The Hidden Treasure in Your Website

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Introduction.........................................................................................viiChapter 1: The Site Monetization Challenge and the In-Text Advertising Answer........................1Chapter 2: In-Text Advertising Explained—Terminology, Technology, Ideology.....................9Chapter 3: Technology Basics of In-Text Advertising..................................................19Chapter 4: Advanced Website Monetization with In-Text Ads............................................23Chapter 5: In-Text Advertising Networks and Providers................................................38Chapter 6: In-Text Advertising Revenue and Earnings..................................................43Chapter 7: In-Text Advertising Extras................................................................60Chapter 8: Popular Questions.........................................................................75Chapter 9: Conclusions and the $1,000 Coupon.........................................................98About the Author.....................................................................................103Index................................................................................................105

Chapter One

I like to wake up in the morning with a smile, knowing that my work contributes to the positive side of the world's delicate balance—don't you? Well, as strange as it may sound, I feel like I'm doing just that when I monetize websites. When we find ways to cover the costs of websites and blogs, we help make more information readily available for everyone. Now isn't that a nice thought to wake up with each morning?

But the bottom line is that websites need to make money. There are three typical ways of making money from a website: (1) charge visitors for usage, (2) sell something to visitors, and (3) expose visitors to ads. From these three methods, only the third—placing online ads—keeps the information available for free to the world.

I know, I know. Exposure to ads involves indirect costs and blurs our delicate minds, but unless you're ready to move to Mars it's already part of everything we do—the Internet included.

So, when we place ads on a website, we pick up the bill for the website's cost, and by doing so we give our site visitors more free information and make the world a better place. Recently, however, revenue from ads has shrunk, and many people claim that they don't provide enough money to justify free websites. Is that true?

Out of Sight, Out of Site—Why is Revenue from Online Ads Dropping?

After several happy years of sharp angle graphs with numbers that grew at an insane rate, the trend began to change. Theoretically, the positive growth should have kept going up, but the recent economic downturn caused a decrease in advertising budgets in general. Nevertheless, online advertising budgets are still out there. Advertisers are seeking measurable and direct ways to communicate with their potential customers, and online advertising is the leading choice.

So what's the problem? Online ads have "disappeared" from websites. Okay, not literally ... the ads are still technically there. But site visitors no longer notice them. Just as with other media formats, people's minds began to screen the ads out of their consciousness. And what did the online marketing industry do to regain the consumers' attention? It created ads that disturb visitors and fight with the website's content for their attention. Wonderful companies like Eyeblaster pushed the evolution of banners forward and, in fact, saved the monetizing business. Banners began jumping around, animated characters walked onto our screens, full-page ads covered sites entirely, and when moving the mouse away from the content, we mistakenly activated sound from banner ads. Even the relatively quiet Google AdSense ads are now mostly replaced by animated banners. It seems like all efforts to withdraw the visitors' attention away from the content and onto the advertising is now legitimate.

But ads can't win this battle over the minds of people. As readers, we learn how to focus our attention on what we're looking for. And since it's the content we're interested in, not the jumping ads around it, we've evolved into human filters, reading content without noticing the ads. The truth is that exaggerated-reach media annoys visitors who then look for alternative sources of information. Only a very few will choose to pay a subscription to avoid ads, and most will simply move on to another site. With growing concerns about too many ads, serious online publishers choose very carefully which types of ads they put on their sites. But then readers give quieter ads less attention, which brings the advertising revenue down.

In a survey I ran regarding online readers' acceptance of a certain type of ad, I discovered that more than 30 percent hadn't noticed the ads. In fact, the multiple-choice answer that was chosen most often was this: "What, there were ads on that page?" According to younger online dwellers, they automatically disregard the commercial frame that usually surrounds the content. In fact, they don't even see it anymore.

While this behavior has not diminished revenue from online ads entirely, it has certainly reduced it. This is why I believe it's absolutely necessary to turn our attention to the hidden treasure in our websites.

The Hidden Treasure In Your Website

The solution to the ad problem is right there in the middle of your website. The content of the website can serve as a layer for placing subtle in-text ads. When used correctly, in-text ads appear as double-underline links within the content of a website. They don't interfere with the flow of reading, and they don't fight for the reader's attention. Your site's visitors know that these links lead to ads, but they don't have to be distracted by them. When a link interests the reader, he or she can hover over it with the mouse. Then a bubble will appear with a relevant ad inside. If interested, the visitor can click on the ad and continue to the advertiser's landing page. If not interested, the visitor simply moves the mouse away and continues reading.

In-text advertising is a great way to monetize a website. In-text ads complete other types of advertising without affecting them. If the in-text ads are relevant, they enrich the content with information that visitors find helpful and interesting. Yes, they are still ads, and readers would prefer that they weren't there, but the fact is that these ads generate the revenue you need to keep your information free. And this is something that your site visitors appreciate. Compared to jumping banners, in-text ads are the least intrusive method of advertising. Yet they are also highly relevant and yield good conversion rates for advertisers. This means that the online publisher is well paid.

With website revenue dropping, in-text advertising could save the day. If you look around, you'll see more and more in-text ads on the websites you visit. That's because now, several years after it was introduced,...