We have discussed, in past NPTalk postings, how search engines play a key role in the marketing of websites online. By using effective keywords, metatags, and understanding how search engines (especially the most popular) work, websites can boost their visibility to a wider audience, rather than relying upon the search engines and users to "find" a site through serendipity. The next step in increasing (or enhancing) the presence of an organization online is directly advertising to the online public. Web ads are a major source of support for online efforts, mostly for commercial sites. Some figures estimate that spending for online advertising will reach almost US$8 billion by 2002. What are websites spending it on? Most of it is spent on banner advertisements, which are usually placed at the top of a web page. These ads, sometimes utilizing sound, video, animation, or just a well-designed graphic, invites a visitor to a website to click on the banner, thereby winding up on the website tied to that particular ad. The idea is that even if one does not click on the ad, attention is paid to it. If the ad pops up enough times on enough sites, eventually users will click on it. Some ads are “fixed” in terms of the message and graphics they display, others are “dynamic” changing what they display based upon factors such as the type of browser used or even the time of day. Every time the ad is displayed, information is sent to the ad server's host machine, displaying what web site displayed it, and what level of activity took place with respect to the ad. Why Consider Banner Advertising? Firms and organizations use banner advertising, simply put, to drive traffic to their site, attract and hold attention, and then direct users to other content or to perform a desired activity. The more effective the advertising and marketing and outreach activity, the happier the advertiser. For those sites hosting web advertisements, more eyeballs means more money they can charge for advertising space. Moreover, there are some good nonprofit examples of banner advertisement usage in actual advocacy and fundraising campaigns, especially on environmental and hunger issues. There are also a growing number of consulting firms that work to develop nonprofit banner campaigns. Banner Ads Don't Come Cheap Banner ads are priced according to something called the "CPM": cost per mille (thousand). This is the measure of the cost of ensuring that an ad is viewed 1000 times (not necessarily by 1000 different people). The cpm is how rates are set for guaranteed “impressions” or viewings of an ad. Web ads however, do not come cheap. Rates can run as much as 70% higher than advertising for television. To be fair, however, Web advertising cannot be compared to traditional print and television advertising. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), a nonprofit group representing the Internet advertising industry, considers the cost comparison of CPMs with other mediums an unfair one, so much so that they make their argument explicit on their website, which goes something like this:

1. The level of target audiences is vastly different. Television is said to target such a wide-ranging audience (namely, everyone with a television set who is inclined to have the television on), that when you factor in what it takes to ensure that your actual target demographic is receiving your ad message, especially factoring in age, education, and income levels, the cost of Web advertising becomes somewhat more comparable if not barely cheaper
2. Figuring that most product commercials last around 30 seconds, and most message spots manage to come in under 90 seconds at most, you still have a time and placement barrier with regards to television. Assuming that you cannot guarantee placement of a spot at the exact same time every day over a specified period of time, it makes it hard to ensure that your desired audience will see your message. In order to get that level of placement, you will shell out a lot of money, without a solid guarantee of reaching them.
3. Web advertisers are able to target specific segments of a given population, especially given the ability to more accurately track usage and viewing patterns online, and to develop sites around specific interests for the same amount of money as one of general interest.
4. Television (and though not mentioned specifically, radio and print) is a passive medium, that is you have very little opportunity to interact with the advertisement as it is being presented to you (and no, those “scratch here and see if you have won” promotions do not count!).
5. Web advertising is more likely to be noticed because web pages in general have a higher ratio of content (specifically relevant content) to advertising. Your average computer screen display is 640x480 pixels (307,020 pixels). A standard banner ad takes up 468 by 60 pixels (28,080 pixels). So, the argument goes, a basic web page is potentially 91% editorial to 9% ad space. (As far as the content goes, that includes graphics and other such stuff). By comparison, IAB argues, look at magazines that have a 50% ad and 50% editorial ratio, and television which is 60% programming (including entertainment, sports, and news, but lumping together broadcast and cable) versus 40% advertising.
6. If people are seeing the message, they may not necessarily be receiving the message to the point that they actually act upon the message the way you want them to. If you believe that most people really don't watch every television show all the way through, then most likely they are not really paying attention to the commercials in large numbers. The television, like the radio, may simply be on in the background. Moreover, in print mediums, you may only pay attention to the full page ads, or ads that have a unique graphic element, but at best, there is no guarantee you will focus on the ad and actually buy the product. Web ads actually encourage an already engaged segment of the population to take action (buy something, contact an entity for more information, etc.) by simply clicking on the screen rather than changing a channel.
