Forum Advertising

[allan]

At what point is it realistic for a forum owner to seek advertising?

For example, would a forum with 300 members, 22,000+ posts and roughly 1,000 unique visitors a day be attractive to advertisers?

If it is attractive, what type of rates would the forum owner expect to be able to charge -- thinking specifically in terms of flat rate advertising (e.g. $50 or $100 a month with a rotation split between X advertisers per month)?

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

[JeremyV]

Interesting question Allen, and I have been playing with this issue as well. One of my privately run sites is essentially just a message board. With 2,000 members, 320,000 posts, and about 1,200 posts per day with always 50-90 people online.

I have wanted to get into some advertising to help cover some costs, but have no idea what to ask. :confused:

[allan]

Originally posted by JeremyV:
I have wanted to get into some advertising to help cover some costs, but have no idea what to ask. :confused:

Right, and of course, this leads to the question: how do you approach advertisers? Especially if you are talking about a non-obvious market. You can use one of the ad systems (like DoubleClick), but I have never had much luck with those, and I don't think they provide the personal tie-in that hand-selected advertisers do.

And of course, if you are not going to use an advertising network, then you have to worry about monthly contracts, billing, etc.

Not to mention the fervor that tends to erupt when a non-commercial forum starts displaying banner ads.

:confused:

[JeremyV]

All very true. My forum is regionally based, and has a VERY targeted audience, so I know of a handfull of people who have expressed interest in advertising. So that helps in finding them.

But like you said, people don't like ads... but if people are not paying to use the service, what other choices do you have?

And don't tell my members yet, but I just formed a Corporation, which my forum (among other sites) is now owned by :o I think when they find out they are going to draw and quarter me.

But the question still stands, what are the going rates typically? If anything, I think I would have 3 or 4 vendors willing to advertise, so visibility would be fairly high, and since these are local businesses, they have an extremely targeted audience.

I agree those ad networks do not do justice when it comes to ad placement, yet it is nice to have the logistical stuff taken care of. But running your own ad campaign will require some extra work, like you mentioned.

It makes my head spin :(

[Chicken]

I think that there's really no particular time that's right for advertising nor a particular amount, rather it matters more why you are accepting ads and from whom. In other words, hosting a forum costs money, but the larger the forum, the more it costs. Certain forums deal in higher ticket industries than others. Of course traffic plays a part too, plus there's not *one* way to serve ads on a forum (there are many different ways, thus different prices would apply).

As everyone knows, HHO will have ads soon. This revenue will be used to take the forum to the next level (in other words, it will be put back into the forum for the forum's sake). Pricing will be enough to keep out the fly-by-night rinky dinks, but not overly expensive (of course, everyone will have an opinon about that, but...)

[emstro]

Want to approach advertisers? Set up your own pay-per-click advertising, and just call start making phone calls. Pay-per-click is so well targeted that the ones advertising don't risk losing any money if their ads don't really work...