Off all the crazy accronyms out there, I think CPM is the most important.  Very simple, this is what you, as the advertiser, pays for 1,000 impressions.  Long long long ago before fire was invented (well not that long) CPM rates were well out of touch with reality.  As an advertiser, if you ponied up for a campaign you probably said to yourself, "...self....I think I got ripped off."  CPM rates of $20 or even $30 were not unhead of.

Rates these days can maybe see the mid teens, but more than likely you should be seeing something in the range of $8-$12 for good publishers, a little lower for smaller sites, and then $3 - $6 for vertical networks ( a vertical network is a collection of sites all focused on the same thing...Like a bunch of cool hiking sites would be a "hiking" vertical network).

Below this, there are a few levels even lower, but as they always say, you pay for what you get.  If you want to spend less than $1 CPM (we call this area "remnant"), it may be a great way for a large branding effort across the web.  While you may not be targeting the exact audience you want, at least your message is getting out into the wild and seen by millions.

So why wouldn't you do this all the time?  Think about it this way.  If you are a florist that only sells wedding arrangements, by taking an add out that reaches a wide audience, you reach a lot of people, but not all of them are getting married like next month. 

Its the same with remnant advertising.  You are getting the message out, in massive amounts, and reaching a balanced mix of the american public.  But what if you know that 8/10 times, a person who is in the market for a camp stove is usually in their mid 30's, makes about $40K per year and often lives out west?  Sure you are going to reach this person, but you are also going to spend a lot of marketing dollars reaching retired chess players in Florida. 

This is where targeted networks come in.  By focusing your ad dollars towards the right demographic mix, you are getting the best of both worlds.  You are not paying a premium CPM, and you are not scraping the barrel with a remnant CPM.  You would expect that as a result of this, your message is clicked on more often and the performance of your campaign should be better.



 



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Online 101 06/10/2009
 

Getting your arms around what online marketing is can seem like learning a different language.  I don't know what it is with analytic types, but everytime something cool comes out they throw all these accronyms all over it to make it seem more complicated than it has to be.

Here is the short and skinny of basic online advertising:

-Think of a website like Yahoo.com as a really big magazine.  Each page has an ad on it.  With online marketing, when a person turns a page, this is called a "page view"  And then if you have more than one ad on a page (say the top and bottom), together these are called your impressions.

Once again:

I turn a page, its one pageview.  When my customer looks at the page, if I have two ads on there, then as an advertiser I recevied two impressions.

Seeing an ad is great for branding, but if you want to move more into awareness and engagement, you need to get that person to CLICK on the ad.  This is called a click through.  When Joe Hiker clicks on an ad, a publisher will then send him to your site (or wherever you want him to go).

So the next time a network or publisher gives you a call, make yourself stand out from the crowd and ask them, ".....what are your click through rates?"  If you REALLy want to sound savvy, just ask them, "...what are your CTR's? " ( Click Throug Rate = CTR)

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First Post! 06/08/2009
 
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A lot of what gets done in the outdoor space has to do with who you know, how well you know, and most importantly...why you know.  For many in this space, its been a long road of hard work to get where they are, and it is this "effort" that seperates the wheat from the chaff.

My first experience in dealing with online media in the outdoor space was when I was running my own retail shop, Powerline Sports.  A kitesurfing shop no less, in the beautiful and cold waters of NH.

This was back in the early beginning of eCommerce and online media.  '96 to be exact.  The whole idea of advertising your brand and getting the word out was just starting to trickle down to the smaller retailers like myself.  CJ was the radar, maybe a few ad networks and of course the local listings.

So like many other retailers, I understood the value of advertising and jumped in...without a plan.  I found a network for around $500/month, designed a horrible 728x90 leaderboard (I'll explain what this means later), and waited for the phone to ring.  Here is what I was missing:

-Without having any goals for the campaign, I was unable to measure its performance

-By not understanding how networks operate (and more importantly how publishers treat networks) I was ill prepared to maximize my ad budget in the right areas.

-By not taking the time to understand some key metrics on the campaign, I wasn't even able to monitor the performance of what I was buying.

This experience left a bad taste in my mouth.  I was out $1,500 for the three months and I was left "thinking" that I got 7 phone calls as a result.  The campaign was a flop, I never asked for reporting, and even worse I chalked up the whole experience as a big mistake and burried online advertising in the back of my head.

Having now established myself inside of a company that operates its own niche network of company owned sites, I can say 100% I have seen more than my share of what works and what doesn't.

My offer to you is this.  Learn from my mistakes, leverage the insight from someone working on the inside, and if you plan accordingly, you may just end up producing an online campaign with a positive ROI, a strong level of brand awareness and ultimately an increase in sales.


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