Archive for: Advertising
Intermediads is a new service just launched in closed beta. It has been developed by the guys over at TheNextWeb.
Since the services is still in closed beta I thought I would quote the guys who made the product, instead of just trying to give you a review of a product im yet to use. If you would like to see what the service does, head over the Next Web website and have a look at their 125 x 125 banners in the right sidebar.
When we started this blog and sold the first few 125×125 buttons we immediately started wondering how to provide more value to our advertisers. We noticed how difficult it was for advertisers to tell their stories and pitch their companies in such a small area.
As you can imagine that small rectangle gives both readers and advertisers very little information. Right now the ‘click or don’t click’ decision is a very black and white situation. As a visitor you either click or you don’t and if you do you take a gamble with your time. What we wanted to do is provide more information to visitors before they click without making the ads bigger.
This service will definitely improve click through rates and hopefully increase more targetted click throughs.
Here at Crenk we have been a part of the Forbes Business and Finance Blog Network from the very beginning. Crenk has reported about this blog network a couple of time when announcing the addition of Nick Ricci and also the initial launch of the network.
At the very beginning some journalists were discussing the possibilities of Forbes paying CPM rates of anywhere between $10 – $20. Initially I thought these CPM rates were very optimistic and now I can report that this hasnt been the case here on Crenk. CPM rates has been a bit lower, but overall I think the network is definitely moving in the right direction. The advertisers that are currently involved are of a very high standard and im sure this will only grow.
I would also like to hear confirmation about whether the network blogs will have any of their content syndicated across the Forbes network of sites. There has been a lot of rumours about this and it would be great for some smaller blogs to actually get their voices heard for a change.
Today Om Malik has talked about CPM advertising rates and how Pubmatic have release their own analysis of over 1 billion ad impression from over 3,000 publishers.
- eCPMs for large Web sites (more than 100 million page views per month) dropped dramatically by 52% from 38 cents in March to 18 cents in April 2008.
- Medium Web sites (1 million to 100 million page views per month) were nearly flat, with monetization dropping from 34 cents in March to 33 cents in April.
- Small Web sites managed to improve their monetization, increasing from $1.17 in March to $1.29 in April.
“The overall trends you pick up from report are not that surprising. For instance, the improved monetization of small websites because they have more focused content presents more targeted advertising opportunity. Again no surprise that Social Networking led the plunge with monetization dropping 47% from 37 cents in March to 19 cents in April, below January lows of 22 cents. Too much damn inventory. You can get the full report here.” Om Malik.
After launching Adphilia we have noticed that a lot of smaller publisher are getting very high CPM rates, thus this price index seems to be in order. However, I find it quite interesting to hear that these smaller publishers think that as they grow their CPM rates will remain the same, when this doesnt really seem to be the case. Therefore, hopefully from these findings most smaller publishers will realise as their sites grow their CPMs will drop.
It has been reported that Radio One has signed a deal with AllHipHop.com to sell advertising on their site for the next five years. The agreement provides Interactive One, Radio One’s digital division and exclusive agreement to sell all of AllHipHop’s ad inventory. Advertisers who already run ads on AllHipHop will have more access to the Radio One system and also their advertising opportunities. Currently AllHipHop has over five million monthly users in which will lead to a good return for Radio One who are trying to broaden their reach in the African-American hip hop audience. Last month it bought social network operator Community Connect and launched NewsOne.com, an African-American news site.
I would like to welcome everyone to the new Crenk design. Before I run through the new features of the design I would like to thank our designer and coder, Astrit. Astrit has a great company which really helped us make our ideas become reality.
As you will notice with the new Crenk the design and branding has completely changed and become a lot more simplistic. The logo and tag line has remained the same as well as the highlighted red colour. However, in terms of basic navigation there are a lot of changes. Navigation now is more recognisable on this design and each channel is easier to navigate into. Additionally, you will noticed that we now have our most recent article list in the left column. This is aimed to help making content easier to find within the design.
The other major changes are in terms of advertising. Crenk now has a top 728 x 90 banner in which acknowledge some of our main sponsors. Additionally, a 300 x 250 banner can be found in the right column, as well as a 160 x 600 at the bottom of the left column. Crenk is very thankful for our sponsors because they are the ones that help us stay in business. Finally, we are going to open 125 x 125 advertising which will be located in the right column above the 300 banner. If anyone is interested in one of those positions, please drop us an email and let us know.
Finally, I would like to welcome our new contributor Abdylas, who will be adding to our You’ve Been Crenked section which focuses on startup reviews. Keep and eye out for more contributors in the near future, additionally if you are interested in joining the Crenk team please drop me an email and let us know why you would be a good addition to the team.
Well I hope you all like the new design, but im sure that is not going to happen. If you have any ideas or feedback you would like to add, it would be much appreciated.
It has already been reported by the BBC and the New York Times that Google should become the largest advertising seller in the UK by the end of the year.
