Over $1 Billion in One Day
I was amazed at the online black Friday number of over $648 Million in sales on November 25th, 2010 and now on November 29th there was over $1 Billion sales. Just as Friday is known as Black Friday, Monday is known as Cyber Monday. Both days are incredible. More detail is found at the comScore Press Release.
That figure was 16% higher than the previous year. Incredible.
Half a Billion in One Day
The numbers still amaze me. In just one day online, Nov 25,2010, there was $648 Million in sales. That is quite amazing. I note this so you do not forget the power of online sales. Whether you are a publisher, an advertiser or a marketer, these numbers have to motivate you and your own bottom line. More detail is found at the comScore Press Release.
That figure was 9% higher than the previous year. Amazing
Who is Making the Video Advertising Money?
ComScore released their August 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings and at first glance it is exactly what you would guess. Google had the most unique viewers and viewing sessions (due to YouTube), Facebook was second, then Yahoo! and all the usual suspects. However on the second chart they listed top properties by Video Ads Viewed.
Now this is more like it, personally I would prefer to be top on the Video Ads Viewed and bottom on the Content Views. Why? Because content views means overhead and high operational costs. Not necessarily, but more than likely, obviously you could put 10 ads per video and charge next to nothing for them and obtain the same result but for the most part there is a correlation between the most views and the highest operational costs. The most ads viewed are at Hulu, more below.
Top Ads in Video
Hulu topped the list with the most video ads. I have to say that I am assuming all things equal, meaning to make the leap that the site with the most ads viewed is making the most revenue means you have to believe they are all selling the same percentage of inventory and all selling at the same price point. Also note that Comscore states this list only includes streaming-video advertising and not overlays, branded players, matching banner ads around the player etc.
Top was Hulu, second was the BrightRoll Video Network which is not a site but a network as is number three Tremor Media Video Network, therefore the second was Microsoft (sites), then Google (sites) Break Media Network and others. It is interesting that Hulu was not on the first list, probably because they have longer form video such as shows or movies, but they do have short clips. Also interesting to see the Break Media Network which owns it’s sites was so high on the ads viewed list compared to others. They obviously sell their inventory well. Also interesting that Facebook was on the most viewed list but not the most ads viewed, so you could infer they are showing clips but not monetizing well.
This list goes to show that it is not always the largest sites or those with the most users that generate the most revenue.
Andy of ComLuv and Hesham of FamousBloggers are hosting their Blogging Contest again. They have a total of $3,550 in cash prizes.
If you are a blogger you can submit your entry now and have until July 7th. Learn more about the Contest Here.
This is a very important and powerful technology, so let me first say two things 1. I am not getting paid by CaptainAd, and I have to say this because my article may appear too biased in their favor 2. I love disruptive technologies and this may be one. Simply put, they can allow you to make money on advertisements within other peoples video as long as it is embedded on your site. That is amazing. Read on.
CaptainAd has a technology solution that will allow ads to appear in video regardless of the video player.
Publishers
On our site, any site with video, the idea of running advertisements within the video on your site is yet another additional revenue stream. Other technologies would require you to either use a particular video player or usually a video player provided by the advertising network that they control.
Expanded Inventory Possibilities
The beauty of CaptainAd is that it works with 27 different video players and I am sure they will add more. You can post videos to your site from sites like Break, YouTube, MySpace, Yahoo and many more. If you were to use an ad networks specific video player you would have to own the content, host the content, and then stream it into the player. However, with the CaptainAd system you do not need to own the content, just embed other sites videos in your site and you are done.
Video Players and Revenue in CPM
You will see from their site that they have a chart showing the CPM (cost per thousand) that you will make for the ads being shown. That is, for every advertisement shown using the video on your site with their technology, you will earn up to $1.00 CPM which is not bad at all. They have a chart listing the amount of revenue depending on the country you are in. You will also see the chart of CPM on the publisher page. They also have a list of the many video players it will work with.
Advertisers
As an advertiser, or anyone that wants to reach an audience that watches online videos, you can reach the Captain Ads inventory. I can only imagine how they can target, you may surprised, potentially they could give you access to individuals watching YouTube (as an example) videos and you would not have to go through YouTube to advertise. You can reach them through their site.
Here is a list of various types of networks, whether you are a publisher and want to make money by adding their advertisements to your site or an advertiser looking to reach your audience. The list can also be found here.
Affiliate Networks
As a publisher you will have to implement these advertisements on a case by case basis by choosing the ads you want to run.
General Advertising Networks
This is a list of networks providing multiple types of advertising and pricing methods.
Niche Advertising Networks
iPhone Advertising Networks
Mobile Advertising Networks
Advertising Network Optimizers
Wondering which ad sizes to run on your site? Marketing Sherpa posted this chart to show the click through rates on advertisements. Assuming the same CPC (Cost Per Click) revenue for each ad size, the 300×250 and 728×90 receive the highest click-thrus.
Obviously there are many other variables, such as ad placement above or below the fold etc. However this is a good starting point when deciding which types of ads to place.
The Rubicon Project is an ad optimization tool.
Rubicon Project Explanation
You may run advertisements on your site. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has a list of standard advertising unit sizes, as an example a common size is a 300×250 (refers to the pixel width and height) ad unit. When you join an advertising network such as AdSense, Yahoo Publishers Network, or others, they typically have all of the standard IAB sizes. You would then place code on your site to display ads from these networks. The code will only place the advertisements from that one network, to rotate them you would need to use a script or ad software.
