Tips for Potential Site Sponsors

Tips for Potential Sponsors of Cumbrowski.com

Introduction

I list on this page on my site the cold figures and details for the sponsorship options on my website. That might be sufficient for the expert marketer with plenty of experience with display advertising and the management of goals and types of ad campaigns that serve different purposes. Display advertising is not affiliate marketing, which is performance based, meaning that you only pay if you get the desired results. In this case you are not even paying CPM, but a flat fee per month. This makes it even more critical that you make your homework properly to avoid poor results because of wrong expectations or mistakes that were made during the ad format, location and design selection.

The following notes and tips are designed to help you with avoiding those mistakes and to make sure that your expectations will be realistic and possible to meet.

If you are involved in ad buying decisions and ad campaign management, I recommend checking out the new MarketingSherpa 2008 Online Advertising Handbook and Benchmark Guide. It contains a wealth of data and tips that can save you a lot of money and headaches. I own the book myself and share some of its wisdom with you in my recommendations below.

Sponsorship vs. Advertising

I call it sponsorship and not just advertising for a reason. If I would be simply ad inventory, my rates would be too high and not justified. Your sponsorship means that you are supporting this website and its efforts to provide high quality resources to internet marketers free of charge.

Awareness vs. Direct Response - Which Ad Format to Choose

Here are some tips regarding the ad format and ad design for the available sponsorship options. Based on MarketingSherpa's 2008 Online Advertising Handbook and Benchmark Guide are full size banner ads at the top and tower ads on the sidebars designed to increase familiarity with your product or brand. They are not doing well for direct response offers with an immediate call to action. The button and text ads are better for this kind of job. MarketingSherpa's guide reveals that button ads have in average a 3-4 times higher click-through rate than full-size banner or tower ads.

Call to Action (for Direct Response Ads)

If you want to increase click-through rates, make also sure that your ad has a clear call to action and entices visitors to click. If you do not provide a reason for the visitor to click, why should he? Coupons, Discounts and special offers are good examples of a reason for the visitor to click or the promise to get access to some additional information that are critical for the visitors business or personal life.

Ad Format Restrictions

I can only accept image ads for the top banner and button ads, because of the drop down navigation, which would create conflicts with flash ads. The navigation cannot be rendered over the flash animation. Flash is okay for the tower ad on the side bar though.

Please keep the size for the full size banner ad below 30 KB, for the tower ad below 50 KB and for the button ad below 20 KB. This is actually the top limits for image sizes compared to the limitations set by various large publishers like Yahoo.com, CNN.com or Amazon.com. If your creative is used for display advertising campaigns already then you do not have to worry, but if you created the design just for my site, please double check and reduce the size of the ad if it is too large.

Conclusion

I hope that my tips and comments will help you to make a intelligent decision about whether or not a sponsorship of Cumbrowski.com is the right thing for you or not and that it also helps to set realistic expectations and goals that can be met.

Cheers!
Carsten Cumbrowski
Contact Me if you have questions or comments. Return to Sponsorships Page

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You are interested in sponsorships and advertising opportunities at Cumbrowski.com, so I assume that you are interested in B2B marketing and advertising. Cumbrowski.com caters to marketing professionals and if that is your target audience, then you are at the right place. If you are responsible for marketing and/or advertising in your company and your products and services cater to other businesses and professionals, I have something that I would like recommending to you, because that is what this site, Cumbrowski.com, is all about.

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