Expert: Barry Dennis - 1/9/2002

Question
I am in the middle of putting up a new entertainment/education website for writers, artists, musicians, ect.  We are currently working on our media package and none of us really have any experience with how much we should charge for advertising on our site.  Are there any rules to follow or guidelines to go by for this? Is it by the amount of hits that we get or our site size?  If you could help us out it would be much appreciated.

Answer
For comparative purposes visit www.doubleclick.com,and also search "online advertising rates". For information, visit www.iab.net

There are ad programs that charge by the "click", others by number of "impressions" (how many people visit your website).

I am in the middle of negotiating the same thing for a high volume website as their marketing agncy for advertising, and have recommended that they consider offering rates that encourage a variety of advertisers to try them, a discount if you will, from ""regular" rates, since they are new. Another way to approach this is to negotiate a "cost per order" program, this allows marketers to fix their cost per order at a rate which is acceptable to them ( maybe not to you, however.) This approach requires some sophistication and a background in Direct Marketing so that you have a feel for what will work, and not work, both in terms of the economics, and in terms of products and services likely to generate a good response from your audience.
Everybody in the industry ( well, mostly everybody) would love to get a "handle" on the reality of Internet advertising, but the industry (in my opinion) is still in early stages of development, and much work needs to be done before the research tools are as well developed as say in the magazine industry. The Internet is just another marketing channel which canabalizes sales from other channels, so be cautious.

Hope this helps,

Barry Dennis
Client Advocate
Netweb, LLC
Online/Offline Marketing Consulting