Technorati has been beta testing a new CPM ad network, Technorati Media, featuring adverts from big-name companies like Honda, Sandisk, Microsoft, and Universal Pictures.

Right now, they’ve been working with larger blogs, but say that they plan to open up the network to anyone (yes, even the “little guy”) in a few months.

Read more at TechCrunch.

I’ve been playing around with Shopzilla publishers network for a few months now but it’s only been in the last week that I’ve had time to take it for a full run on my blogs.

Today I checked my stats and am kicking myself that I didn’t take this program more seriously sooner!

You can read my first impression review of Shopzilla here from when I first started to play with the ad network.

This last week I’ve experimented with some more aggressive positioning of the ads and I’m very impressed with the conversions. You can see one such campaign operating on single posts right at the base of Digital Photography School Posts (like at the bottom of this one).

Now the positioning of the ad unit on that page is far from prominent (it’s so far below the fold that it’s not funny) but my initial testing is that while the CTR isn’t high, it is higher than the ad unit that I previously had in that position. What makes Shopzilla attractive however is that while CTR isn’t massive the ads are paying a significantly higher amount per click (I’m talking a 500% increase).

As usual with this type of ad unit, they work best on product related sites and where the products featured relates strongly to content (I suspect that the higher value the products the better for click value) – but it’s a great program that I have a new found excitement for and plan to start using more and more.

Check out the Shopzilla Publisher Program here.

iamluc asks “How much traffic should you have to offer advertisements on your blog?”

“When should you put advertising on your blog?”

Funnily enough I’ve been asked this question four times in the last 24 hours so it’s probably a good time to answer it.

Before I answer the question though – let me say that there are numerous approaches to this question and if you ask a variety of ‘pros’ you’ll get a similar variety of responses. Here’s how I do it:

I put ads on my blog from the day it launches (actually they go in before it launches). My reasons for doing this largely come down to two reasons:

It’ll earn you a little bit from day 1 – even if it’s a dollar or two a day that does add up to a few hundred dollars a year and I don’t know about you but I don’t mind a few extra hundred in my mortgage at the end of the year.

It gets readers used to ads – most people who don’t put ads on their blog early on tell me that they make this decision because they want to build readership and community first and add ads later.

I understand this on some levels, they don’t want to put off new readers with advertising, however I’m a little skeptical how many people are put off by websites with advertising and wonder if there could actually be more problems when you change the rules later on and introduce ads onto a site that people have become used to being ad free.

Further Reading:

I expand upon this topic a little in a previous post – How Quickly After Starting a Blog Should I put Ads On it?

In February I posted a first impression review of the Shopzilla Publisher Program.

This CPC (cost per click) ad unit is similar to those used successfully by many with the Chitika program. There’s one live in action at the bottom of this post.

I’ve been getting some good feedback from quite a few ProBlogger readers who have tried the program and am consistently getting good results with them so I approached Shopzilla’s Senior Vice President of Operations and Business Development, David Weinrot, for an interview about the program. He kindly agreed. Here’s our chat about Shopzilla.

Can you describe Shopzilla to us in a few sentences?

Shopzilla.com, which operates both the Shopzilla.com and BizRate.com websites, is consistently ranked (by comScore) as the number 1 or 2 most visited comparison shopping site in the US. In addition, Shopzilla operates comparison shopping websites in the UK, France and Germany under the same brand names. Our comparison shopper features enable online buyers to compare prices on millions of different product offers from thousands of retailers. The comparison pricing information is complemented with detailed customer ratings of online retailers, which help buyers identify vendors with high reliability scores along dimensions that are important to them.

Shopzilla, Inc. is wholly owned by the E.W. Scripps Company.

Why did you start the Shopzilla Publisher Program?

Recognizing that the Internet allows all manner of content developers to publish their content and achieve broad market reach, Shopzilla introduced the Publisher Program as a way for those publishers to complement their content with our vast inventory of monetized product listings. In other words, we believe there is a market need to make our “where to buy” listings available to shoppers at any point of presence in their buying & purchase flow.

What does Shopzilla offer that other ad networks don’t that makes it attractive to bloggers?

