Ask HN: Good advertising network for a site with 4M views per month?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8763203

by LookingForHelp • 12 years ago

15 8 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've been running a site for quite a few years that now sees around 4 million page views per month. It's a large community site with discussions about software. I've only been running Google AdSense on it, since it was what I'd started with. But revenue is only around $2,000 a month. Based on some reading on HN, it seems I could be doing more with it, but I honestly have no idea where to start looking. Ad networks, CPC, CPM, bidding, etc. I've started doing some reading and learning, but it's a lot to take in for someone with no background in advertising (I'm primarily a programmer).

Any help or suggestions are appreciated.

Note that I'm using a throwaway account instead of my main HN account since I'm sharing my AdSense revenue numbers.

fjabre• 12 years ago

At 4 million page views per month you have to ask yourself if ads are the only way to generate revenue from your site.

LookingForHelp• 12 years ago

I've done some branded merchandise. It's done OK.

petercooper• 12 years ago

I sell six figures of sponsorships each year on programmer-oriented properties and have been through a similar situation to you in the past. My email is in my HN profile so I'm happy to give you some context specific pointers over email, including things I'd rather not say here.

In terms of general advice I can give here:

- I've always found Adsense to perform poorly the more intelligent or technical the audience is. Adblocking is one issue, but essentially sophisticated audience == less likely to engage with weakly targeted ads (except retargeted ads, but that's another story).

- A community site that's so popular has great potential to get a small subset of the audience to pay for some sort of status symbol or internal advertising. See Reddit.

- Depending on what the topics are, job advertising could be lucrative if done right and promoted internally in the right way.

- If you want to take baby steps, consider introducing some BuySellAds units and selling your own ad space through them. You get control over your pricing and if you have an audience an advertiser is interested in, things can work well, especially if you can sell a site wide sponsorship type thing on a monthly basis.

- Do you have e-mail access to your community's members? There could be a goldmine there if it's treated properly. Email CPMs are way higher than the Web.

- Ditto but for having a podcast the community listens to. Podcast CPMs are even higher, but this is an entire project in its own right.

- If you're in the right topic area, boutique networks like http://adpacks.com/ might work well for you. In my experience the CPM isn't particularly mindblowing, but it should be better than Adsense and little work for you.

mattm• 12 years ago

Ditto but for having a podcast the community listens to. Podcast CPMs are even higher, but this is an entire project in its own right.

Really? I had considered advertising on podcasts in the past but couldn't see how it would be worth it as I figured most people listen to podcasts on the go and wouldn't visit the advertisers. Does anyone else have experience advertising on podcasts or can you share anything more?

davismwfl• 12 years ago

Sounds like petercooper would be a great contact to reach out to.

There was also a thread the other week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709438 that was how to monetize a smaller site, but the basics are still the same to a certain point. But without knowing the content its kinda tough to give specifics.

Some ideas, you can collect data/posts from the site into ebooks and sell those, or provide training from the site on specific topic etc. And if you haven't already I would be building the email list for a newsletter, cross promotions etc, all of which convert at a much higher rate and do really well.

I would think that out of 4M views per month you should be able to monetize it in multiple ways, so you do not put all your eggs in one basket as well.

jaddison• 12 years ago

You should check out Google's Doubleclick service: http://www.google.ca/doubleclick/publishers/small-business/

Instead of just serving Adsense ads, you can set up various kinds of bidding (or manually create ads to start with) falling back on Adsense when inventory 'runs out'.

Basically, it will end up being a manageable/overridable layer between your site and Adsense, which you currently use.

aslewofmice• 12 years ago

What do you mean by discussion about software? Is the readership primarily programmers or is it software end-user discussion? Having a clear idea about your user base is step one, and I think that should be easy for you.

How many uniques per month are you seeing?

Have you considered video? You'll need to find that balance between user-experience and monetization.

Like someone else mentioned, you might want to consider looking into a proper Ad Server setup where you can then tap into the programmatic ad exchanges/networks and get more bang for your buck. DFP Small Business may be best - it's free up to XX million imps and you can manage AdSense through it as well.

d12b• 12 years ago

It sounds like you are getting very low CPM from google adsense ($0.50 ecpm?). Are your visitors from the USA?

You should consider DFP (doubleclick for publishers) and than run some competition for adsense. Rumor has it that it will drive your CPM's up. competition can be any ad network like Matomi, DSNRMG etc)

You can also contact companies such as the Rubicon project and they will do this work for a commission of about 15%-20%. They claim to do better than adsense in certain markets.

My last advice is https://buysellads.com/ where you can post your inventory and ask for more than what you currently get.

Oh, you can also contact adsense help desk and ask them to advise you on how to improve the location of your ads (if your ads are currently on the bottom of the page, you won't get clicks or $$)

good luck!

Ask HN: Good advertising network for a site with 4M views per month?

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