How Do You Price Your Ads?

Banner Ads for SaleI’ve been working on a new design for Thatedeguy.  The current one isn’t doing some of the things that I want it to and I’ve been wanting a more Magazine-y design for a while.  I’ve got it mostly finished and am about |   | this close to being ready to roll it out to production and begin tests here on the live side.

Part of the changes will involve some changes in how advertisements are done here.  I’ll be using some 125X125 banners and possibly a 468X60 banner on the index and other pages and an 160X600 banner in the prime left banner spot on all sub pages.  I may reserve the skyscraper for some affiliate banners, but I’d like to open up the others for purchase.  I’m going to attempt to use the open source ad server, OpenAds to manage those.  Another addition will be the universal use of the rel=nofollow tag on all banners to keep the Google gods happy.  I’ll continue “follow”ing most links in the content and the comments after 3 comments by the author.

My question then, is how do you price those spots?  I’m curious to see if there are any other methods besides the “by the month” method that I plan on using.  Anyone have any luck with CPM or impression ads?

Me next question is how much would you pay for any of those spots on this site?

You can leave your thoughts in the comments.  Feel free to say anything, and you can post anonymously if you fear offending me.  (I’m not easily offended though)   Also, if you’re interested in one of these spots, drop me an email at admin@domain and I’ll drop you a line when I get some more concrete prices and a better idea of a rollout on the new design.

Online Ad Revenue Hits New High

In case you missed it, the IAB announced that the online ad revenue for the second quarter of 2007 hit a new high.  Over 5 billion dollars.  Wow.  Some quick math will point out that we should be looking for a 20 billion dollar year in ad revenues online.  That’s impressive.

HipMojo points out that the big dog of the online ad game, Google, accounts for over 40% of the U.S. Online Ad revenue.  That also is impressive.  What’s more impressive, and I think more than a few people either missed it or glossed over it is the fact that performance revenue increased the gap between it and cpm (impressions) revenue.

What does that mean for you and me?  If we’re counting on Adsense, Adbright, or any other impression ads to pick up or sustain their levels, we better start counting elsewhere.  PPC (pay per click) advertising seems to still be rising, but I would guess that the large increase to the performance revenue is most likely due to affiliate sales.

So, how much affiliate work do you do?  I’d say you’ll be doing more in the next few months.  I know I’ll be focusing on getting my affiliate work in gear.  I’ve been doing poorly in that particular area so I have a lot of work to do.