Written by Fernando Maciá
Índice
Selling advertising on the Internet requires a protocol that must be followed to the letter where advertisers look at the historical curriculum of the website in which they plan to invest. Learn how to polish those details that will make your portal get that customer’s account.
A business model based on selling advertising using our website as a support can become a lucrative business if we manage to attract a mix of interesting advertisers.
To see how companies sell advertising on their own web pages I invite you to take a walk through different major web portals and go to the bottom of the “home” page where there will surely be a link that says “advertising”. When clicking there we will see the page of the site that shows us the conditions to contract publicity with this portal.
The sales pitch of portals that sell advertising is based on quantitatively demonstrating several indicators that advertisers know from experience to be the most valuable to the success of their campaigns. The fact that these indicators are meaningful and can be demonstrated is what will ultimately convince advertisers to invest in advertising.
Average Unique Visitors per Month
These value indicators can be listed under the following phrases:
“We have an average of XXX Unique Visitors per month…”
The higher the level of unique visitors to a website, the more attractive it will be to advertisers. Normally unique users are demonstrated by the reports produced from the analysis of web traffic statistics systems. The indicators par excellence are the web statistics of “average daily unique visitors” and “unique visitors per month”. Sometimes it is advisable to show the evolution of the number of unique visitors over the last 12 months to demonstrate whether or not there is seasonality in the traffic to the website.
To increase the number of unique visitors to our website, we use all the tools of Internet marketing to attract traffic. Among the most commonly used are search engine optimization, the use of sponsored links and banner advertising.
“We have an average daily Page Views of XXX…”
Total Number of Page Views
The second indicator of value for selling advertising is the total number of page views. When a single visitor visits a website, he/she navigates through several pages of the site, registering several page views.
The number of page views presented by the advertiser’s banner is equivalent to the number of impacts in print media. The advertiser’s banner will be seen in a certain proportion to the number of page views achieved by the page where the banner is inserted, since it will have to share that number of page views with the banners of other advertisers, which are rotated. For this reason, the commercial unit for selling advertising on the Internet is usually the cost per thousand impressions (CPM).
In order to increase the number of page views we have to resort to the science of page views. web usabilityThe “Web Marketing” approach, which consists of applying a series of principles that positively maximize the user’s experience when visiting a web page by translating its effect into an increase of page views on the site.
Registered Users
“Our registered users as of today total XXX users…”
Registered users are all those unique visitors who have registered in the portal by leaving their data in a form designed for this purpose. With this data, companies usually send segmented information through e-mail campaigns. A good portfolio of unique users is an excellent opportunity to send targeted advertising, so advertisers value it significantly.
Having a good number of registered users is important but not as important as the management of the e-mail marketing campaigns applied to them. Having registered users does not ensure that they will read every email you send them.
If a website has good content and provides attractive services to its visitors, it will achieve a high level of registered users. Additionally, if we apply the principles of usability and some creativity in the messages, we will increase the probabilities of obtaining feedback from the user who receives the mail.
Profile of web visitors
“Our visitors are 55% women and 45% men, aged between 20 and 35 years old, 95% from Spain, Mexico and Argentina, and with interests in…”
The trend in advertising is increasingly towards segmentation and
segmentation
. Many web portals show in their advertising offer the profile of their web visitors. The most common data displayed are gender, age, interests and geographic location. Most of this data is extracted from the information collected in the databases where unique users have registered on the site.
“All our statistics are audited by OJD.”
Data sources
Not only must attractive data be shown to advertisers, but it must also be demonstrated that such data is not fabricated or manipulated. The web statistics of any site that wants to sell advertising must be backed up by audit reports from independent organizations created for such purposes. Objectivity is obtained “as the information is audited by a body of proven neutrality and meets the characteristics set forth in the General Advertising Law in force”.
In Spain, there is the Office of the Justification of Diffusion (OJD) whose objective is “to obtain and provide useful and timely information on the dissemination and distribution of periodicals and Internet traffic of electronic media for the use of advertisers, advertising agencies, publishers and other interested persons or entities”.
The OJD has its own statistics system which it installs in the web pages that request this service. Once the statistics system is installed, the OJD publishes a monthly report on the web traffic of the site in question (control report), this information being of a public nature. Currently, a total of 145 web domains are registered with the OJD, equivalent to some 41 million unique monthly users.
Web portals that have their statistics registered with the OJD normally use the reports issued by this entity as a guarantee of their web traffic indicators.
Do not confuse quantity with quality
The first paragraphs of this article may give the idea that the most important thing is to have the maximum number of unique visitors, page views and registered users. But sometimes our web portal is aimed at a very segmented audience and these indicators may not be very high.
If we show that the number of registered users is not so large because the quality of the customer database is focused on a segment, your numbers will be just as attractive as in the case of an infinite but poorly segmented database.
Finally, once we have managed to polish these indicators that make our advertisers fall in love with us, we have to make this information reach them in an effective way, but that is another story. The minimum to start with is to have an optimal page that shows the advertising system and its corresponding statistics that support the investment that the advertiser will be willing to make.
