ad revenue 09,10,11

Working on SEO and promotion of your blog or website is hard and long ongoing process. While you should never stop doing it, you can also invest some time, effort and money in increasing the ad revenue of your site keeping the current traffic levels. Doing this often brings high return because when you attract more visitors and page views later you will further benefit from the advertising income optimization you are doing now.

Here are 10 ways to boost the ad revenue of your site or blog even without boosting the traffic.

1. Focus on best performing ads. A common misconception is to place lots and lots of ads together on the site – AdSense, Chitika, Clicksor, direct ads and so on – with the hope you will make more money. This is all wrong! Not only you will push your visitors away and reduce the site page views. The real problem is that poorly performing ads will draw visitors attention and reduce the clicks and attention that goes to the well performing ones. It’s much better to track which ads have the highest cost-per-impression income and leave only the best ones. Besides that private advertisers are more likely to buy advertising on sites that are not already crowded with other ads.

2. Publish relevant ads. As long as possible, try to provide ads that are relevant to your content. This will keep your visitors happy and less of them will ignore the ads. The ads will perform better too, the advertisers will be more satisfied and your revenue will grow. Doing this is easy with the good contextual ad networks but if you are selling banners directly you will have to seed the better ads yourself and sometimes even say no to irrelevant advertisers.

3. Sell ads directly to advertisers. One of the bets ways to increase ad revenue is to cut the middle-man. Most ad networks keep 33% – 50% of your revenue. Quite blunt, isn’t it? Yes, they are great way to connect you to advertisers, but why don’t you also try to approach them directly? With a little effort you could double your ad revenue – without the need to have any additional visits and pageviews.

4. Offer more payment options. When selling ads directly, offer more payment options to the advertisers. Even those who don’t want to use a credit card or Paypal may be good advertisers. And because the supply of sites is huge, advertisers will rarely bother to write you asking about payment options that they don’t see listed. Why don’t you list everything possible so you don’t miss these extra advertisers?

5. Position CPC ads well. There is two keys to success with “CPC” ads (ads that pay per click): relevance and positions. Usually you can’t do much about relevance, but you can fully control the ads position. There is no universal formula, but usually placing the ads above the fold, putting them within the text and using square ads instead of standard banner formats work better. To find what works best for you just experiment!

6. Have clear “advertise here” page. Many bloggers and webmasters expect that advertisers will just contact them by email and ask about buying ads. While this happens sometimes, it’s quite uncommon. Your chances of selling ads will get much better if you have easy to access, clear to understand, and attractive page that clarifies the advertising options and prices. If you can have an option to purchase ads directly from the page, this will be even better.

7. Publish your site traffic stats. If you target private advertisers, give them as much information about your site as you could. Screeshots from your traffic stats software, number of inbound links, Alexa stats, Google PR, internal membership activity – everything of this can impress the advertisers and encourage them to buy ads. A page offering loads of info is much better than a page giving some meaningless text and contact form.

8. Offer yearly packages and automated renewals. Many advertisers will simply forget to renew an ad or decide to try somewhere else even if they are happy with the results. It’s much easier to keep them longer if your advertising subscription renews automatically or if you get them purchase yearly package. In order to succeed with this, plan some discounts for advertising on yearly basis.

9. Give stats to your advertisers. Your advertisers will appreciate if they can track the clicks and impressions of their ads – even if they pay flat fee. This can help them test different banners and see which ones perform better. As a result this leads to happier advertisers and better ad revenue.

10. Have instant ad activation. Advertisers love to have their ads activated immediately after they pay. Try to implement such functionality on your site. Seeing their ads live immediately will often encourage advertisers to purchase even more ads with confidence.

You know you need to add another revenue stream to increase your cash flow, but which one? There are so many directions you can go in, how do you know which is right for you?

You could do a telesummit; start a membership site; create a Platinum, high-ticket coaching program… the ideas are limitless.

