Ask HN: I have 100MM views/month and need to monatize

9 points by oonny 11 years ago | 20 comments

Hi HN, We created a widget that goes on publisher website. We have been modestly successful but have a few big name publishers. So far our widget gets about 100 MM views a month. We have 154x250 space within the widget to monetize for ourselves. What's our best approach here in terms of ads. Is there a list of ad vendors (other than ad sense) that might be interested in this inventory? We are new to the display/native ad game so any suggestion is welcome. AD's can be displayed within a lightbox (to keep users within the pub site) or just can be directed to the ad page on click. Thanks in advance!

neuen 11 years ago |

Wow - what an opportunity. Honestly - you have something great here.

I hope this doesn’t come across as an insult as you’ve already expressed your dislike for Outbrain and Taboola but you’ve stepped right into their market and have a huge opportunity to shake things up.

I’d say you’ve figured out what every publisher loves - or should love - keeping traffic and keeping the audience engaged. I assume most smaller publishers >10m views would make more money keeping readers clicking around their own site several times compared to losing them to a “click-bait” sponsored content ad.

I would however recommend after spending a decent amount of time on your site to take a look at Taboola and Outbrain - the copy and design of their sites are very to the point and informative - to publishers and advertisers. I don’t really get that from your site. I’d try to be more like them in those areas - they have a knack for grabbing both publishers and advertisers.

As for getting the advertisers, get on LinkedIn - search for people with job titles like Manager of Digital Marketing - poke around their profiles see if their company might be a good fit for you then fire them off a quick email.

Just my two cents!

oonny 11 years ago | |

neuen, THANK YOU so much for the feedback! definitely not an insult, it is something we have known all along. The only thing going for us is the video. We were so focused on sales (w/ big publishers) that the site took the back burner. We are working on a redesign focused more to get small to mid-level publishers. thanks again for your insights.

thenomad 11 years ago |

If you haven't considered affiliate programs, that would be a good direction to go. You'll have to do more testing but once optimised you'll get a higher ROI than you would from most non-adsense ad companies.

Someone1234 11 years ago | |

They do have to be a little careful that the publishers aren't selling the same book on the same site (thus competing with their clients directly).

In which case they'd have to figure out how to look for "related" content to sell. However affiliate programs like Amazon's for one example definitely seems like a good suggestion.

oonny 11 years ago | |

Thanks! I can google a few, are there any programs that you would recommend?

thenomad 11 years ago | | |

Check out ShareaSale, Commission Junction and potentially Clickbank to get started.

dabogy 11 years ago | | |

You should check out http://varinode.com

MalcolmDiggs 11 years ago |

If you're just testing the waters, an inventory marketplace like BuySellAds.com might be worth checking out.

You can browse through the inventory of similar sites to get a gauge of what you can expect, CPM wise: https://buysellads.com/buy/allsites/

Later on, you might just want to strike one-off deals with interested advertisers, or build in a more "native" ad solution into your platform, etc.

oonny 11 years ago | |

thanks for this suggestion! I will check out buysellads.

winslow 11 years ago |

Is there a way to see the product. It might help in getting you better responses.

oonny 11 years ago | |

sure thing, this is an overview of the product http://us.veeseo.com and here is a sample link for it out in the wild: http://mmajunkie.com/2015/01/diego-brandaos-ufc-183-challeng...

zubairq 11 years ago | | |

On the sample link which one was your banner?

dabogy 11 years ago |

What kind of content do your publishers show?

oonny 11 years ago | |

video

zubairq 11 years ago |

Show me an example URL. I may invest

oonny 11 years ago | |

sure thing, this is an overview of the product http://us.veeseo.com we are bothered by the stupid recommendation engines (outbrain/taboola) that insults our intelligence at the bottom of ... pretty much every website. veeseo is a tool for editors that shows relevant content that their own publisher produced. no click-baits! :)

zubairq 11 years ago | | |

Can you send me your statistics for the last year? Find me on zq@matchingheads.com

fuj 11 years ago |

I'm surprised no one has suggested you to just simply take donations or suck it up. After all, according to most HN users, all ads are bad and adblock is a God's gift. You have no right getting revenue on the content you create.

oonny 11 years ago | |

haha, well I do see ads as a necessary evil, although some companies do a better job with non-intrusive ads.