Thoughts on banner ad for news website

wonder_lander · Apr 23, 2018

Our main website sponsor (Panda Press) has decided not to renew at alittlebitofstone dot com as they are moving to focus on B2B.

Before we head off to try and find a local replacement I'm wondering if anyone could give me some thoughts on other opportunities?

We're on about 500k visitors per year for our 18,000 population town. We've been running since 2010 with the majority of visitors from Stone, Stoke or Stafford.

We're currently selling that slot for £2,400 per year and that includes up to 6 pieces of advertorial coverage per year.

Just wondering whether you bright sparks had any ideas on alternative ideas?

1) Adsense?
2) Rotated ads - 3 x £1000 would generate more money and be less of an outlay for a local advertiser
3) Affiliate stuff - either generic like sky / BT or more tailored like Alton Towers which is 30 mins away?
4) Upsell an existing advertiser

I'm interested to hear your ideas.

martin-s · Apr 23, 2018

Adsense might typically be worth £1 CPM on a site like that I guess. £500 pa or thereabouts.

tocku · Apr 23, 2018

Upselling would probably be the easiest way (either single or 3 rotating) - especially if you can demonstrate the value that you've given the advertiser.

(It doesn't appear that you track outbound links - might be worth doing as you can then quote numbers when it comes to renewal. You can do it in Analytics with Event Tracking - see this for example.)

Affiliate banners might work, if you make them relevant - "Still with EON's standard rates? You could save over £200 by switching to XXX". "Superfast fibre broadband is now in Stone. See if your street can get it"

Adsense might be OK, as a back-up.

wonder_lander · Apr 23, 2018

tocku said:
Upselling would probably be the easiest way (either single or 3 rotating) - especially if you can demonstrate the value that you've given the advertiser.

(It doesn't appear that you track outbound links - might be worth doing as you can then quote numbers when it comes to renewal. You can do it in Analytics with Event Tracking - see this for example.)

Affiliate banners might work, if you make them relevant - "Still with EON's standard rates? You could save over £200 by switching to XXX". "Superfast fibre broadband is now in Stone. See if your street can get it"

Adsense might be OK, as a back-up.

Thanks for the response. We do have outbound tracking via the plugin that sells the ads. We've used them before as part of our renewal strategy but with a highly engaged local audience we find that the ads are great for brand awareness as people visit the site multiple times per day.

The ad plugin we use can handle all kind of ads, adsense, directly sold, rotating and affilliate ads. Might be worth doing some split analysis to see how the various options perform.