Will someone please tell me why no one wants to advertise on this site?
Your main pages invite advertisers, and quote prices.
You have had ads in the past. Altoids and something new age, if I recall.
Theads available today on this forum seem to indicate that this is a high-traffic site.
Every other site I go to, no matter how large or small is able to find and keep advertisers.
Yet no one is advertising here.
Why is that?
Maybe there’s a low clickthrough rate? Advertisers want people to click on their banners, not ignore them.
I started to advertise here once, but decided against it on account of the banner not showing in the posting area. There’s way too much great stuff to click on the front page. The ad banner is quickly lost to Cecil’s column, Thread Spotting, Weird Earl’s, etc. But once inside, many times the boredom is palpable and the slowness is excruciating. That is when it seems most likely to me that people might click a clever ad banner.
It’s probably something to do with vBulletin not providing for an ad banner, I don’t know. (Duck?) But it’s too bad, whatever the reason.
Howyadoin,
IIRC, isn’t it more lucrative to have unique visitors than the same people over and over?
-Rav
Nope, vBulletin does not limit you from having an ad banner on pretty much any page you want. IIRC, the Altoids banner was on every page too.
I’d bet that nobody at the Reader is trying to sell ads. They just aren’t geared to it. It’s a newspaper, and they probably have most want ads customers just call them up.
Because we’re too busy hitting our own monkeys to hit theirs.
Well, the SDMB ditched the overt banner ads in favor of the subliminal ads. Now if you’ll excuse me, I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to drink Diet Coke.
Even my home page (for a local theatre group) has ads.
The ad brokers came to me the day I opened it.
I get pennies per hit, but then I don’t get the hits a bulletin board must.
If you use any search engine, you’ll quickly find dozens of ad brokers, all begging for people with active sites. The customers and ads are already lined up, just waiting for a place to be posted.
So, what does that leave us with? That no one tried? But there’s lots of stuff about how this site is overhead for the Reader. Shouldn’t somebody at the Reader be in charge of making all this traffic pay off?
Internet advertising is not the cash cow it once was. Advertisers don’t want to spend a lot of money unless they get high sales from the ads. Basically, the advertising isn’t able to pay for the cost of getting the ads, let alone the cost of the message board. Or so I’ve gathered.
Ahh… Finally, someone has started a topic discussing Internet advertising - my area of expertise.
Lynn, although Internet advertising isn’t the cash cow it once was, there are still plenty of ways to monetize the traffic here. I wouldn’t recommend joining a results-oriented network (pays on clicks or on specific actions as the result of clicking on a banner), but there are several ad networks that have been able to generate significant revenue for newspaper websites.
Two such companies just merged - Poweradz and AdOne. AdOne built their network on classified ads. Poweradz represents a huge collection of small newspapers. You should look into whatever comes out of this particular merger and see if they would be interested in repping the Straight Dope site.
You might also want to check in with the major ad networks - DoubleClick, 24/7 Media, Real Media and L90. They might be able to help as well. Their typical cut is between 40 and 50 percent, but you really don’t have to do much once you sign up with them - just install some ad tags and let them do the rest. I had a site that was a 24/7 affiliate, and they did a pretty good job of not only sending network ads my way, but selling sponsorships that would bring in some nice beer money.
I don’t see why a site that has as much traffic as the SDMB wouldn’t be able to pull in an extra $5K to $10K per month by going with one of these rep firms. That would at least cover bandwidth costs and maybe it would allow Unca Cecil or whoever is running things over there to give the mods and admins something more than a coffee mug. 
E-mail me if I can be of assistance. I’ve brokered quite a few deals with ad networks, and I’d assist you for free, considering the amount of time I’ve spent amusing myself here.
Thank you, THespos. I’m not the one in charge of advertising, but I’ll certainly kick this up to a Higher Authority, once I can figure out who to send it to. I’m not in Chicago myself, and I don’t know many people at the Reader, but I WILL try to find out something. This might be something we can use.
The ad business on the Net has taken a huge hit, even the biggest sites have seen a huge drop in ad revenues over the go-go times of the past.
Just an assumption here on my part, but I suspect most of the ads you see are big-package bulk deals so that there’s some money of some sort coming in.
We could do that kind of thing too – and for a short time in the past, we did – however, when you take those bulk ads there’s no control on our side over the quality of the advertisers. As we object to certain kinds of advertisers – for example, psychic hot lines, to name just one ubiquitous sort – we’re just too picky for these sorts of ads and so do not get this kind of web traffic. There’s not enough money in it to make it worth the Readers time and effort, apparently, in any event.
While our users want us to make some bux so we can stay in business (and so do we!), at the same time y’all get quite upset seeing, say, Miss Cleo talkin’ to you from a Straight Dope ad banner. One of the ads from the bulk package adverised “free astrolgy readings” and the email received about it was very negative.
Hope this answers your question. And if you wanna advertise with us, come on down! (Unless you’re Miss Cleo.)
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
**Lynn Bodoni & THespos -
Thanks !**
I knew there must be a way.
You just have to reach the right ears.
Hope it works.
I think it might be due in part to this:
Don’t you think advertisers know that the “smartest, hippest people on the planet” are the least likely to fall for banner advertising? As for the total dipsticks, they are too busy writing their manifestos in the margins of dollar bills to waste time trying to “shoot the monkey”.
Tuba, in most contracts with reputable networks or rep firms, you can reserve the right to refuse objectionable advertisers. There are still quite a few sites on the net that refuse to take alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, etc. I’ve planned and executed two campaigns for liquor advertisers this year, so I’ve seen this in action. You could stipulate no gambling, psychic hotlines, pop-up ads, etc.
One of these days, I’m going to find a client that will advertise here. I’m just waiting to land a client who wants to target smart people.
Oh, one other thing…
When my site was a 24/7 affiliate, I could use the client they gave me (AdForce) to view upcoming campaigns. If I found the advertiser objectionable, I could opt out of that campaign and it wouldn’t be served on the site. If you swung a similar deal, you could have someone spend 15 minutes a day making sure that Miss Cleo banners didn’t find their way on to the SDMB.
I hope that I’m not the only one who noticed that the whole board is one big ad for the Chicago Reader…maybe the SD Reader too. Me thinks Matthew Alice sounds a bit like Cecil, maybe they are twins.
If nothing else an ad banner might be able to fund having the Big C himself visit some of the more remote Dopefests, or better yet, having a fund for a trip lottery for a reader to visit a dopefest in another part of the country. I know I would love to do a dopefest on the east coast sometime just to meet sum y’all. But alas I cannot afford the trip 