Advertising Banner Campaign - Clueless please help

I am about to set up a hosting campaign for my site http://www.dataflurry.com but I am totally new to banner advertising campaigns and whether the following costs for advertising is worth it. The site is very popular and has a 12,000 alexa rating, but I am unsure of whether this would be worth my $600. I am assuming I am going to need more information, but thought I would post here first. Thanks for your guy's help in advance. Also any benefitial Banner Advertising knowledge you can share will be greatly appreciated.

Quote:

Thanks for the conversation the other day. The prices below are broken down to reflect that I want to earn your business as soon as possible – not just as a new advertiser, but to assist you as a long-term investor. Keeping that in mind, I will give you all three months for the price of two (see discount outline below). Showcase Pricing – (1) listings [Shared Hosting] = $300/month Retail Value= $300/month x 3 months = $900 Discount Value = $300/month x 2 months = $600 125 x 600 ROS Banner - $15/CPM ~ 20,000 impressions = $300/month Retail Value = $300/month x 3 months = $900 Discount value = Free Retail Value Total: $1800 Discounted Value Total: $600 / 3 month campaign

as long as you are aware of the click thru ratio is usually less than 5% and more in the 1-3% range, then that campaign seems ok. I would go rather go with a PPC campaign such as through overture or google adsense on a personal note. However, if you are trying to increase your PR, then putting up a banner ad might not be a bad idea if that advertising site has a good PR.

This is true. If you're campaign is for branding purposes only, than using banners in this instance is not too bad so long as the site's traffic is the traffic you would seek demographically speaking for your site. With regards to the overall price, it's I think a little high given the impressions estimate he's given, 20,000 per month. Generally a person would visit several pages within a site, so if they visit 3 pages and your banner is on three pages, that equals 3 impressions. I'd rather see you pay for a pay per click campaign or pay per lead campaign. Paying for impressions only, is definitly a thing of the past. But again, if you're only interested in branding, that the cost is reasonable.

Thats alittle pricey for a skyscraper especially at just 20000 impressions. An average CTR for a skyscraper is .6% but it does matter on the creative that is used (I've seen skys with 2% before but it's extremely rare)

20,000 impressions x .6%CTR = 120 clicks
$300 divided by 120 clicks = $2.50 per click <-pricey

And you wont get PR for this either as I'm sure the publisher will want to track impressions and therefor us an adserver which doesnt pass PR because of the redirects.

I'd look into this a bit further because:

1. Most publishers never give out free months.
2. 20,000 impressions is nothing for a month (I go through that byt the afternoon!) that's something like 190 users a day.
3. An Alexa rating is garbage. It's a completely skewed number depending on how many toolbar an office has installed. I can get a 12,000 if I really wanted to. Alot of publishers use that ranking to up sell advertising so be careful.

What you should be asking him is the site's demographics. Also make sure you are related to the publisher so the ads are more targeted. You'll be throwing money out the window if you aren't.