“Oil is to the global economy what advertising is to the web ecosystem. Cut it off and the whole thing shuts down”
That quote came from a renowned scholar at my former university in England.
My name is Niyi and I’m the Founder of Trafficspaces (I’ll get to what Trafficspaces does in a second).
Focus on that quote. It is quite seems particularly poignant in the current economic environment. It seems like no matter what we do, our dependence on oil just seems unassailable, even to our own detriment. It seems to me like we have a love-hate relationship with the “black gold”. Without it, we can’t seem to power anything. In fact, without it, we’ll all probably lose our jobs!
Advertising is pretty similar. Many people dislike ads on websites (especially the annoying banner ads) but unfortunately, the truth is that without ads, most websites, blogs, will go out of business and mass-appeal tools like the Google search engine, Gmail, Facebook, and possibly even Twitter will be unsustainable. I shudder at every “Catch the Monkey” ad like everyone else so I’ve been particularly intrigued to discover if there is a middle ground somewhere – something that gives publishers more control over what appears on their site and doesn’t leave them short-changed by some dodgy, fly-by-night ad network.
My team and I have just created a new ad management platform called Trafficspaces. We’ve solved three common problems:
1. Losing potential advertisers
“If you build it, they’ll come”. So true, but if they come and they are ready to pay, and you are not ready, they’ll leave (and may not come back). Way too many potential advertisers are lost because publishers expect them to fill a form in order to advertise. Where is the automation?
Imagine if you had to call an airline over the phone in order to book a flight, and there was no Expedia, Orbitz, Ebookers etc. It will be a pain and the airlines will make less money.
The solution – provide your own self-service system to process payments, and help them get started
at their convenience. Facebook and Myspace have spent millions doing exactly this. Most publishers can’t afford to do and that’s were Trafficspaces steps in. You can get your own white-labelled self-service ad platform from $4.99 a month.
2. Earning way below potential
I once spoke to a very large newspaper firm who relied mostly on Google for ads on their website. They received a $5,000 check every month from Google and they weren’t impressed. It turns out that their site generates about 10 million impressions per month and understandably they felt short-changed. “I wonder how much Google got paid by the advertiser” ranted their Online Editor.
Recently, Michael Arrington of Techcrunch mused about dumping his long term partner Federated Media because his advertisers (who had to go to Federated Media’s site to place ads with Techcrunch) were spending a disproportionate proportion of their budget with other sites on FM’s network. Basically, if Techcrunch had its own self-service system, they’ll keep more of the advertiser’s budget.
The point there is that publishers need more control. The traffic that cannot be filled by your direct sales, or through your self-service system can be sent to Google or any other ad network. This is particularly important for those who get a lot of site-targeted ads. That is the best way to maximize your revenue.
3. Managing ad operations easily
This part is actually quite important because a lot of publishers I know don’t want to get bogged down with the intricacies of monitoring ad campaigns, optimizing the ads, and preparing reports. They don’t want the complexity that comes with OpenX. They just want to approve the ads with one-click and forget about it. “Keep it Short and Simple” as a close friend said to me. If you are one of those publishers, then Trafficspaces is for you.
Conclusion
Our goal was to give publishers more control. More control over what appears on their sites, and more control of their revenue. But most importantly, it had to be done through a system that was easy to use. The response so far has been great.
If you want to try Trafficspaces out, visit www.trafficspaces.com
IDG Tech Network is moving away from Adify and Doubleclick will be their new ad serving and technology partner. IDG confirm that everything will be moved to Doubleclick between the 12-19th of February and that the transition will be a smooth one.
Adify have not really been making too much improvements since they were acquired back in April of 2008 for $300 million by Cox Enterprises. It is interesting that IDG have moved from Adify to Doubleclick. I know Doubleclick are quite an expensive ad serving solution compared to most on the market today, but this move has happened because Adify are even more expensive. Adify have been charging around 20% or net revenues from networks who have been using their platform. This is extremely high and no wonder they are losing business. IDG has to be one of Adify’s main customers so this is a heavy blow.
After spending months in public beta and lots of changes to the ad supports music service, We7 is about to launch out of beta with a bang.
We7 have launched with a “Big Listen” campaign. This new service has some great new features including Free on-demand, unlimited access to full tracks and albums, “Search, Click & Play”, A ‘Celestial Jukebox’ with several million track, ‘Play Anywhere’ – a link and play system for blogs and websites, Users can create playlists, share with friends and buy mp3’s, Payments to rights owners and artists.
The first thing you will notice with the new site is that they have a completely new design. Other new additions include a Magazine, Blog and a much improved list of advertisers. Im sure we will be hearing a lot more from We7 in 2009!
For a while now I have been running Adphilia and we are only a small site representation company that is slowly growing. We have spent a lot of time trying to source the right Advertising server to meet our needs, but we still haven’t been able to find the right one in my mind. We have toyed with using free ad servers like OpenX or Google, as well as corporate ad servers like Right Media or Doubleclick. This is a post which just outlines what we have found within the company.
Free Ad Servers:
Open X – OpenX is an amazing piece of software that allows medium and large website to control their inventory. It is cost effective because the software is free, however you need to think about the implications advertising will have on your hosting servers, because huge amounts of ad serving can mean very large bandwidth costs. I also find OpenX a little hard to understand when you are first using the serving, plus I’m sure the larger your sites are the more complicated it becomes.
Google Ad Manager – Google Ad manager is a great product but it is built specifically for small publishers. It has a great design and easy to use. The first issue is that you can only use this ad server for small sites, because it is not compatible with any larger ad servers, and you have to put ad code straight into the header of your site. Additionally, I really don’t like the fact that when you deliver your first campaign you have to set it all up the day before it is allowed to be start. Small but bloody annoying.
Corporate Ad Servers:
Zedo – Zedo is very professional company with some great customer service. However, with them we got caught on the first hurdle, cause they were very expensive compared to all the other companies. Possibly, this is due to the great customer service and the results they can bring your sites. However, if you don’t have a great sales team to match what they can offer, there isnt too much point.
DoubleClick – This company just amazes me. Doubleclick seems to be a mish mash of several individual sections of software that has been mashed into one tool. Instead of Trafficking, reporting, billing and account details all in one sections, they seem to have segmented them, thus making it very untidy. However, they are the worlds best ad serving tool and the most used.
Atlas – Atlas, I tried to contact 5 times and they have never even responded to the messages I left. So I didn’t even get past the pricing stage let alone using their service. Typical Microsoft!
After all of these experiments it didn’t really bring me to finding the ad server solution that I was after. Im wanting a piece of software that is easy to understand and us, which doesn’t cost the earth, preferably free and web based. Does anyone know of a solution that I should try?
