How Many Ads from MediaBids Should I Use?

If you are reading this and you are a MediaBids registered user, hopefully you are familiar with how our system works. MediaBids gives publications the opportunity to choose which of our available advertising campaigns they want to run – at will.

The main reason we do this is that we believe that no one knows their audience better than publications and we want you to have the chance to choose which response-based ad you believe will be most effective with your readers. For that reason, we give publications lots of choices on the MediaBids.com site, which leads to the question – how many of the available ads should each publication use?

Here is what we hope publications do not do: choose every ad you may possibly want to use in the future all at once and then not use them. This is a recipe for confusion because neither you nor MediaBids understands what is running and therefore it becomes impossible to determine whether something is underperforming because it is not a good fit with your audience, or not getting results because it is just not being used.

MediaBids’ goal is to enable publications to make money from response-based ads. So, here is how we believe you should think about the usage of ads. Instead of requesting ads just because you think that you may have the chance to use them in your publication, we recommend the following strategy: Start by using three ads from MediaBids and try ads that are in different sectors. For example, you may want to start by using one ad in the home improvement area, another ad for a product focused on seniors and a third that is a seasonal ad. Try each for three insertions and then look at the results, cut the ones that are not generating enough revenue for you, keep the ones that are and add advertisers who are likely to appeal to the same readership group that is responding to the ads that are doing well.

Using this strategy, you can systematically test what your readers want.

If your publication already has our ads, take a look at your monthly reports from MediaBids and see which of the ads are generating revenue. Start by running the successful ads on a set schedule and then eliminate any of the ads you have that are not living up to your revenue expectations. Using this method, work through the ads you already have, eliminating the ones that underperform and increasing the run frequency on the ads that are working. Then, when you have a core group of advertisers that are working, you can think about adding into your rotation one or two ads at a time, testing them and determining if they live up to expectations.

Let us know if you would like to discuss how many ads you should use or anything else about MediaBids’ per-response program, call us at 860-370-9602 or visit our website www.MediaBids.com.