7. You can target different ads to multiple segments of a target audience easier and cheaper than with other ad mediums, based not only on interests, but also with respect to the type of hardware or software, they own, their Internet domain, or other criteria in a few mouse clicks.
8. You can gauge the effectiveness of your ad more precisely and more quickly (namely real-time) than with other forms of advertising, especially given advances in tracking software. More importantly, real-time feedback also allows for the ability to quickly adjust advertising strategy to maximize impact and respond to negative factors as they develop.

Tracking Banner Advertising Impact One way companies attract investor confidence is by showing that an ever-increasing number of website visitors are flocking to particular sites. This measure is the same as that used by firms that offer to boost the online presence of nonprofit websites. Nonprofits and companies alike are encouraged to believe that factors such as the number of visitors, the number of “hits,” the number of page views, the average amount of time visitors spend on a site, the number of unique users versus new visitors, and other elements are all useful measures of gauging a web site's effectiveness in reaching an audience. By utilizing technology designed to affect any or all of these factors, web advertisers offer to boost the amount of traffic to websites, through a variety of offline and online marketing techniques, ranging from tried and true “old school” methods” to innovative techniques. How do you know a banner ad is reaching an audience? There are web rating services, like Nielsen/Net Ratings and Media Matrix that ask selected users to install software on their computers that record their Internet usage and behavior, down to the specific page, over a certain period of time. Their numbers are not always perfect, or even close to accurately reflecting the popularity of every website available, as they exclude often times nonprofit websites from their rankings. Yet these numbers are in fact the basis for determining how much ads will cost, where they will be placed, and if you are a commercial website, how much investor dollars are infused in the Internet marketplace that makes advertising possible. Consider this: Media Matrix uses a sample base of some 60,000 online users representing some 10,000 U.S. households out of a total potential audience of 78 million users for its services, which means that one Media Matrix sampler is equivalent to roughly 1400 users. Thus if you attract the attention of people most likely to be in Media Matrix's sample, the more likely you are to increase your site's popularity according to that rating service. Measuring Banner Advertising Effectiveness There have been a number of studies that seek to discover how effectively eyeball traffic translates into actual website use. While most of them look at how well eyeball traffic translates into a customer base for online retailers, there are some useful lessons nonprofits can draw upon, keeping in mind that that a banner ad serves to attract a viewer and get them committed to doing something through your site. Peg Wallace, in her 7/27/00 The Industry Standard piece, “The Truth About Eyeballs” cites two such studies. Of particular interest is one study by marketing doctoral student Wendy Moe and her advisor Professor Peter Fader, of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, who conducted a study on eight months worth of website clickstream (user) data from Media Matrix with respect to two larger online commercial sites from 1998. The study, “Capturing Evolving Visit Behavior in Clickstream Data”, examined the elements of web pages and websites commonly understood to influence visitor traffic, like the number of page hits, average length of time visitors spend at a site, and total number of page views. They found that all of these factors are not useful in determining if a website is attracting target audiences, because in aggregate, they factors cut across a number of audiences, including new and experienced Internet users, especially over time. One of their interesting findings deals with visitor frequency. They found that frequent visitors, especially new and first-time visitors, were not necessarily more inclined to buy things from a site. Those visitors, however, who are more familiar with a site were found not only to visit a site less frequently, but also more likely to actually buy something from the site. Fader and Moe discovered, somewhat counter-intuitively, that it is the individual level behavior that is a better gauge of online traffic than larger-picture analyses. They found, for example, that consumer web usage patterns change over time for both newer and experienced users. Newer users tend to explore websites initially out of curiosity, and for those they like, they tend to visit more frequently. The more frequently they visit a site, the more familiar they become with the site's content until they reach a point where they no longer feel a compulsion to visit frequently, though they may still visit on a somewhat regular basis. The second challenged a commonly held assumption of electronic commerce, which is that people who shop online are more likely to buy something at any given time on any site, therefore making it more likely that that should be the target audience for online commercial entities. Moe and Fader, found data, however, that suggests a more desirable target audience might be those who are prone to returning to a particular site on a frequent basis are