Member News: Notes from your Advertising Committee
Ad Alley
Notes from your Advertising Committee
Requests continue to come in from agencies challenged by their clients to include online media in their mix. Currently it is potential business for AWNA members that dies on the vine. AdWest has a plan in place that would enable us to answer these requests positively however, as yet participation has been well below the critical mass it will take to begin to draw revenue.
Here is another look at the AdWest plan. We would encourage publishers who are uncertain about what steps to take to make their websites marketable under this plan to contact AdWest who are ready and willing work with you to align your website with revenues as they develop.
AdWest Online Advertising Program
Overview
“As the Internet boom took off, a number of prognosticators that the Internet would constitute “the end of traditional media” and “the death blow to advertisers”; they suggested that traditional media would suffer greatly as marketers moved the communications dollars to the Internet.”
– Belch, Belch and Guolla, “Internet Marketing Communications and the IMC
Approach,” Advertising and Promotion First Edition, p. 404
In this ever-evolving advertising and media landscape, reinventions and innovations are the keys to support our media and ensure that the community newspapers are maintained in the drawing boards of the national advertisers. In 1996, about $200 millions was spent globally in online advertising. In 2001, that figure rose to 9 billion!
AdWest will be selling national advertising onto members’ websites on a regional basis, as opposed to site by site. Exact regions will be defined after current analytics data is collected from members and analyzed. Ads will be sold Run of Site for 30-day timeframes and cost will be calculated per thousand impressions (or page views).
To launch the program, AdWest will offer Big Box (or Medium Rectangle) size advertising on participating member sites. Both members and advertisers must comply with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard ad unit for Medium Rectangle advertisements of 300 x 250 pixels to a maximum file size of 40KB. Other sizes will be added to the program at a later time.
AdWest will be running the ad serving services independently and our goal is to have the program running in the most efficient and user-friendly manner possible to members and advertisers. All advertising transactions will be managed out of the AdWest office in Edmonton, including customer service, client relations and billing.
AdWest will set one uniform CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for all sites in each region based on competitive rates for similar advertising. We will request member members to provide us with a net CPM rate of $15 to allow for some negotiation by the AdWest sales team. Members will be notified of digital insertions via email and once a campaign has ended, AdWest will be able to generate a report for all sites within each region to verify that the number of impressions sold has been met. AdWest will then invoice the advertiser and pay members for the insertion, less the 8% processing fee.
Please fill out the following questionnaire to confirm your participation in the AdWest Online Advertising Program. If you would like further details regarding this program, please contact Catherine Lee at catherine@adwest.ca or 780.989.4907.
In order to be included in the AdWest Online Sales program, your site needs to meet the following criteria:
• Must have a Web site related to your AWNA, SWNA or MCNA Active Member Newspaper.
• Must be able to accept a Big Box/Medium Rectangle ad that meets the IAB standard (300×250 pixels, up to 40 kilobytes in size and in gif, jpg or standard flash format).
• Must be able to insert third party tags on your Web site. An independent ad server will serve all ads purchased through AdWest, therefore we require all participating member sites to allow for third party tags.
• Must agree to allow AdWest to monitor online traffic and generate report for average number of impressions over a 30-day time period. (In order to participate in this program, AdWest will request member sites to insert a Google Analytics tag that will monitor online traffic in each site).