One of the Publisher Program’s most distinguishing features relative to ad networks is that it is a “direct program” and is thus likely to result in higher monetization yields for publishers. Many of the popular ad networks actually utilize the Shopzilla Publisher Program as an underlying source of content for their own ad programs. As a result, publishers that use alternate ad programs generate only a portion of what they would otherwise generate if they used Shopzilla Publisher Program for the same set of monetized product listings.

Other meaningful features include the program’s link and ad building flexibility. In addition to having access to customizable, standard display ad units, publishers can create custom text links that point to any page on Shopzilla.com, and subsequently integrate them into editorial content. Most ad network programs do not offer the flexibility to link to specific and precisely targeted pages on the advertiser site nor do they enable publishers to tailor the ads in a way that make them most relevant to the page content.

We also think bloggers will appreciate our newly launched referral program, which allows participants in our publisher program to earn $25 for each account that they refer to the Shopzilla Publisher Program.

Do you accept all publishers into your program? If not – why not and how do you make decisions on who is accepted?

Shopzilla does not accept all publishers. Every application is manually accepted into the program by our dedicated Account Management team, led by Rex Roberts and Talia Drake, who you will find are incredibly accessibly and highly responsive to publisher support inquiries. While we do not disclose our approval guidelines, though we typically accept all bona fide US sites and select international sites that tailor to a US shopping market, subject them meeting our decency guidelines.

Do you have any restrictions on the location of publishers or on international traffic?

We do not have any specific restriction on where a publisher is domiciled. However, as previously mentioned, we approve sites that are tailored to the US market.

You’ve obviously seen a lot of publishers using your program – what type of publishers are doing best with it in terms of topics?

Without question, the most successful sites in our publisher program are those that produce editorial content around specific product categories. Niche and specialty retailers are consistently the highest yielding participants of our program; these publishers can command effective CPMs of up to $45. Sites that cover GPS, Digital Cameras, Televisions, MP3 Players, Fashion & Apparel, and Fitness & Athletics all seem to enjoy good success with our program. In addition, at the far end of the integration spectrum, there are content producers who utilize Shopzilla’s commercial API to build full-featured, stand-alone comparison shopping sites and shopping mash-ups. It’s really exciting to see what the publishing community is doing with our openly available content. Examples include ShoppingBounce.com who have built a comparison shopping mash-up as well as yourminis.com, which utilizes our API to publish facebook, typepad, and google widgets/gadgets.

What are the most successful publishers in your program doing well that makes them top earners (ie any practical tips that you have)

If I had to pin this down to two points, it would be: contextual relevance and deep integration. This doesn’t mean publishers have to use the API to accomplish this level of integration, but it certainly helps.

What plans do you have for the future of Shopzilla Publisher Program?

We’ve got big plans! We intend to launch this program to our international sites as well as release various reporting enhancements.

Here’s an example of a Shopzilla Ad

In this post Daniel Scocco answers to another question on the Problogger Question Box (and a question that I get asked a lot). Brian Auer asks:

What about [direct advertising] pricing? Are there any good ballpark price structures? What do we base rates on?

As soon as a blogger decides to play with direct advertising, the question of “how much to charge” emerges. If you charge too much, you might end up with no advertisers at all. If you charge too little, on the other hand, you will be leaving money on the table.

Unfortunately, as Brian wonders, there are no standard pricing structures across the Internet. You will need to take a look around, do some research, and experiment on your own site to find the rates that will maximize your revenues.

That being said, that are some methods that you can use to draw an initial price tag, and some specific places where you can look to cross check the numbers. Below we will cover them.

Defining the metrics: The CPM

Notice that talking about advertising prices in absolute values is useless.

Suppose there are two blogs. One charges $500 monthly for a 125×125 banner spot above the fold, while the other charges $1,000 for a similar spot. Could we say that the first blog offers a much better deal for advertisers?

Obviously not, because the value that the advertiser will get for its money depends on a myriad of factors, above all the traffic that each of the two blogs receives monthly.

If the first blog generates 100,000 monthly page views while the second generates 500,000 monthly page views, an advertiser would be better off by purchasing the advertising space of the second blog for $1,000.

As you can see, the answer to our question comes from a very simple ratio: cost of the advertising space divided by the traffic that the ad will receive.