more likely to buy something from that site. Their findings suggest that rather than attempting to attract everyone online who exhibits a particular behavior, it may make more sense to try and attract a subset of an audience that has previously demonstrated interest in a particular site by visiting it. So a site may have a high volume of traffic, but the type of traffic it attracts may not translate into higher numbers of people that perform the action or view the content desired. Moreover, there is no guarantee that significant numbers of the visitors will come back and/or eventually perform desired activity on a repeat visit, if indeed they come back at all. Keep in mind that with a lot of marketing and hype both online and offline, a successful marketing campaign may lead to a spike in web traffic for a site. But Fader and Moe's findings suggest that even an initial flurry of interest in a website may at best only yield a spike in volume among new visitors, not repeat visitors. The more new users a site attracts, though, the easier it is to overlook the fact that the existing users base may in fact be shrinking for a particular site. A site, in essence, would have to ensure that it could keep its existing user base while continuing to attract new users, keeping in mind that the audiences are indeed distinct. Why is this important? It speaks directly to something called the “conversion rate” (the number of individual purchases or information transactions divided by the total number of visitors to a site). In other words, if you are attracting a lot of people to your site, but nobody does anything you want to them to do while they are there, you have a problem. Firms tend to measure conversion rates as the number of people who complete a transaction during a particular period as a proportion of total visitors during that same time span. The conversion rate, in effect, speaks to the probability of each visitor making a purchase or conducting a transaction during each visit. Those who are just beginning to visit a site more frequently are more likely to yield a higher conversion rate, so it makes sense to market to that audience by continuing to offer features that can continue to provide information new to them, giving them a n incentive to visit more often and hole their interest while they are there. It is this thing that is known as “stickiness” Stickiness and “conversion,” speak to or how well eyeballs translate into an actual user who conducts a transaction (either sale or information exchange) online. A conventional industry statistics states that only about 20% of all online buyers account for 80% of total sales online. A Forrester Research analysis from 1999 reports that for over 70% of all online retail sites, only 2 out of 100 visitors represented “conversions,” or sales. There is no guarantee that those who do shop once at a site will (a) return to that site, (b) will return to that site on a frequent or at least regular basis, and (c) will return to that site to shop, and (d) will return to shop with some frequency. A conversion does not automatically mean that you have established “customer loyalty.” Just because somebody visits a site and shops or asks for further information does not mean that they are “loyal” to the site. Your site may be the only source of information, but eventually another source for information may develop, and you may lose users to that site. Keep in mind, as a measure, that online retailing powerhouses have pretty low conversion rates. usually somewhere between 1% and 20% Another measure to keep in mind is detailed in Scott Woolley's 8/7/00 Forbes magazine article “Lyin' Eyeballs.” Woolley focuses on the notion of “unique traffic,” and its importance in gauging website effectiveness. Unique traffic is an important measure because, while you may see higher numbers of website traffic, you may not actually be engaging new and existing visitors who are reading your content or staying on your site for long. In fact, it may help to create a negative association between your organization and your marketing practices. For a commercial site, the “unique traffic” numbers are important as increases in traffic can boost both investor interest and confidence. Woolley cites one study that has looked at this trend, that of professors Elizabeth Demers of the University of Rochester and Baruch Lev of New York University, “A Rude Awakening: Internet Value-Drivers in 2000”. This study, released in May 2000, looked at factors thought to have influenced the value of Internet stock prices for some 80 companies during 1999 through the first financial quarter of 2000, when a large number of Internet stocks lost a good chunk of their value. The researchers applied those factors to a set of web traffic measures, namely “reach,” “stickiness,” and “customer loyalty.” Reach refers to the number unique individual eyeballs, the portion of the online population that views a single website, and total number of views for a web page. Stickiness speaks to the amount of time spent per person on particular pages within a website. Customer loyalty refers to the number of visits per person to a particular website. These three factors were found to have significant correlation with the stock prices of stocks tied to Internet ventures involved with online retail, community building and portals, content generating, financial news and services, and miscellaneous service activities, as well as some impact on “strategic alliances” among companies on the web. In other words, the number of unique visitors to a particular site, the