From the advertisers’ point of view, the less they have to pay for a thousand pageviews, the better it is. But there are some other things the advertisers have to take into consideration when choosing the right websites for their campaigns. Here are a few of them:

1. The widget placement. If the widget is placed on the very top, or the top of one of the columns, then the publisher can charge more for a day of displaying an ad, since the ad is seen by more people. The lower the widget is, the less people will see it, because most of them only look at the top part of your website.
2. How relevant the target audience is. The advertisers are willing to pay more for ads that are placed on websites that suit their needs. If they sell computers, they will want to place an ad on computer-related sites. If what you are writing about is in high demand (e.g. computers, clothing, holiday), then you are more likely to get advertisers to buy ads on your site even if these ads are more expensive.
3. CPM. It’s actually the first thing the advertisers look at. The more pageviews your site generates, the more you can charge for an ad that’s placed on it. It’s best to take a look at other websites that use AdTaily by visiting our Marketplace. Find the ones that have a similar number of pageviews as you do, and set your price accordingly. You don’t want to be the most expensive site in your pageviews range.

Let’s look at the sites in 90,000-pageviews range as an example. These sites sell ads for anything from €1.63 to €12.20. But most of them charge less than €5, so you probably shouldn’t charge more than that.

This will also depend on the country in which the ads are sold. For example, on average, the ads are cheaper in Greece than in Germany. So check the sites in your country, see what their average CPM (cost per one thousand pageviews) is, and set price on your website somewhere in the middle. Then see how attractive your site is to the advertisers, and either increase or lower the price.

After a while you will see how many advertisers choose to advertise on your site. If there are very few of them, you should probably lower the price, and if there are many of them, you may consider increasing the price, and start making more money :).

Sometimes the most random ads become surprisingly successful, because for some reason people decide to click on them. Usually these are the most creative ads with a good call to action and incentives (“get a free trial,” “start making money now,” etc.). Most of the times it’s also a matter of placing the ad on a relevant website. For example, Lineage II server ads placed on Lineage II- and gaming-related websites, tend to get the highest click-through rates.

Of course, it is best to see some examples of ads that work, before you get a hang of how to design effective ads yourself. That’s why today we are going to show you a few of the best-clickable ads placed in the AdTaily network (on various websites but usually on very much relevant ones) so far. Get inspired, and think about how to design your ads to make them work for you.

(The ads are shown in a random order.)

Don’t waste money on poor-performing ad campaigns. Take some time to design a few simple 125x125px banner ads, use each of them for a week or so, and see which of them works best. Use 2 or 3 best creations alternatively, so that the viewers wouldn’t get bored with just one design.

Here are a few tips on how to design effective banner ads, based on our experiences, and the expertise of one of our advertisers. Use them as guidelines, rather than a set of strict rules, and most of all, be creative, and think about what ad banners YOU would be most likely to click.

1. Tip 1. Choose websites that are relevant for your target audience, and for what you are advertising. For example, if you advertise sports shoes, choose websites related to sports, fitness, clothing, etc. Read the descriptions of those websites, and/or skim through their content, to see if they are a good fit for your ad campaign.
2. Tip 2. Don’t forget about a call to action. Call to action is a word or a phrase that encourages a viewer to click on your ad. It can be a simple ‘Click here!” but it’s usually better to be more specific, for example: “Find out more,” or “Get a free trial now,” depending on what product you advertise. Such a call to action makes an ad seem more interactive, and Internet users tend to seek out interaction.



3. Tip 3. Don’t use just your logo or company’s name. Unless your logo is self explanatory, or you advertise a well-known brand, you should include a brief description of what your product/service is about. If your company is called TOTO, and you sell cat’s food, simply say it: “TOTO. The best food for your cat.”



4. Tip 4. Don’t write too much… or too little! The AdTaily ad banners are just 125x125px. You can’t fit a whole lot of information in there but this is fine, because people don’t like to read too much anyway. They want to find out what your product or service is all about in just a few words. You can write all about your product’s features on your landing page but you have to attract people to that page first.
5. Tip 5. List the benefits. This connects to the previous tip: write only the things that you think are most interesting to your potential visitors/customers. If you sell toys, don’t write: “Your children will be so happy when you get them toys from our store. The prices are lower than our competitions!” Instead, write: “Get your child’s dream toy for less than you think!”