Several metrics could be used to define traffic, from unique visitors to visits and page views. Most publishers tend to use page views though. Moreover, it is a common practice to measure page views by the thousands, so one should talk about cost per 1,000 page views or impressions. CPM is the term for that, and it stands for Cost Per Mille (Mille being the Latin word for 1,000).

Just to conclude our example, if you do a small calculation you can see that the first blog has a $5 CPM while the second one has a $2 CPM.

Now, we are not suggesting that you should tie your ad rates to the number of monthly impressions of your blog. Offering a flat monthly rate to advertisers is usually the best (and simpler) way to go. Just keep the CPM numbers in mind because they will enable you to compare your prices with those of other bloggers.

What do other bloggers charge?

Like it or not, the Internet behaves like a giant market place, and all websites are subject to the laws of supply and demand. In other words, if you set a price that is significantly higher than the one used by other blogs on your niche, the advertisers will go somewhere else.

The first thing you should do, therefore, is to take a look on blogs that sell advertising space to evaluate what rates they are asking.

The format of the ad (e.g., 468×60, 120×600, 125×125) and the position (e.g., header, sidebar, footer, blended with content) are factors that will directly influence the final price, so in order to be consistent through out your research you should pick a format and position that is popular.

Among blogs selling direct advertising space the 125×125 button ad on top of the sidebar is arguably the most used format, and it should fit our research purpose.

Let’s see what popular blogs on the online marketing sphere are charging, for instance. If you visit the Advertising page of Copyblogger, you will find that the blog generates over 1,000,000 monthly page views, and a 125×125 spot on the sidebar costs $1,500. Divide $1,500 by 1,000 (remember that 1,000,000 is equal to 1,000 times 1,000 page views) and you get a CPM of $1,5.

Similarly, if you visit JohnChow you will find that the 125×125 button add costs $500 monthly, and the blog generates 300,000 page views. Again just do $500 divided by 300 and you get a CPM of $1,66.

As you can see a CPM of $1,5 for the 125×125 buttons is a good average. Even TechCrunch charges a similar rate ($10,000 for 6,5 million page views monthly, converting to a CPM of $1,53), so let’s keep that number as a starting point.

Adapting to your own situation

All the blogs mentioned are viewed as authorities on their niche, which affects how much advertisers are willing to pay to get exposed to their audiences. If your blog is new or if you are just beginning to experiment with direct advertising, therefore, you probably should start with a lower CPM.

Start asking a $0,5 CPM, for example, and as your blog grows and more advertisers come along you can gradually raise it. If you have a blog generating 100,000 monthly page views this would translate into $50 monthly for each 125×125 button placed on your sidebar.

If you are going to use other ad formats or position the ads on other locations of your website just estimate how these factors will affect the traffic that an advertiser will end up getting. Placing a 300×250 banner on the sidebar, for instance, is similar to having 4 125×125 ads, so you could charge 4 times the price of the 125×125 ad ($200 monthly if your blog generates 100,000 impressions, converting to a $2 CPM).

Similarly, increase the CPM if the ad is on the header or blended with the content, and decrease it if the ad will be displayed below the fold or on the footer.

Keep in mind that you should consider real page views for these evaluations. Most web stats programs and software tend to over estimate the traffic on your site. Google Analytics is usually the most reliable one.

Cross checking the numbers and experimenting

In order to cross check the numbers with an external source you could join an advertising network (either CPC based like Google Adsense or CPM based) and use it on the spots where you plan to sell direct advertising.

If you are planning to sell a 300×250 banner spot below your posts, for instance, you could firstly put a Google AdSense unit there and measure the CPM that it will give. Most direct advertising deals should bring you more money that what advertising networks do, mainly because you are cutting out the commissions and negotiating directly with the advertisers.

Finally, remember to experiment endlessly and draw your own conclusions. What works for one blog may not work for another, and vice-versa.

Over to you

Defining optimal advertising rates is a tricky business, and I recognize that the methods and strategies described above might not work for everyone.

What other methods have you used on your blog? How did they work?

This post was written by Daniel Scocco from the wonderful Daily Blog Tips.

Looking for a CPM Alternative to AdSense? Will Reinhardt from Calico Monkey (RSS) shows you 12 of them in this post.