Google earned $803 million, about £407 million, in the United Kingdom in the first quarter. If you assume that rate won’t grow, that makes £1.6 billion for the year. And since Google’s British earnings are up 40 percent from a year ago, it is a safe bet it will grow.
That means Google will overtake the ITV television network as the biggest seller of advertising in Britain this year, Mr. Cellan-Jones figures. ITV sold about £1.5 billion of advertising last year.
This year Morgan Stanley estimates Google’s total advertising revenue will be $21.9 billion. Excluding the payments it makes to companies that display its ads, Google’s total ad revenue will be $15.7 billion. Time Warner, the largest media company in the world, earned $8.8 billion in advertising revenue last year. Viacom had $4.7 billion in ad revenue last year.
I have been thinking the same thoughts for a while now, that is I think the next place to boom in terms of the internet is display advertising and whoever can actually get that right, will be challenging the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo in the next 3-5 years.
Yesterday I wrote about the Rubicon Project and how they have launched into public beta. The site itself is amazing. Overall it is a brilliant package that has been put together for over a year by a dedicated team of about 40 members. This all being said, yesterday I did a test of their service and received mixed results. The code in which I implemented into my sidebar worked fine, except the placements that didnt work at all was the 728 at the top and the 160 at the bottom of the sidebar. Now, why launch a product into public beta, if it doesnt actually work at all?
Has anyone else had the same problems with the Rubicon Project?
AOL has acquired Sphere. Sphere is a technology that increases the relevant articles, blog posts and content to websites, via their widget. Sphere will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, the company said in a statement, part of the programming division led by Executive Vice President Bill Wilson. AOL–along with Newsweek, Time, Reuters, GigaOM, The Wall Street Journal, and other sites–already was a Sphere partner.
This is a very interesting acquisition, because the Sphere technology can be very useful for the larger conglomerates and because Google and Yahoo already have this kind of technology, that only left AOL and possibly Amazon left. The deal im sure will see more AOL content floating across it, while AOL will also be using the technology in amongst their services and finally, Platform-A will have some more ad inventory to sell.
Rubicon Project is now in public beta and has even named their product, Automatic. Automatic is their ad network optimiser and for this service they will be charging 10% of your ad revenue, but say they can increase your CPM and fill rates. We will see if this works! For a while now I have been in their private beta, and im very curious to see if their service actually works and by how much.
According to Allen over at CenterNetworks, AOL is announcing that their Platform-A advertising network has just signed an exclusive agreement with Verizon. Under the agreement AOL will manage the mobile and online advertising for Verizon exclusively, but there is no real indication wether is agreement was provided on a total amount of impressions.
The soap opera that is Microsoft bid for Yahoo is continuing. Firstly it is reported by the WSJ that Yahoo is closing in on a merger with AOL. If the deal goes through, the two companies would combine their web and internet based services. Yahoo! would reportedly use some of the revenue from a merger with Time Warner/AOL to buy back a whole bunch of stock which woudl help the company fend off any further unwanted advances from Microsoft.
While at the same time it is reported that Yahoo has begun testing out Search Ads from Google. Then Microsoft hit back with the following statement about the search testing:
From Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel:
“Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands. This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo! We will assess closely all of our options. Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo! shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.â€
Well, what can I see happening? I expect that AOL and Yahoo will potentially merge, but this it might happen in about 6 months time. In terms of search advertising between Google and Yahoo, im sure this cant continue because of the amount of marketshare they will have between them. Finally, Microsoft have no chance of purchasing Yahoo, I cant see it happening because Yahoo shareholders and directors would have already agreed if there was something that was going to happen.
More news from around the world.
Over the last few months the market of ad serving has really heated up. Firstly, it was the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google, which was really supposed to accelerate Google into the display advertising market. While at the same time Open X announced funding, basically so they could turn their ad server from self hosted to hosted and controlled by Open X. Then comes the very recent announcement that Google is launching Ad Manager. Finally, this week it was announced that Yahoo are entering this competitive market and are soon to launch Yahoo AMP!.
The overall fight seems to be about control and more importantly information. Google has always been a company that is hungry for knowledge and information, but it seems that everyone wants to know all about advertising, be it long tail or short. Each option has its own unique selling point, DoubleClick is for huge volume clients, Google’s Ad Manager is just simple to use (especially if they have Google Adsense as defaults), Open X has a great free service for self hosted companies and with the inclusion of a hosted option im sure they will see even more interest, then finally there is Yahoo and AMP!, this service has had amazing early reviews and im very keen to get my hands on it.
Thus, who will win this race? Well, it has always been hard to look away from Google, but I do think that Yahoo might be on to something here. Yahoo has a very strong display advertising business already, and if they make a Ad Manager that ties in hundreds of other ad networks and offers great transparency, then im sure they will be in the box seat.
