The only ad that it shows is "promote with us", so that is really relevant. They should choose some ads networks that has real ads already, may be running alongside with this one.
Expectations: Follow up to "I'm building a better TechCrunch"
31–33 of 33 posts
Re: Expectations: Follow up to "I'm building a better TechCrunch"
#32"We are a member of the InfluAds network. The quality of advertisers here is incredible. You will only see one (relevant) ad on the sidebar because of this great partner." I give it a month. These hipster advertising networks never pay near enough that you can make, once you hit "success" with traffic you'll be funding out of your own pocket if you don't switch.
This is true. At Techcrunch we started with four 125x125 squares in the sidebar:
http://www.crunchnotes.com/2006/05/11/new-techcrunch-site-ad...
The rules were no animated GIF's, no promotions and just a company logo. If you look back at archive.org you will see that it was nice and clean:
http://www.crunchnotes.com/2006/05/12/new-techcrunch-site-la...
(the banners came in 3-4 months later)
They sold out within an hour. The next month, we increased the price to 10k and they sold out again, with some companies buying 3 months worth. Then we increased the price, and again they sold out.
We went from making 1.5-3k a month on AdSense to 40k+ a month and the site was cleaner.
Federated Media came along and promised more revenue. I can't remember the details at the time, but we agreed. Before too long we were getting requests for very large ad spends but they had specific requirements - square ad spots, flash, rollover, the works.
Once the site traffic reached the levels where the ad buyers were interested in dealing with us direct, the entire game changed. We now had 2-3 middle-men between us and the advertiser, and we had to implement the old school ad system (although we did get some concessions such as no autoplay or rollovers).
Steadily over the next few years the site went from nice and clean to top banner, square banner, skyscraper, 12 square units, etc. You all know what it looks like now (well I dont, thanks to adblock).
Those squares are everywhere now (you can blame me for that - they even became a standard IAB unit). They were quickly picked up by all the other blogs but the meaning has changed from what they were supposed to be (ie. just company logo's and a clean way to do ads instead of the traditional), but everybody, including TC, ended up hitting traffic numbers where the old banners were thrown up as well - causing all the sites to look terrible with ads (if your competitors have the banners, you have to have them as well, so you can keep up with revenue, hiring people, etc.)
Re: Expectations: Follow up to "I'm building a better TechCrunch"
#33The only ad that it shows is "promote with us", so that is really relevant. They should choose some ads networks that has real ads already, may be running alongside with this one.
You should check that again ;)