The basic examples of ad designs shown above were created to illustrate our tips, and could be obviously improved with a nice background, an appropriate font, different wording, some pictures (photos of faces tend to attract attention, by the way)… Well chosen pictures and a nice-looking creation definitely improve an ad’s click-through rate. But it’s not a place for a creativity lesson (maybe some other time) :).

Finally, remember that your ad has to influence a user at 4 different stages (according to the AIDA model, which stands for Attention-Interest-Desire-Action):

1. 1. Get attention (be creative, so that your ad would get noticed).
2. 2. Keep attention / interest (be brief but interesting and relevant to the user).
3. 3. Encourage action (use call to action, offer benefits).
4. 4. Fulfill needs (don’t advertise something you don’t have; if you advertise cheap shoes, take the user to a page with cheap shoes, after he/she clicks on your ad).

Now get creative, and create some great, highly clickable ads! And don’t forget to check which of them work best (and on what sites), in order to optimize your AdTaily ad campaigns, and make them even more effective :).

That’s why we are looking for AdTaily Partners in many European countries (full list and requirements here), who will help us to grow even faster, and to understand the needs of the local markets in different countries.

If you are interested, contact our Business Development Manager, Marcin Grodzicki. Once again, all the details are here.

We are looking forward to working with you, and seeing you soon (at one of our awesome AdTaily parties) :).

We already wrote about it a while ago but we have made some changes to our widget since then, we’ve launched our Marketplace, and we have many more publishers now, so we thought we should share the info with you again, in an updated format.

All you have to do is copy-and-paste this article, leaving it as it is, or customizing it. For example, you may want to replace “our website” with “my website,” or with your website’s name/address, and use a picture of your own widget. You may also want to add a personal note from yourself, or just use this text as a reference, and write a completely different article.

Either way, here it is:

“

Advertising on our website has been made simple thanks to the AdTaily self-service advertising widget. Using this handy widget, anyone can create an ad in just 3 clicks and in a matter of minutes.

You can be promoting your services, products or special offers to our readers within 24 hours. Ads are booked and paid for by the day, so you can easily set up a daily, weekly, or monthly campaign, and depending on the results, decide whether you want to continue.

To place an advertisement on our website, follow these three easy steps:

1. Look for the AdTaily widget on our website, and click on the “Advertise here” link to open it.
2. Design your ad. Type in the URL address of a website you want your ad to link to, and choose the ad style. With the ‘Text ad’ style, you can write some text and upload a logo, and the ‘Banner’ style enables you to upload a ready-made 125px x 125px banner ad. After preparing your ad, decide how many days you want it to run for, and click “Continue”.



3. Review your order, click on “Buy Now,” and pay via Paypal. After the payment process is complete, all you have to do is wait for us to approve the ad. We have to make sure all ads are relevant for our website but the approval process shouldn’t take more than 24 hours. After that, your will be able to see your ad being displayed on our website.

You can also use the AdTaily Marketplace, and buy an entire ad campaign just as easily. Enter our website’s URL address (in quotation marks) in the search box, add it to the cart, and then find some other websites that may be of your interest. After you are done choosing, simply create an ad, and place it on several websites at the same time.

Tu sum up: use the AdTaily widget to advertise on our website in 3 clicks, or go to the AdTaily Marketplace to create a bigger ad campaign in just a few minutes. The choice is yours!

If you experience any problems, or have questions about the AdTaily advertising system, please contact the AdTaily team at: support@adtaily.com.

”

You can add some screenshots of where the widget is on your website, and add them to your article, to make it easier for the advertisers to locate it, or use this link in point 1 of the instruction: http://yourwebsite.com/#open_widget=adtaily (replacing “http://yourwebsite.com” with your website’s URL address). It will take the advertisers straight to an open widget.

Good luck writing your articles and attracting new advertisers!