Use Your Own Banner Spaces
I’ve worked for several major internet sites over the last 4 years, and I’m constantly having a go at my channel managers for not making use of their own banner spaces if no paid for advertising is being displayed. My view is that if a space is worth $X per month to an advertiser to reach your users, then surely it’s worth the same amount to you to get a message across to your readers? E.g if a banner slot or text-link is being sold for $100 per month, then this is $100 of free advertising you could be using!
Many blogs use Google Adsense to serve their adverts, but unless you specify an alternate url in your code Google will serve free public service ads that don’t give anything back to site owners in terms of traffic or cash. I’ve found on my site that this can be anything up to 10% of all impressions, which is a big chunk.
Here are some ways you can make better use of spare banner impressions:
- Signup for another advertising service such as Chitika or Adbrite, and create banners the same size as your banner slots. If you’re replacing Google Adsense banners you can even now make the ads contextual
- Signup for an dedicated alternative url scheme www.alternateurl.com and add these your banners
- Make your own banners promoting site registration. They don’t have to be sexy, although it helps - even text ads work
- Sell banners directly by adding a link to your site offering to add custom banners
- Swap banners with other bloggers. Give them a banner to be served on their site in return for a link or banner on your site to theirs
- Insert your flickr pictures to give your readers something interesting to look at
- Make your own banners promoting your key posts. A cool feature would be to show excerpts from the most popular posts on your site
- Look for better performing ad networks! Just because one particular ad network works for another site, it doesn’t mean it will work on your site
If you can think of anymore ways in which your spare banner ads can be used let me know and I’ll add them to the list.
Bookmark & Share