Since my theme song is Simple and Elegant, my first choice right now is a VIP day, also called a Virtual Retreat Day.

I have done all of mine on the phone, virtually. It’s so much easier to just pick up the phone and dial into a bridge line than hoping on a plane, getting a hotel, and having to look nice to boot!

Virtual VIP days are the easiest way to do this.

In a nutshell, VIP days can be done privately or in a group setting. I have been involved in many, group and private, with my own coaches and have run many of them myself in my own business.

Let me give you some quick tips so you will see how easy they can be to attend and set up as your own.

How to Structure Your Day

I generally schedule 5 – 6 hour days. We are on an off the phone all day, with generally no call lasting more than 45 minutes. You give your client(s) their homework for that break while you can just hang, check email, whatever you wish.

1. Pace Yourself and Your Information

I know how easy it is to share everything you know about a particular subject. I know you like to ‘over deliver’ and I do too. But, please don’t. It would be so easy to overwhelm your client(s) with too much information.

Break your information down into bite size pieces, step-by-step systems to help them digest what you are teaching and sharing. Pick one topic, one primary challenge your client has and address that one only.

2. Offer Bonus Handouts

Clients love handouts, checklists, and tips. Offer at least one or two to increase the value of your day.

3. What is your upsell?

This is the perfect opportunity at the end of your call to offer another program or service you have. You want them to stay in action and hiring you will keep them moving forward. Accountability is what coaching is about, right? I also suggest you give them a great discount if they decide to continue with you either that day or in 24-48 hours.

Are you ready to add Virtual Retreat’s to your business? I suggest you sign up for one yourself so you can ‘live’ the experience of how powerful they are and how much forward action you can take in your business.

Are you ready to step up and helping your client(s) with their challenges? This is a win win for you and your clients.

Action Step: My suggestion is you sign up for a VIP day experience, mine or someone else’s, but I want you to see how beautifully they work. Once you have done that I encourage you to design your own first Virtual Retreat Day experience.

The Shaw Media division, which airs popular series like “Glee,” “NCIS” and “House,” saw sales revenue fall year-on-year as Canadian advertisers pull back in uncertain times.

TORONTO – Economic uncertainty has started to take its toll on Canada’s broadcast market, as cable giant Shaw Communications on Thursday revealed lower ad revenue from its Shaw Media broadcast division.

Calgary-based Shaw reported first quarter earnings of $202 million, against a profit of $17 million in 2010 due to year-earlier one-time charges.
Overall Q1 revenue jumped 19 percent to $1.28 billion, with cable revenue up 4 percent to $792 million, despite losing 22,768 basic cable customers in the latest quarter to November 30, and satellite TV revenue rising 1 percent to $209 million.
Shaw Communications recorded $299 million in first-time revenue from Shaw Media, which comprises the former TV assets of CanWest Global Communications Corp. acquired last year.
The cabler reported Shaw Media revenue on a pro forma basis was down 3 percent, compared to 2010 levels, due to a softening advertising market.
The Shaw Media division includes the Global Television over-the-air network, which airs popular U.S. shows like Glee, House and the Survivor franchise, and a string of cable channels like HGTV Canada and Food Network Canada.
Shares in Shaw Communications were down by 2 percent, or 47 cents, to $20.00 during early morning trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, before clawing their way back to $20.30 mid-afternoon after the cable giant announced a dividend increase.
Shaw Communications faces stiff competition in western Canada from mobile phone giant Telus Corp, which offers TV services as part of a bundled offering.

The arrival of the World Cup to South Africa has brought more than just fans and athletes to town. It has also brought an influx of advertising revenue. Advertisers looking to reach the television oriented World Cup fans have brought the power of their pocketbooks to bear on the massive sporting event. Even companies that lack official sponsorship status have gotten into the game, paying handsomely for the privilege. So far the spending has paid off for both the advertisers and for the South African advertising market.

