advertisingI’m currently working with a client to launch a fun website aimed at young people. Because this is a brand new website at the beginning we’re not expecting an awful lot of traffic.
The success on the website will be people participating - it can’t succeed without an active community.
My client would obviously like to make money from this website and wants to put a fair amount of adverts on there. However I’m concerned that the impact of the amount of ads for the user won’t justify the amount of money they’ll make at the start.
I’m looking for some concrete evidence that either supports or challenges my theory. I’m happy to be wrong because ultimately I want this website to succeed and I want my client to eventually make some money from it.
Has anybody had any experience with this or know of any pro’s and con’s to advertising on a startup website?
Thanks very much!
Unless you can guarantee that ads will be relevant to your consistency it might not be worth it. First, you need enough traffic to even merit including ads because they wont generate much revenue without lots of users clicking on them. Second, you want to make sure they don’t interrupt the regular function of the site or you risk losing potentially interested and loyal users.
Some larger website case studies might include Facebook. I believe they held off on ads until they had a fairly substantial and dedicated user base. Which, at least it seems, was a good idea.
Same thing I’ve noticed has been the case for some sites like this one - http://clientsfromhell.net/
And other niche sites with slowly growing communities of users.
If you do go for ads keep your offers relevant to your users, non-invasive, and interactive and engaging instead of annoying and disruptive.
Good luck!
If the intended model long-term is ad-funded, then the sooner you include ads the better.
However, early stage, low volume sites often fill up with lame advertising. So rather than pollute the user experience for minimal return, I would start by curating ads, for zero return.
What I mean by that is go and find, say, 20 ads that are relevant to your user base. And just use them - create your own mini ad platform that lets you select ads and their targets. I’ve never yet been told off by a brand for running their ad for free, as long as I’ve delivered traffic sensibly.
Doing this lets you bring forward all the learning, without losing control. And that learning is going to let you decide if ad-funded is the way to go, and when the time comes, it will give you the data to help you cut across to the right ad platform if that makes sense, or to go offer advertising direct to brands and sites that want your audience.
I think you answered your own question:
Because this is a brand new website at the beginning we’re not expecting an awful lot of traffic.
If there’s no traffic, there will be no ad revenue. And the one thing ads largely succeed in is annoying users. If you’re fortunate to have some relevant partners, then properly-curated and tasteful ads may help guide users between your site and the partners’ sites, but otherwise the ads only serve to clutter your site and annoy users. If the site can’t stand on its own, the ads will only hurt.
My client would obviously like to make money from this website and wants to put a fair amount of adverts on there. However I’m concerned that the impact of the amount of ads for the user won’t justify the amount of money they’ll make at the start.
You may also want to point out that you won’t get any ad revenue from users who are running ad-blocking software. If the site hosts a community, then no doubt some users will complain to the community about the ads and other users will help them install an ad-blocker.
If the site really takes off, it may sense to incorporate more advertising at that point, but even then you should try to keep the ads relevant to your users and keep them from distracting users from the website’s content. The last thing you want your users to think when they view your site on a new computer is, “Oh, that’s why I installed an ad-blocker.”
Your client is about to launch a community site hoping to get ad revenue from this community.
I’d say that, in a simple rhetorical way, to get revenue from a community, he needs to have a community first and foremost.
You can see this is a two-step goal.
Build the community. Everything that gets in the way of this objective is to be banished while your client is still in that phase, because it’s too fragile and every effort has to be dedicated to that goal. And putting ads on a site is likely to be something that gets in the way of community building. At least there is a risk. So no ads during this period.
Once the community is there, then it’s time to think of getting a revenue out of it.
Same thing for a tomato plant that you grow from a seed. You simply can’t ask for tomatoes while the plant is still growing.
Another way to look at it would be, your client has to give before it takes.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.