the same way as they can currently.”

IAC reports display ads could fall 50% this month

Duncan Riley — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:26:48 +0000

IAC CEO Barry Diller told an earnings call this morning that he expects display advertising across IAC sites, including College Humor, City Search, Vimeo and a range of other leading web brands to drop a whopping 50% in February.

Diller also reported that CPC rates were down 8-12% in January, showing weakness in a space that many expected would hold up despite the recession.

The drops for IAC come on top of a 19% drop for the 4th quarter of 2008.

As much as the figure is shocking, it’s also not surprising given what we’ve been reporting this month. In the Web Ad Apocalypse we mentioned reports of big drops being discussed privately around the web space, then January 26 AdAge estimated the drop at 20%.

While not everyone will see a 50% drop, I’m betting that it’s a reasonable base line figure for the months ahead (notably Nick Denton predicted 40% last year). The reality is that ads are disappearing, and those that are around are being purchased at cheaper rates.

The bigger question is that if this is the online drop, how big now is the offline drop? If we believe the earlier analyst suggestions that the web will fall the least, then newspapers, and even radio and television must be doing it even tougher again.

(via AllThingsD)

Online Ads Down 20%: Start of a Vicious Cycle Downwards?

Duncan Riley — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:13:05 +0000

AdAge has reported that CPM rates for websites are down 20% according to their sources, and sell rates have dropped from 60% of frontline inventory to 30%; the net effect there being that it’s a 20% drop on half as much inventory, which by my calculations would be something closer to a 60% drop on front line premium inventory.

Those figures are bad enough (and confirm what we’ve reported previously), but it’s the cycle they describe that’s more disturbing. Silicon Alley Insider has a good description of it here, but here’s the short version of the downward pressure cycle.

Large sites lose frontline inventory.

They turn to ad networks to fill the remnant/ passback.

Those ad networks, already feeling downward pressure, cut rates to sell the extra inventory

Advertisers, seeing discount rates on the same sites on ad networks vs direct sell, switch more inventory to ad networks

Frontline inventory sales decline further, both in fill rates and CPM

And around we go again.

Nicholas Carlson at AlleyInsider claims ad rates could drop as far as 90% based on the AdAge story, although I don’t see the figure mentioned there; either way the decline in the cycle could easily be higher that the 40% Nick Denton claimed last year, a prediction many people claimed was extreme and simply wouldn’t happen.

The proposed solution is for large sites to stop handing inventory to ad networks as a way to break the cycle, but it’s not quite that easy. Old media companies in particular are being hit in every direction, that they’d say no to selling the majority of their inventory, even at lower costs at a time the bottom line for many is deeply in the red is preposterous: they simply won’t say no, and the cycle will continue.

The missing link is the long held notion of premium inventory. Carlson claims that you can reach the same audience on the NY Times as a small blog; that may in effect be the case sometimes, but it doesn’t strictly apply across the board. Some sites (including blogs) attract more appealing audiences than others, based on content and reach. While some sectors of the economy simply can’t afford to chase this traffic any more, advertising and marketing isn’t about to disappear, and neither is chasing premium audiences, well not entirely. The only outstanding question is how deep is the bottom of the market.

The Web Ad Apocalypse

Duncan Riley — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:41:13 +0000

The predictions of a massive downturn in web advertising due to the US recession started last year. Gawker Media’s CEO and Founder Nick Denton, one of the smartest men in blogging and a guy I’d never tell anyone to ignore, predicted a 40% downturn in web advertising this year.

Let me say that I think, sadly, that his prediction may be right.

Our own ad provider has dropped so much inventory this month it’s scary. As others have suggested, the worst of it was always going to be January; Q4 2008 ads were booked in advance, Q1 2009 were directly influenced by the recession, hence the lower spend.

I’ve talked this last week or two with a variety of people in the blogging space, and I’m yet to find anyone with a good news story. The rate of the drop in ads for January varies widely by supplier, so while some are still only showing a small drop (with companies that have manged to maintain most of the business) others are telling me of huge drops well past 40%.

This of course doesn’t excuse our ad provider, who cited the recession in their justification; the conclusion is that some are doing better than others.

Although obviously I don’t have the full picture, the sample is big enough for me to draw some conclusions, and they aren’t pretty. Advertising in blogging and 2.0 services/ apps is on the downward march, and companies that rely on advertising that were marginally profitable, or running at a loss are about to find life that much harder.

Outside of direct deals, I’ve also heard from some publishers that passback inventory rates are declining. Adsense has been mentioned, but that’s not my experience so far. We had a spike up to the US Election which delivered some of the best rates I’ve ever seen in Adsense, and it has dropped back since. Having explored a couple of ad suppliers for that inventory, I would note that some rates are very low at the moment, but I don’t have the history to know if there was a drop.

If you’re interested in selling ads for The Inquisitr, particularly our passback inventory (which is 90%+), drop me an email duncan at nichenet.com.au

To everyone else out there in blogging and 2.0 land, you’re not alone, and god speed.