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

by oonny on 1/27/15, 4:42 AM with 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!

  • by neuen on 1/28/15, 11:16 AM

    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!

  • by thenomad on 1/27/15, 10:43 AM

    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.

  • by MalcolmDiggs on 1/27/15, 3:33 PM

    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.

  • by winslow on 1/27/15, 6:35 AM

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

  • by dabogy on 1/27/15, 5:48 AM

    What kind of content do your publishers show?

  • by zubairq on 1/27/15, 8:46 AM

    Show me an example URL. I may invest

  • by fuj on 1/27/15, 10:07 AM

    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.