However to determine which advertisements are paying the best for your site, page, position, ad type, etc., you would need to check each network every day and keep a spreadsheet. However what you would be unable to do is what ad optimization networks like Rubicon do, and that is optimize by determining which ad network to pull an advertisement from based on the page, position, geographic location of the person and more, in order to optimize your revenue. Revenue is measured by an eCPM (estimate cost per thousand). If the eCPM is $1.20 then you are making $1.20 for every thousand ad impressions.
Setting up Networks
Rubicon has two types of networks.
Smart Matched Networks
When you initially join and set up a website, receive your Rubicon ad code, and place the code on your site you will instantly begin displaying advertisements because Rubicon already has relationships with certain Advertising Networks in place. Therefore advertisements are being pulled from a list of about 10 already setup. These are the Smart Matched Networks. Which Smart Network advertisements are pulled from depends on settings under the Sites tab that I will explain in another post. As a quick example, you can choose to show both display advertisements (graphical ads) and/or text ads. If a network does not have text ads and you chose to only show text ads, then obviously that network will not be part of your mix.
Baseline Networks
These networks can be manually added by you. There are two reasons you would add them, you may want to add additional networks that are not already part of the Rubicon Smart Matched Networks or you may already have a network relationship and you would like to keep it.
There are a lot of networks you can choose from under the Baseline Networks. Simply click the “add” button next to the Baseline Networks heading and you will see a list. However to add one of these networks you must have a relationship with them. In other words you must sign up with them, be approved, and when entering into Rubicon you would need to have your login and password to set it up. Now when you do this you can still log into the original ad network directly to obtain stats and/or get them from Rubicon. The benefit of having the advertising pulled from Rubicon is to optimize your inventory to achieve the highest eCPM, the most money possible per impression. However, there are costs associated with this so read on.
How You Get Paid and How Rubicon Gets Paid
Rubicon charges a 10% fee. Therefore if your total revenue for the month is $1,000 Rubicon would receive $100. Now here is how it breaks down if you have added networks using the Baseline Networks. First the Smart Matched Networks are Rubicon relationships so let’s say you make $100 from them in one month, then you make $100 from a group of Base Line networks that you signed up for and added to Rubicon. For the Month you would make $200, however Rubicon would take a 10% or $20 fee since they optimized your inventory. Now Rubicon’s Smart Match Networks made your $100 minus their $20 fee (fee is on the total $200) and you would receive an $80 check from Rubicon. The $100 from Baseline Networks would come directly from those advertising networks you have direct relationships with. The question is whether you believe a 10% fee is worth Rubicon optimizing your feeds. Assuming they can take your $.90 eCPM to $1.00 or more, then yes, it’s definitely worth a try.
In-Text advertising is what Kontera is known for. You can make more money per page using their system and installing their code. Install once and generate revenue forever.
How Kontera Works
You place their code on your pages and Kontera will hyperlink, in other words make links on your pages clickable by visitors, to advertisers sites. For example, if you have the word baskets within a post on a page of yours they may make that link clickable because an advertiser paid to receive clicks on the word baskets.
How You Make Money With Kontera
When a visitor is on a page of yours and a word is hyperlinked by Kontera that catches the visitors attention they can place the mouse over the word. When they move over the word an advertisement pops up enticing them to click and learn more. The visitor, if they click, is taken to the advertisers site that bid on that keyword. Since the link is clicked the advertiser pays Kontera and Kontera splits the revenue with you. What is nice about this advertising is that you do not need to do anything and the advertisement is nothing more than a hyperlink of a word that is already in one of your articles and does not appear as additional advertising. This raises your page eCPM.
New Feature to Make You More Money
The more clicks, the more money you make. Kontera has added a new feature to make individuals more likely to click and there is nothing changed on your page. The information that is shown when someone moves the mouse cursor over the hyperlinked word is enhanced, call it a rich media experience if you will. Take a look at this image from Kontera of their newest feature:
The benefit is hopefully more clicks per page and more money for you per page and per visitor.
Visit Kontera here to get started, it is free to join.
Earlier I wrote about how the domain parking with Sedo worked. However, you may Park Domains with GoDaddy or Park Domains with Sedo. In case you do use GoDaddy here is a coupon to use.
I chose to test with Sedo and have parked 47 domains with them, as they are free. When setting up the service you choose keywords, related to your domain, and categories. After half of a month I have domains earning only pennies and others close to $1. The basic analysis would say that if you can receive greater than $1 a month or $12 a year, then it makes sense to renew at any amount smaller than $12. Others that are not profitable you may want to let lapse or put up for sale.
However, another benefit of parking domains is to determine which of your parked domains receive the most traffic and click throughs. You are able to see not only the number of unique visits to your domain but also the click through rate of the advertisements placed on the domain. This information could be used when determining whether to develop the domain into a property. I clearly have some domains with much greater trafic than others and higher click through rates.
Domain parking may be more profitable if you have obtained domains that were once properties and have links to them already developed, or as some have done – create misspellings of other popular terms (it is not suggested you do this as it may be problematic).
To conclude the first follow up to this test, I have determined some domains I will let lapse, others I will continue to park with Sedo and a couple I will attempt to develop into properties as they have decent traffic and click through rates on content and advertisements related to the domain and the category I assigned to it.
I did not choose GoDaddy simply because GoDaddy charges you to join their program while Sedo is free. The GoDaddy basic plan allows you to earn 60% of the advertising revenue on your parked domains. The cost is:
The GoDaddy Premium Plan allows you to earn 80% of the advertising revenue on your parked domains and includes other services. The cost is: