What to charge for a banner??

HitByLife · Jan 11th, 2008, 08:31

Hello, I am having a slight problem determining the value of of some banners going in the top header of a website. I have a client interested in advertising there but I don't know what to charge him. As the banner sits in the header it will show on all page impressions.

Size: It's a 468x60 px banner
Traffic: When we first started talking about it the site had about 2.000 unique users a day. I then suffered a hacker attempt and the site was offline for quite some time and lost traffic. It is now back to about 700 unique users a day.

I was thinking about charging 250 euros a month (approx 370 USD or 190 GBP) for the banner, but a friend, who stressed that he does not really know what to charge, felt it sounded cheap.

I also have some smaller spaces just under the banner that would be about 60x40 px, and my idea was to charge 125 euros / month for these (approx 185 USD, or 95 GBP).

Any opinions on this would be greatly appreciated.

alexgeek · Jan 11th, 2008, 10:03

It greatly depends on the quality of his work amount of experience he has.
Could you tell us more about that? has he done a multimedia course for example? Or could you post an example of some of his work?

alexgeek · Jan 11th, 2008, 10:07

OH and don't get conned (http://kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=236251).

That's a good link!

HitByLife · Jan 11th, 2008, 10:09

OK, I'll give you the url of the forum:

- http://www.grandi-tenori.com/bbs/

The client provides his own banner, so it is not really a question of what that artwork is worth. It's about what my space is worth.

welshstew · Jan 11th, 2008, 10:17

Usually, you see advertising space sold on a impression basis, i.e you charge £50 per 1000 impressions and you get 5000 impressions per month on average, therfore they will be charged £250.

The price per 1000 impressions will depend on the popularity of your site, but is usually between £10 and £100.

HitByLife · Jan 11th, 2008, 10:23

Yes, but how do you determine the popularity of your site??

I was thinking of giving them a fixed fee rather than an amount per 1000 impressions. I'm not really sure how to figure out the page impressions, because surely it is not like hits?? I'm using Awstats to measure traffic and they operate with unique users, total users, pages and hits.

HitByLife · Jan 11th, 2008, 10:24

Sorry, didn't quite get it; you can of course figure out the amount of page impressions and from that give him a fixed fee...

Daniel · Jan 11th, 2008, 12:30

Google analytics is handy for seeing how many users you get.

HitByLife · Jan 11th, 2008, 17:19

OK, page views and page impressions are the same things. Page impressions are not hits. I guess "Pages" in AWStats refers to page impressions.

Yes, I can check it through google analytics, which will work OK for the forum. It's more complicated for non-template driven sites because you would have to inlcude a piece of code on each page that you want tracked, otherwise you may not get a realistic picture of your traffic.

However, checking page impressions doesn't necessarily give you ann idea of how popular your page is, that you need to compare against something...

I think I'm getting an idea of what to charge though, if £50 (65 € / 100 $) per 1000 page impressions is a good guide.

HitByLife · Jan 11th, 2008, 19:04

Hm, something is not quite right...

In google analytics, I have just under 8.000 pageviews for December 2007. That is probably less than the actual number as the google analytics only covered the index page and a few other pages, the forum for instance was not included. Yet, AWstats shows more than 170.000 "pages" - surely, even with the whole site and the forum included, the difference can't be that great??

AWstats shows around 14.500 "visits" in December 2007, but surely that is not to be confused with page views?

Any help would be appreciated.

Ed · Jan 11th, 2008, 22:22

When did you set up the Google Analytics Account?

HitByLife · Jan 11th, 2008, 22:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vivara

When did you set up the Google Analytics Account?

On November 5 2007 - why?

Ed · Jan 12th, 2008, 23:46

I thought you were looking to see December's stats after only installing it the day before yesterday.

Ed

HitByLife · Jan 13th, 2008, 00:37

No, I've had it running long enough.

What I can't figure out is the per 1000 impressions model. Say I have 650.000 pageviews in a month. According to the above model, if I charge 50 GBP per 1000 page impressions, that gives me: (650.000/1000)*50 = 32.500 GBP (43.000 EUR / 63.500 USD). Per banner. Fantastic! But surely, a different rate applies as traffic becomes more substantial?? I can't imagine anyone paying that for a banner on my site...

MikeHopley · Jan 13th, 2008, 09:44

Well, you do have a lot of traffic, so you should be able to make some serious money.

Having said that, forum advertising tends to perform worse than average. Your rates may need to account for this.

£50 per page impression sounds like a lot to me. I thought Google's aborted CPM model was running at about $5 per page impression.

That rate would still give you about $3000 a month.

HitByLife · Jan 13th, 2008, 12:11

The point is that I am not sure what kind of pageviews I have. The above figure stem from AWStats and their bracket "pages" which I can only assume is the same as "pageviews" but I am not sure. Unless "visits" is the same in AWStats as "pageviews. I'm keen on using AWStats as a measure because it tracks traffic on *all* my pages.

USD 5 per 1000 page impressions seem little, but looking at the total figure is sure seems more realstic.

MikeHopley · Jan 13th, 2008, 12:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by HitByLife

The point is that I am not sure what kind of pageviews I have. The above figure stem from AWStats and their bracket "pages" which I can only assume is the same as "pageviews" but I am not sure. Unless "visits" is the same in AWStats as "pageviews. I'm keen on using AWStats as a measure because it tracks traffic on *all* my pages.

USD 5 per 1000 page impressions seem little, but looking at the total figure is sure seems more realstic.

Getting decent stats would help. Can you not include Google analytics on all your pages? You'd just need to add their code into your page template.

If you're using AWStats, you should try to find out more precisely what their terminology means.

It would also help to get some data points for CPM. Do you have any? My $5 estimate is based on a vague memory of reading about Google's CPM programme.

HitByLife · Jan 13th, 2008, 12:48

I think AWStats is pretty accuarate, at leats that is the impression I've got after googling it. What I am unsure of is the terminology, so I need to google more. As far as I can see, there are no thorough explanation on this on the AWStats site.

As for the forum, adding the google tracking code is no problem and I've just done it - it's just a question off adding the code to the template, as you say. However, for the rest of the site, and it receives just as much traffic as the forum, there is no template system in place, they are all static html pages. I will eventually squeeze everything into a cms, but until then, imagine adding the traking code to the 1500 pages or so that the site comprises...

HitByLife · Jan 13th, 2008, 12:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by HitByLife

imagine adding the traking code to the 1500 pages or so that the site comprises...

Having said that, of course not all pages receive the same amount of traffic and some pages hardly receive any visits at all, so I wouldn't matter much to leave them out. But it would be nice to track them all, nonetheless.