Advertising: Ad Supported Model

Everyone has a different opinion on how they should sell their services online. At New Leaders we wanted to deliver an end-to-end experience, to ensure that quality and honesty are delivered to our customers. By combining our web applications, design and development services, along with our newly-developed campaign manager, we have administered small but mighty campaigns that perform.

We wanted to give away our web apps for free to our customers. Cost walls create barriers between making money and the application’s true potential. How can we compete with Google when they give it all away? As our applications became more popular, the cost to scale them steadily increased. We are not interested in being a product company alone. We had a bandwidth problem. So, in the spirit of New Leaders, which is usage based, we put small, friendly ads into each of our web applications.

Eeek! Most people would say.

We almost had to scrap the idea entirely. Try explaining to one of the big ad networks that you have to be a user to see the ads, that they are in one of the smallest formats, without animation, and we want to be very, very careful of the type of products we help promote. Sold by page-view only. Ad networks really can’t do much for you. They want big ROI; quality and influence account for nothing.

Our only option was to do the unthinkable. Build our own advertising network focused on the iPhone and web applications. We decided that we would become a “Web Application Publisher” so our apps could pay for themselves via revenue from advertisers, and remain free to the public. Our team can help deliver simple, powerful campaigns where the product, site, campaign, ads, tools, and network, for the first time, all came from one company. The complete, cohesive solution. No big ad network reaching in to take a percentage. Built by a world-class design and development firm to ensure that the experience is solid.

We have seen many companies adopt a subscription-based revenue model with the “Solo” account, or the “Always Free” account. These really-low-revenue-generating account types seem to be the most popular. Why? Rarely do people want to pay to use web applications. Instead, it would be better to build in a market place (think ebay, istock) for publishers. This allows you to earn revenue from your audience without having to tie them into a subscription.

Our initial test campaigns have been successful in generating higher click through rates than the industry standard. This is because we are delivering relevant display ads of products in which our audience is interested; whether that is a Drobo ad within our web apps, or an iPhone headphones ad within Twitter for iPhone. The human approach toward connecting the right audience with the right campaign can be effective.

Posted on Apr 30, 2008 by Kevin Milden

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