I sat down with a client recently and went through
steps involved in setting up an online advertising campaign. The first meeting was a bit slow as we spent entire time going over terminology associated with online ad campaigns. Here’s a sampling of what we had to cover before we could begin to work on terms of deal.What types of ads are there? Everyone has heard of banners, and often that term is used for any online ad, but there’s more to it than that. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has laid down voluntary guidelines for ads (which they call Ad Units). These guidelines are widely followed and lay out clearly standards for sizes and formats for variety of ads being used today, be they banners, buttons, skyscrapers, or other more exotic formats. Visit IAB site to become fluent in terminology of this realm. (www.iab.net)
What kinds of campaigns can you create? Ad campaigns are generally sold on basis of either Impressions, Clicks, or Duration.
An Impressions Campaign: If you sign up for an Impressions Campaign you buy a set number of impressions or “views” of ads. An Impression occurs when a banner is downloaded to a web page and (presumably) seen by visitor to website. Accurate calculation of Impressions is difficult, but important thing to remember is that number of page views site registers is not necessarily an accurate indicator of ad impressions. Some page views do not generate opportunities for a visitor to see you ad and accordingly you should not be charged according to that “gross” number; rather, you should insist that certain page views are removed from calculation. Specifically, make sure they do not count visits from spiders, pages that generated errors, or redirects. This concept is called “valid hits” and that is what you want to be billed for.
A Click Campaign: This method of selling ads is performance based and is easier to measure and benchmark. Essentially, you only pay when someone clicks on ad. This method of ad measurement is less prone to manipulation and therefore preferred by many advertisers. Clicks can be measured both from their ad tracking software and from your site traffic reports.
A Duration Campaign: Sometimes called a “Fixed Placement”, this type of campaign is based on old fashioned model of buying a position on a page for a set period of time; say you want ad at top of page one for one month. It is a simple and easy to calculate approach to online advertising, but it is often impossible to arrange on active sites, which tend to use one of two approaches outlined above.
