Posts Tagged ‘Media Buying’

Angstz.com – New Social Networking Advice Site

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

Angstz.com is a new social networking advice site for ages 18 and up.  What makes Angstz.com unique in the social networking space is its ability to target its membership with brand advertising.  Angstz.com allows advertisers to run advertising targeted by Member Profile interests.  The interests are divided by Advice Channels, which include Travel, Fitness, Gaming, Relationships, Business, Colleges, Jobs, Politics, Religion, and many others.

Angstz.com has found a way to target its users that Facebook.com, and MySpace.com have not been able to do with their own membership base, target based on interests.

Advertisers have a choice of either traditional banner advertisements or branding the entire Advice channels at AngstZ. Angstz.com is currently in public beta and advertisers can get reduce pricing, while the site is in beta.

Go to http://angstz.com.

B2B Marketing Secrets on Google

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

If you are a B2B marketer, you know the rising costs on Google Search is making it tougher on your bottom-line ROI numbers.  To reduce your costs and to stay within your marketing budget, check out Google Base.  Google Base is currently in beta, but it’s a great product to test out, since it’s free to list your products and services and you can link it to a store easily for processing purchases.  Google Base makes it easier for consumers to find products and services from B2B marketers that are more relevant to their searches.

Also, check out HowStuffWorks.com, if you are a marketer with products that need demonstrations. HowStuffWorks.com can create customized pages for marketers that want to brand their products and services in a non-traditional way to their target markets.  The How Stuff team will maintain the page for you with their own editorial content, which is relevant to the products and services that you are marketing.

Horizontal or Vertical Ad Networks – Should I bother?

Friday, May 30th, 2008

There’s a lot of hype over ad networks recently, due to the explosion of the online advertising business growth.  There are now over 300 ad networks online, so how do you choose as an advertiser, which one to go with?

When Ad Networks first began, most networks were built to become a one stop shopping source for advertisers.  These ad networks would fight to get the top 100 trafficked sites that were listed on ComScore to join their networks.   These networks are called Horizontal Ad Networks;  an example of a Horizontal Ad Network is Advertising.com. These networks are good if an advertiser needs to market broadly online and is more concerned with a brand marketing campaign, rather than a direct marketing campaign.

As advertisers started needing more niche advertising solutions to reach specific narrow target markets, Vertical Ad Networks started to appear. These networks are much more recent to the online marketing industry, than the Horizontal Networks, but work just as effective as a one stop solution for advertisers.  Vertical Ad Networks, such as ESPN.com or Adify.com are a much better choice for an advertiser that needs to reach a specific audience.

When choosing an ad network, choose the one that is best for reaching your audience.  If you have a broad campaign consider Horizontal Networks, if you have a specific niche market that you must reach, consider a Vertical Ad Network.

To brand advertise on Facebook or not, that is the question

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

I recently had a website owner ask me about advertising on Facebook, whether the campaign that they were running should continue. They had done some minimal testing at Facebook themselves and received a lot of impressions, but very little clicks. They thought that they should continue, since they were exposing their brand name to the members of Facebook, so it was worth it to them to let people know who they were, especially since they weren’t paying for it, since it was a CPC campaign. My simple question to them was, “What is your advertising goal?” They replied, “…to get traffic.” Well, then my answer is, stop advertising with Facebook because it is not going to help you get traffic, if you’re not getting any or low clicks. You would think that marketers would know this, but don’t assume.

Many marketers believe by running ads with no click-through helps with exposing the brand name. Be careful of those marketers because they are not looking out for your best interests. Your goal is to get traffic to your site. Remember that.

People don’t run ads on Google to only expose their brands, they want traffic to their sites, so work on the premise with any high-trafficked site…don’t just run ads on Facebook with the expectations that by exposing your brand that people are paying attention. If people are paying attention, then they will click on your ads, which will help with your brand marketing efforts. Yes, it is true, that you will receive free advertising on Facebook, but is it worth it, if no one is coming to your site? No, so why do it?

Think about your goals. If you are a web owner and want traffic to your site, go to where you will find the best click-through with the best conversions at your site. By running ads with no click-through is a waste of money and time. It does not brand your company to have no one clicking on your ads. Clicks mean that Internet users are interested in what you are offering and by the interest, helps establishes your brand.