Video content publishers face a unique capitalization challenge on the internet today. Sites that rely on new media for the bulk of their content are unable to earn as much from Adsense as those sites that feature more traditional written articles.

Improving CPM in a New Media Era

There are CPM alternatives to the pay-per-click model that can offer video content publishers better monetization than Adsense. These impression based publishing networks have often been around for many years, while some are new to the field and thus have less stringent traffic requirements. While the CPM amount that can be earned varies depending on the niche and number of unique visitors/pageviews per month, for new media publishers this amount is often higher than Adsense revenue.

The following publishers are ordered by their traffic requirements, in parentheses.

AdsDaq (no requirement) – While they only provide CPM ads to specific countries, their ability to display backup ads from any network makes them an easy first choice for somebody looking to test the waters of the CPM market.

Ad Dynamix – (no requirement) – While not quite as intuitive as AdsDaq, their minimal requirements make Ad Dynamix quite approachable even though their customer support is poor.

ValueClick (3,000 pageviews per month) – While their pageview requirements are quite low, ValueClick is known to be picky with the type of site they will approve.

Morning Falls (10,000 pageviews per month) – A relatively low traffic requirement, solid customer service, simple implementation and easy to understand reports make this a good CPM publisher for beginners.

CPX Interactive (10,000 pageviews per month) – A relatively new face on the advertising scene, CPX Interactive offers good integration and solid reporting. Meeting the traffic requirements is not always good enough, however, as their internal approval process is on the strict side.

Burst Media (20,000 pageviews per month) – Burst Media is an intermediate advertising publisher. Their overly-complicated integration and reports, as well as their poor customer service hold them back from the upper echelon of advertising networks.

Casale Media (10,000 unique visitors per month) – A good intermediate ad publisher, perfect for an established site that has not quite reached A-List status just yet. Casale Media handles larger sites as well, making them a good long-term choice for many sites.

Tribal Fusion (60,000 unique visitors per month) – A solid pay scale, depending on your niche. Tribal Fusion represents hundreds of sites with a wide range of categories.

Brightroll (100,000 video views and 250,000 pageviews per month) – Along with Video Egg, Brightroll is the only other advertising publisher on this list that is truly centered on new media. Their video view requirement automatically puts them in the advanced category.

Adtegrity (500,000 pageviews per month) – While their orange and green color scheme may make you scratch your head, Adtegrity is known for their quality customer service and is quickly becoming a leader in the advertising network field.

Advertising.com (2 million pageviews per month) – One of the heavy hitters of online ad publishing, their high pageview entry point means only well-established sites need apply.

Video Egg (10 million video views per month) – The cream of the new media crop, Video Egg concentrates entirely on advertising in online videos.

Conclusion

Once a new media site has obtained a solid audience a close examination will reveal that Adsense simply doesn’t have as much clout as it should. As your site grows, consider other advertising methods and networks. Your bottom line will appreciate your efforts.

The Author

Will Reinhardt shows his own cartoons and discusses making a living creating animation at Calico Monkey (RSS). He also teaches animation at Toon Boom Tutorials.

Chitika today have announced a new type of ad unit that I was fortunate enough to get a sneak peak of a few days ago.

It’s called the Viral Branding Unit (VBU) and you can see it in action on their VBU page but it looks like this:

This unit is currently in beta test but I’m told it’ll be released to all shortly. It’s an interactive ad unit which gives users of your blog the ability to actually interact with the ad. The ads are video based and have the ability for readers to leave comments, rating the ad, telling a friend about it – all on the ad itself.

I’ve seen a few blog networks provide advertisers with the ability to have readers give feedback before (I think Weblogs Inc did it) but this is definitely going in a new direction for ad networks. Of course leaving the ability to comment on ads is a risky business for advertisers and I’m not sure if there is any moderation policies – but it’ll be one way for them to get feedback on their advertising.

I’m told that advertisers will have the ability to control which of the viral components that their ads will have (ie they can turn off comments etc) but what moderation there will be I’m not sure.

These are CPC ads – Correction, these are CPM ads – I’m not in the initial beta test so can’t say how much they are paying – but I’m presuming that they’d be reasonably well priced ads as they are a little more intrusive than many other types of ads.