volume of the online public that views a site, the volume of repeat visitors, and total number of page views, If you are scratching your head at that last three paragraphs (and we were too as we reading the Demers-Lev study), Justin Fox provides a more digestible reading of the study in both a 6/12/00 piece for Fortune Magazine, and in the July 2000 eCompany Now. Fox states that the main impetus behind the Demers-Lev study, and a number of other studies, has been an attempt to prove that there is some rationale basis for why investors pick the Internet stocks that they do, especially given the fact that it is still difficult to find large number of online commercial enterprises that are actually turning a profit instead of losing money. Even with the bust in Internet stocks during the first quarter of 2000, there is still a lot of interest in Internet stocks, only more guarded. The fact that people still invest in the Internet economy would suggest that there is some rational approach to why investors pick the stocks they do. The Demers-Lev study, in addition to a few others this year, collectively suggest that this rational basis lies in a new understanding of traditional economic analysis. Heretofore, they suggest, economists and analysts have viewed Internet marketing as an expense. Demers and Lev, however, suggest that if investors treat online and offline marketing as an investment, one can see a higher valuation for those online efforts. This makes sense on a practical level, because the more people who visit your site, the more potential visitors you may have returning to your site. The more people who return, the more likely they are to stay on your site and see the things you want them to see. [As a footnote the research also found that online alliances with AltaVista, Amazon.com, Excite@Home, Go Network, Go2Net, Lycos, Microsoft, Time Warner or Yahoo led to poor stock performance, yet any online alliance with AOL had virtually no effect on stock performance]. Maesures like the conversion rate and “customer loyalty,” however, exist in tandem with the fact that more people are going online and new users are constantly visiting web sites. But if there is no guarantee that these new users are taking advantage of sites that are shelling out tons of money to market themselves, why should nonprofits, especially those with limited budgets for out reach and marketing even bother to spend money on Web advertising? Mostly because any eyeballs you attract are definitely worth something, depending on how much you spend to attract them. For online commercial ventures, especially the ones losing money like crazy, there is no single measure by which to gauge their value other than the effectiveness of a website to attract “eyeballs” or customers. So how much are those “eyeballs” worth? Erick Schonfeld, in an article appropriately titled “How Much Are Your Eyeballs Worth?” in the February 2000 issue of Fortune Magazine, attempted to find out. Schonfeld reports, (somewhat ghoulishly) for example, that a pair of real human corneas can command roughly US$4500 on the black market. By comparison, he writes, a pair of eyeballs is worth a little over US$2000 on the Yahoo portal site and US$1400 on the Amazon.com site. Why? Paraphrasing Schonfeld: The investor market considers Yahoo to be worth some US$86 billion compared to Amazon's US$26 billion. Yahoo has 42 million users who don't buy much yet use the information and search features, receiving about $19 yearly from each user in one form or another. Amazon.com has 17 million users, each of whom generates about US$160 a year. But the value of ads on Yahoo is worth more than that on Amazon. Why? Because Yahoo is mostly content-oriented, not commercially driven. Amazon.com has to spend money to not only attract eyeballs, but to also support eyeballs in the transactions they conduct with their site. Each new eyeball that translates into a customer costs Amazon.com money, whereas each new eyeball attracted to Yahoo costs nothing. Yahoo can command higher ad rates because it guarantee higher traffic, and it can translate its ad revenue into actual profit. At least for commercial sites, the value of eyeballs is not that they may actually translate into revenue or even earnings. Their value is that they simply represent traffic to the website in the first place. Why? Because the more traffic sites are thought to have, the higher the advertising rate those sites can command, especially if they are web portals, or sites that advertise participating online entities under an affiliate program. Because the valuation of a great number of online commercial enterprises, however, is based on web traffic, and not necessarily how many actual transactions (either purchasing or information exchange) the site conducts, it is hard to know what attracting eyeballs means for a website. So in the absence of a better measure, commercial firms have created an environment where it is the rule to spend large amounts of money to attract eyeballs through all manner of tactics, some of them bordering on the ridiculous, and a few bordering on the dishonest. Woolley's aforementioned article describes an online service called Hitbox that helped to create a spike in unique traffic for About.com's website, and other sites. People who went to Hitbox's website saw the About.com site in a new browser window, behind the Hitbox.com screen. Therefore, no matter who visited the Hitbox site, and no matter how often they visited, they would be counted as new visitors for About.com, even if they closed it or never actually