An Economic Slowdown Halted

The advertising market in South Africa had been fast growing previous to the economic downturn. The growth since 2001 had been in the double digits from year to year. Those numbers plummeted to a mere.4% of year on year growth according to Group M, WPP’s combined media buying operation. Before the media frenzy of the World Cup hit, the predictions for this year’s growth were conservative. The original forecast called for growth of about 3% over the course of the year. Not unexpectedly, the World Cup’s effect on media growth caused that number to double.

Nike’s Big Ad

One example of the type of advertising that supplied this much vaunted growth is Nike’s current campaign. Though not an official sponsor, Nike has reached fans by renting Africa’s largest digital advertising screen. There they displayed messages sent by fans alongside the images of fifty Nike sponsored athletes. One hundred of these messages were vetted and displayed each night. The campaign, which brought millions to South Africa in advertising revenue, has been enormously popular with fans across social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Total Growth, By the Numbers

The total expected boost to the South Africa advertising economy is approximately �150m. It is now predicted that the market will bring in about $220m more in advertising this year than last. Television is expected to be up 10% year on year, resulting in about $2bn and internet advertising will be up 20% year on year from a much smaller base. This will result in about $19m. On the whole, the effect of the World Cup has been very healthy for this year’s media growth rate in South Africa.

The newspaper advertising industry’s revenue has improved and dropped and improved and dropped and improved again and dropped again. It jumped 16.3% in 1983 and then took a hit in 1991 of 6.0%. In 1997 we saw an increase of 8.5% and then just 4 years later watched newspaper ad revenue fall 9.0%. Newspaper advertising income fell 28.9% in the third quarter of 2009. Cause for concern? Probably not.

The idea that “history repeats itself” doesn’t seem inappropriate perhaps just a little cliché. You get the idea. We have been here before. Newspaper advertising revenue has never experienced the amount of loss we have seen in recent years, however there are outside factors playing into this drop that are news to the industry. For example, in the past two years internet advertising has grown in popularity and can be held at least partially responsible for the third quarter of 2009 being the 8th consecutive quarter of double digit decline in newspaper ad revenue.

The internet has made it easy for people to advertise to a large perceived audience. A huge number of websites out there offer some type of advertising, and the ones that don’t may have missed an opportunity. New advertising vehicles can excite the masses and create a bandwagon effect. Internet and other “interactive” advertising is no exception. The wide accessibility of internet advertising has created fierce competition (to put it mildly). Many websites you visit are covered with ads selling something, often multiple companies selling the same somethings.

The growth of internet advertising has not fared well for newspapers. This situation however, has created a prosperous environment for newspaper advertisers. Less ad revenue means that fewer advertisers are spending their advertising dollars in the newspaper. Fewer advertisers in the newspaper represent less competition for those advertising. Ultimately, less competition among advertisers results in an increased return on marketing expenditures for those still advertising in newspapers.

Newspaper circulation has only dropped an average of 7.41% in the past two years. Not as much as many have speculated. Especially when you consider that on a national level we are talking about circulations in the high 40 millions.

Here is the point: advertisers are faced with far less competition in newspapers today than they did two years ago, while the product has remained more or less unchanged. Newspaper advertising is producing more results for people that have stuck with it.

While it remains uncertain that this trend will continue, it appears increasingly likely that the newspaper industry has seen its darkest hour in advertising revenue. The first signs of the rebound are apparent. US Newspapers, a full service advertising agency that specializes in newspaper advertising, reports that they are expecting an increase in advertising revenue of 68% this quarter (compared to the first quarter of 2009). The companies’ president, Jim Trammel explains, “We have seen a large increase in new business over the past couple months. Past clients have been returning on a regular basis as well. We know that the ads are doing well, because re-orders are consistent. If this is any indication of the industry as a whole, and I believe it is, it looks as though things are looking up for newspapers.”

US Newspapers is a newspaper advertising agency representing more than 6,000 community newspapers in the United States. Since their inception in 1998, US Newspapers has offered clients extremely valuable print advertising products at highly discounted prices.