HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Publisher Web Sites
Publisher web sites are the most traditional online media buys; leaderboard ads at the top of a page and square ads
along a site's right or left hand side are typical examples. These are traditional because they've been around the longest.
Anyone with a popular blog or site can sell this form of ad inventory. In fact,
buysellads.com
and similar sites help
content producers and advertisers to do so. Anyone who is getting a bunch of unique visitors to a web page and wants
a form of passive income should consider including advertising. The New York Post web site (
www.nypost.com/
) is a
typical example of an ad experience on a publisher's web site.
Web Portals
Web portals are virtually analogous to publisher web sites in terms of their ad inventory. They differ in being gateways
to other sites or to subsections of site information. Web portals include AOL Travel, Yahoo Music, and many others.
AOL's subsections include AOL News, AOL Music, AOL Travel, and AOL Money. Each subsection, being tailored to a
specific user interest, and could include section-specific advertising inventory.
Ad Networks
An ad network, is a collection of publisher sites for which advertising can be bought and sold on a group basis, can be
big or small. Its key function is accumulating ad inventory from a contributing list of publishers and matching it with
the advertiser's requirements. Going through an ad network allows the advertiser to reach more web properties than
can be reached by just going through publisher sites one at a time. A very good example of a successful ad network is
Video Players
Video player media buys are quite new on the scene. They are what you'd see if you viewed a popular video on
YouTube or another content provider that shows ads to viewers in order to provide them free content. This would
be the typical 15- or 30-second in-stream video spot that plays before the content. Typically, the video autoplays; it
disables users' ability to skip to the content until the ad has played. Video player advertising can also be a lower-third
type of ad unit, traditionally called a “post-roll,” which appears over the player content
The Media Buyer
Securing any or all of the above-mentioned outlets is a job of its own. This is where a media buyer comes into the
mix. The media buyer plays a vital part in the overall campaign process: the media buyer, usually as part of a media
agency, specializes in securing appropriate media outlets. One of the media buyer's jobs is ensuring that the inventory
purchase aligns with the advertiser's overall vision. For example, if I'm the advertiser Titleist Golf Balls, I'd want my
media buyer to place my brand all over the golf sites and related networks. It wouldn't make much sense to show golf
ads at, say, a dog show.