viewed the hidden window. This however exaggerates the number of people who actually utilize a site or view the content, especially the advertisements for which firms pay no small amount of money. For this “boost” in traffic, firms pay Hitbox between US$15 and $20 per thousand visits, according to Woolley. Woolley also discusses banner ads that are tied to lotteries and prize-offer sites. You may have seen some of these online, in the form of a game that lets you “punch a gorilla” or “picking the leaf on a tree”. When you successfully (or unsuccessfully) click on the ad, you are asked to register information about yourself (including contact information), and you are then entered into a drawing for which you might receive a prize. Some variant of this type of banner ad increase the odds of winning if users visit other participating advertiser websites. What users don't know is that by simply clicking on the ad, you are also transported to a participating advertiser's website, an act that counts as a unique visit. Woolley, however, quotes some of the folks behind the lottery ads who emphasize that the goal behind such ads is only to inflate numbers, not increase customer loyalty. An example that may be more relevant to NPTalkers is the free ISP service NetZero. The people who use the service have a fixed banner ad that runs on screen, the price they pay for free Internet access. Upon registering for this (and other similar offerings), users divulge information about their interests and Web habits. This banner ad also helps to monitor the Web viewing habits of subscribers. Because NetZero has a built-in audience that is wide in terms of interests but narrow in terms of age, education, and income, advertisers do not have to expend large sums of money and effort to locate a desired demographic. Therefore anyone who advertises through NetZero is bound to reach a well-defined target audience, and the value of eyeballs comes out to roughly US$1140. Poor Richard's Web Almanac cites the apparently high cost of Web advertising, however, arguing in a number of postings that “click-through” rates have declined from a rate of 1% from the first half of this year to 0.5% currently. it consistently claims that firms may be paying too much if they pay the posted rate for banner ads, since nearly 80% of available ad space, according to the Wall Street Journal is currently going unsold. That same article asserts that “click-through” rates have declined from a rate of 1% from the first half of this year to 0.5% currently. Thus, Poor Richard's argues, for 1 out of 100 site visitors to translate into a successful conversion, given a click-through rate of 0.5%, you must have around 20,000 banner impressions. With cpms running up from $2 (a rare deal if you can find it) to $60, it could cost anywhere from US$40 to $1200 just to land one sale. Moreover, many companies are discovering that their sites are worth more as advertising vehicles in and of themselves if they can attract a huge volume of eyeballs. A service oriented-site, by comparison, must literally drive such a high-volume of eyeballs to its site in the hopes that they will actually take advantage of the site's offerings translating into some sort of transaction, while keeping the cost of that transaction low enough to not drain too much cash. If sites can, however, tap into the traffic from other sites that have a large, dedicated, and active user base, they are more likely to enjoy a steady and growing stream of eyeballs. This is why some content-rich sites tend to attract eyeballs in larger numbers—they offer “stickiness, “ that is not only a reason to visit a site, but a reason to stay on the site for a while, and to return to the site to spend more time the next time around. Basic Rules of Thumb With of the above said, what should nonprofits keep in mind about banner advertisements? Here are a few suggestions:

1. You can advertise online to either raise awareness around an issue, your organization, or both; drive traffic to your website to learn more about said issue or your organization, (c) perform some type of desired activity while they are there, and d) stay engaged with your content or work enough to return, bringing other traffic with them.
2. Keep in mind though, that one ad cannot, and should not, seek to accomplish all of those things. Otherwise, you will spend money on a potentially valuable resource that works at cross-purposes resulting in nothing but confusion and missed opportunities.
3. If you are going to advertise online, you need a clear understanding of who you are trying to target, why you are trying target them, what you want them to, how you want them to do this, and what your organization needs to sustain that activity (be it money, staff, or expertise)
4. Web advertising entails a level of experimentation, especially as technology continues to raise the bar not only on what is possible but what other sites utilizes to draw attention to their web pages.
5. Web advertising must be put realistically in terms of context of changing online demographics. The common assumption is that the online audience is basically educated white males between the ages of 18-35 who earn over US$35,000 annually and who only speak English. Yet women, blacks, and Hispanics at lower income levels are coming online at faster rates than before, and are showing a greater willingness to not only shop online, but to process online advertising. Therefore campaigns that speak to the established user base may quickly realize that they are not hitting everyone they could or may need to.
