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Posted: 03.27.2003 Fun with numbers
So I had a guy...we'll call him "Mr. Blonde"...ruffle his feathers today at the $25 pricetag for 90-days banner rotation on WM!
Mr. Blonde has been a customer in the past, and had a problem with the number of hits his banner ad was bringing him. One day I linked him here at my blog when he signed up (as I usually do for new advertisers to give them the double-traffic boost), and he had almost 500 clicks that day from ATPTB. Back then, he wanted to know just why his banner wasn't giving him the same amount of click-thru traffic that my blog did. Well gee, let's see... A hardlink vs. a banner ad. Hmmmm. I don't know about you, but unless a banner really "grabs" me -- I won't click on it. That means, make it good. Not like something your 4th-grade child could put together in Paint Shop Pro. But I s'pose that's my fault since I didn't ask him to pay me to create a new one as well. Fast-forward to today. His snide reason for not renewing his contract was because on investigation of my stats, I'd only had a half-million unique hits in three month's time. He claimed that was not nearly enough traffic into my site for his $25. I decided to do a little research for Mr. Blonde using the same stats-tracking site he did. "The Knot" and WeddingChannel.com were not included (because if you have your own NASDAQ trading symbol you don't count as equal-competition) -- leaving my closest competitor as a site who averaged around 240,000 hits for the same 3-month period. A banner with them would cost several hundred dollars for the same time frame. My price? Again, it's twenty-five bucks. My traffic? Double theirs. My next closest competitor came in the 177,000 range -- followed by another with 50,000 unique hits, and another with 20,000 for the same 3 months. Yeah, I'd say it was all my fault. Oh, and by the way -- I checked the stats for the site owned by Mr. Blonde as well. He averaged 54,951 unique hits during those three months. My traffic was ten times his. You do the math.  I don't know too much about the web advertising game, other than it hasn't been very successful in general. Are there actually many (any?) documented cases where banner ads actually generated enough traffic and revenue to justify their costs? ¤ ¤ credit: dave | 03.27.03 at 03:03 PM | link- -this ¤ ¤ Well in the case of one of my advertisers, yes. I know they've had at least 5 orders based on my ads -- and each order averages $500. So if you take a $25 banner for 90 days vs. the $2500 it generated them, very cost-effective. But they have an awesome, professional-looking banner that's very on-target for my audience (destination wedding related). As mentioned, if the banner is "cheap" looking -- I always assume that the service(s) offered will be as well. And no clicky results... :-) ¤ ¤ credit: robyn | 03.27.03 at 03:06 PM | link--this ¤ ¤some people are never satisfied ;) ¤ ¤ credit: Sonia | 03.27.03 at 03:18 PM | link--this ¤ ¤Hi Robyn! Hmm, I don't know about your analogy that a "cheap" banner probably represents a cheap service or in my instance, product. I'm a wahm, making candles out of my kitchen and my banner is probably very "cheap" looking, to be honest. But I'm pretty proud of my products. Ya know? It's really tough to come up with cash to launch a business and I scrape for every penny of my advertisement. That said, I think your banner rates are fantastic! I've paid more than that the same service and got nothing in return. ¤ ¤ credit: Eden | 03.27.03 at 03:26 PM | link--this ¤ ¤Eden, sorry -- didn't mean to insult you there! The site in question offered web design services though -- not something like candles. I think it's understandable a homemade product like candles might not have a banner that could compete with one designed by, say, Yankee Candle with their budget and staff. But if you're offering to design someone's website, the banner should look better than the site-design-quality the client they're trying to reach currently has. Make sense? ¤ ¤ credit: robyn | 03.27.03 at 03:37 PM | link--this ¤ ¤Ok... I give..how do you track the stats of other sites? ¤ ¤ credit: Bryan | 03.27.03 at 04:29 PM | link--this ¤ ¤You send me $25 per site you want stats for, and I'll get back you with some numbers pronto. Interested? :) ¤ ¤ credit: dave | 03.27.03 at 04:52 PM | link--this ¤ ¤You can do it through Alexa. For instance, here are the stats for my blog. My own stats trackers vary somewhat from this -- but it's a semi-decent gauge. ¤ ¤ credit: robyn | 03.27.03 at 05:07 PM | link--this ¤ ¤Being a former math teacher, I can safely say that "Mr. Blond" is a student of new math. You know, whatever 2+2 equals is OK as long as you feel good about the answer. ¤ ¤ credit: BillH | 03.27.03 at 11:54 PM | link--this ¤ ¤BillH, I see you missed the NEA's latest memo on acceptable New Math Standards. Now the kids don't have to feel good about the answer. In fact, it's probably better if they don't feel good about their answer, because that wouldnt be fair to other kids who might not feel good about theirs. And in no case should a teacher acknowledge that a kid has the right answer, because that would only serve to humiliate those kids who didn't and might permanently damage their self esteem. What's important with New Math, BillH, is that the kids have the right idea when they undertake to solve a problem. That is, it doesn't matter what methods you employ, how hard you try or what answer you come up with, as long as you wanted the problem to somehow get solved. I can't wait to see all these great concepts at play in the workplace and the rest of the real world in a few years. Hopefully I'm retired and financially self-sufficient by then, because I suspect we're pretty much f*cked once today's kids are running the world. ¤ ¤ credit: dave | 03.28.03 at 08:49 AM | link--this ¤ ¤Amen, Dave! Gosh, it sounds like Mr. Blond sure has his panties in a bunch. I was thrilled that my site has so may hits (thanks mostly to Robyn's WM!) Then, I was disappointed that after checking the stats, that people were leaving without exploring the site. I tried then to view it on a 56k, and the sucker took forever to load. I'm currently working on a new, less image-oriented design. THE MORAL TO THIS STORY: Make sure you have something worth visiting, Mr. Blond. And be thankful that Robyn is helping you. If it wasn't for her, the only person visiting my site would be my Mom. And Robyn, I'm sure that he was sniping at you because you don't have a fully armed staff of lawyers (i.e. Mr. Burns from The Simpsons) like the NASDAQers. Maybe he thought that by harassing a nice lady, he could shake her up enough to get her to bend backwards and wave the $25. You're a brain to be reckoned with, girlfriend! Mr. Blond had NO clue as to whom he was f'ing with! ¤ ¤ credit: Kathryn | 03.28.03 at 10:57 AM | link--this ¤ ¤Mr Blonde is a real moran. :) ¤ ¤ credit: dave | 03.28.03 at 12:58 PM | link--this ¤ ¤Just to help put this into perspective: AOL run of network banners: $18 cpm (providing you're spending at least $30k with them overall) AOL banners are 234x60. If you want specialist sections where the audience has already been narrowed down for you then you're looking at around twice that amount. ¤ ¤ credit: D | 03.29.03 at 01:31 PM | link--this ¤ ¤Just realised that I should probably explain that "cpm" stands for "cost per thousand". So your 90-day tenancy is far and beyond better value for money... ¤ ¤ credit: D | 03.29.03 at 02:19 PM | link--this ¤ ¤
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