Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Placement Availability
As I
ve said about most of the topics in this topic, placing your
ads on a Web site takes forethought. Although there are some
sites that may be able to run your ad the very day you first call
them, they are getting to be few and far between. Most Web sites
'
'
policies and procedures require advance notice before running
any ads on their pages, and exactly how far in advance can
depend on several factors. Some of the factors involved can
include things like what dates you plan on running your banners
or how many other advertisers are running ads at the same time
in the same place.
TIP
Available placements can indeed selloutonanygivenWebsite,andit
happens more and more every year. Although it makes complete sense
that this can happen, it
s not something that everyone thinks about every
day. One way to look at it is like a time-share condo; in any given week,
there are only a certain number of hours that can be split between the
renters. Once those hours are all taken, you have to move to the next
week if you want to spend your vacation there.
'
It is a good idea to plan on purchasing your placements about
3 months in advance. However, there are special dates where you
may be better off getting your order in 6 months or more in
advance. The Super Bowl is a good example. We all know and
love the television commercials that air during the Super Bowl,
and with more and more of those commercials directing viewers
to Web sites, the traffic to those sites is increased by leaps and
bounds during (and after) the game. In addition to that online
traffic is the increased number of visitors to sports-related sites
leading up to, during, and after the Super Bowl. Because the traf-
fic to all of these sites grows so much during these times, they
have become prime spots for online advertising and as with any-
thing in high demand, this leads to placements selling out more
quickly.
Ad Rotation
Because I
ve used the analogy of a time-share condo to explain
placements selling out, I
'
ll go ahead and use it again for ad rota-
tion. If the placement itself is the condo, then your ad is a renter.
There are other renters (ads) out there that are sharing the condo
(placement) with yours, but they all get it at individual times. How-
ever, the placement isn
'
t normally purchased by the day or week; it
is instead purchased in blocks of 1000 impressions (each time your
ad is viewed, it
'
'
s called an impression).
