Ad Sales Blog

"Dear NBC your ad stinks"

As an interactive evangelist you have to get tough with advertisers who send you lousy ad copy. In interactive media there is no place to hide when an ad does not perform. If an ad tanks on your blog, or website the advertiser will more often blame your media than their message.

B.L. Ochman, publisher of What's Next Blog, was faced with this situation and posts about the tough love she dished out to NBC who submitted poor ad creative for her blog: 

"Dear NBC - Please don't get me wrong: I love you for advertising on my blog. But I want you to get results so you'll keep coming back, and this ad sucks...

So I'd like to give you a little free advice about how to make your blog advertising more effective.

- The job of a blog ad is not to tell your story. Blog ads need to be intriguing, interesting or entertaining enough to get us to a convincing landing page where you have lots of room to tell us what you've got for us.

- Talk about us, not about you. Don't take this personally, but we don't care about you. All we care about is what you can do for us.

- What's the ROI? Tell us about what advertisers got in the last Olympics. All advertisers care about is ROI, either in orders or awareness. Give us stats. We don't care how many days are left before your Olympic coverage starts. We want you to tell us, in the headline, why we should care.

- Be topical, timely, edgy, and fun. Blog readers are inured to traditional advertising. They're here, and on other top blogs, looking for something new and interesting.

- Be clear! You want to get brands to advertise on NBC during the Olympics. Tell me in the headline why I should bring my clients to you

- Don't make your ad a black hole. When that dreadful flashing stops in the ad, you're left with what is basically a black hole.

- White space is your friend in blog ads. You're competing with lots of copy that my readers came here - by choice - to get. What you have is basically a blob of copy, and since it's not easy to read at a glance, it's pretty much invisible. Less is more in blog ads.

- Don't scream in blog ads. You need to be clever.- Have a sense of humor.

- Don't be boring.

Read all of B.L. Ochman's story on her blog

What is a click worth? Why Nielsen's new metric is good news for you

Here is a great selling tool for battling the "not enough clicks" objection so common when selling publication branded online media.

The whole argument for our online advertising, as opposed to the search or general online media you compete with, is that while our clicks or page views may be fewer, they are based on more relevant content and deliver a more involved reader. Last week, Nielsen, arguably the most credible media monitoring service, just told the world that page views are not enough. Their web site monitoring service will refocus on TIME SPENT on a site as the primary metric, deemphasizing page views.

Reacting to the Nielsen announcement, The Wall Street Journal reported,

"Page views have been a major barometer of a Web site’s popularity and help set advertising rates, but the measure is becoming less relevant. Online publishers and advertisers say page views don’t capture consumer loyalty to a site or reflect the increasing popularity of online video and new technology that automatically refreshes Web sites, thereby depressing page views.”

Here is how you use this on a call.

"Time spent" on a site is measurement of involvement. Talk up the Nielsen policy shift and, if appropriate, remind them these are the same people doing the famous Nielsen TV ratings. Now, show them the story, "Nielsen to focus on time spent, not page views, in measuring Web site popularity."

They don't have to read the article, the headline says it all. If your advertiser can see the point that "time spent" and "involvement" are better metrics than "click throughs" and "page views" then go on to explain why your media will deliver greater involvement per visit by talking about your  unique reader and why they are important to the advertiser's business. 

This is also a great news item for selling accounts were search is gobbling up a disproportionate slice of the ad budget. Search tends to get short "time spent" ratings because as they are designed to quickly move users to desired destinations.

This angle covered on the Read/Write Web blog

Original announcement from Nielsen

What is a click worth?

While making the transition from being an all print salesperson to selling Web products, I looked forward to selling media that had accountability. "How 'bout those click throughs!" I would proclaim, like my home team had just won the World Series.

But after a few months I realized the click reports didn't make the sales job easier. While they ended the tiresome objection that asks, "Does anyone actually read this stuff?" it fired up a huge new one: "Your web product didn't generate enough clicks for the money." It turns out there is always  a cheaper way to get more clicks than the one any of us sell. How did I not see this coming?

If all clicks are the same, and all clicks are a commodity, then your advertisers should buy the cheapest clicks they can find. To fight this, you have to sell the unique value of your audience. Not all clicks are created equal. You need to point out, given the unique nature of your audience, why your clicks mean more.  But there are some rules:

1. You have to sell the value of your unique audience as you make the initial sale, NOT after the click report comes out. "After" is too late! If the numbers are low, you sound like a used car salesman pushing the next lemon. As you make the sale, take time to explain how your audience is unique, what they mean to the sale of your client's product, and just why a click from your audience means more.

2. Share category predictions. I find that after I see a few click reports go by my desk that I can pretty much tell a prospective advertiser what to expect in response. If financial advertisers on your website do not pull big numbers but tech advertiser do, tell them upfront. Here your job is to be a consultant advising them on the behavior of something you need to know about; your readers. This is also a great time to slip in stories, facts, ideas and anecdotes about how important your readers are to the sale of their products.

3. When necessary, talk about ad creative in self defense. Recently an advertiser placed an online branding campaign with me. Banners featured a well know industry figure, nice graphics, and a testimonial. I told the client, "Great ad, but don't expect any click throughs." Why not? Because there was no benefit or reason for a reader to click on the ad. Online ads that invite response are simply going to get more clicks than ads that do not.

Simple, right? But at the end of the quarter, when my clients evaluate the click reports, they often forget which banner creative ran where. Then they see the low scores. But if I brought it up before, I can say, "Remember we talked about that, it was that testimonial ad" then ask about about renewing their schedule...

The big blunder I made early in my online conversion was to sell clicks into the great online "blue sky," "Hey, some of our advertisers have gotten thousands of click throughs, you could toooooooo.!"

Don't do this. Be a consultant. Sell the value of your reader, and help your advertiser understand  the response they will get, before they get it.