6. If you are looking to raise awareness around an issue, your campaign will target a more general audience. If you are looking to tout your organization's services, you will need to identify a more targeted audience. The more targeted the audience, however, the lower the number of people who will actually visit your site. However, if a high percentage of your targeted audience visits your site, then you have a better return on your investment than if the same number of people from the general online population ultimately visits your site.
7. If you want people to know more about your organization through advertising, you have to ensure that you are meeting a targeted set of needs and that you can guarantee that those needs are met immediately upon their visit.
8. Both awareness raising and serving needs work to create “branding” opportunities for your organization online. Therefore, you must make sure to include your logo and mission in any banner ad that you place.
9. The number of people who actually click on an ad is just as important as the number of people who see your ad. At best banner ads result in “click-throughs” or “click rates” of only 1-5% of everyone who sees an ad.
10. Traffic, however, should be viewed alongside the average length of time someone spends on your site, the number of pages they view while on your site, and how many unique visitors you are attracting. This information can be gleaned from your webmaster and the logs files from your web server.
11. Conversion” of visitors into users who actually do something—whether it is signing up for more information, agreeing to help out with a campaign, or purchasing a book or service-- via your website only is possible when someone reaches your website. This means that when you advertise that people will be able to do something upon visiting your site, you must make sure that they can do so. Conversion ads are useful if your organization has something to promote, like a special event, or limited-time offer or prize.
12. Make sure that the mission, content, practices, and target audience of a potential advertising venue or ad broker does not conflict with your organizations goals, missions, values, or work. In looking at where you can place ads, consider very closely the traffic, audience, and content of the websites in question, and how well (as well as how) they collect information on their usage. See if your ad will be rotated along with a number of other ads, or if you will be guaranteed specific placement on certain pages with relevant related content. A general portal site, for example, might not be the best place to advertise your work on an environmental regulatory campaign.
13. If you are using an ad broker, find out what rates they are charging, and what range of services that rate afford you. Can you change ads as frequently as you need during a campaign? How often will you receive reports on your campaign? Will you have access to design consultants and technical support staff?
14. Do your homework on a firm, and do background work to make sure they are reputable. Make sure you understand the ad firm or broker's use of terms like impressions, click rates, etc., and that your obligations are understood and spelled out in writing. Check to make sure the firm does not conduct unethical practices (like spamming, or pirating other banner ads and passing it off as it own)
15. Negotiate for the best price. Know how much you have to spend, and then do your homework to discover how much you need to spend. Don't let the ads drive all your marketing. Instead see if web advertising makes sense for your organization, given what you are trying to do, and the type of audience you are trying to attract. If your audience is not online in sufficient numbers, why bother? Also remember that the cpm (“cost per mille” or “cost per thousand”) is the rate charged only for displaying your ad, and guarantees only the number of times it will be displayed (the “impression”), but does not guarantee that a certain number of people will click on it.

Done right, banner ads can attract a new stream of potential supporters. At their worst, banner ads can leave online viewers with a negative impression of your organization. More importantly, nonprofits should remember that online banner advertising, like any other advertising approach, does not replace the need for continuing to work directly, in persona and on the ground with the organizations, stakeholders, and groups with which you are already work. Other Options Mark Welch maintains the Adbility website, providing extensive listings and critical assessment of ad and link exchange networks, banner ad programs, search engine resources, marketing contacts and ad brokers, banner ad creation tools, traffic and statistic analysis, and content enhancement tools. Some suggestions for nonprofits to consider (many of them discussed on Welch's site) include: Advertise Your Own Ads on Your Own Site Another overlooked are of nonprofit Web advertising is perhaps the simplest: use your own website to promote your organization's activities as many times as possible or practical or effective during the visitor's interaction with your site. There is, for example, no reason why nonprofits cannot put banner ads on the their most frequently viewed pages which, when clicked upon, link users to other parts of the site. Such banner ads could be designed to reciprocate between the referring and target pages such that by simply clicking on any banner a user can effectively navigate a site. There are also a number of software tools and free scripts that allow organizations to, in effect, host their own ad services through their website. This may be a more cost-effective model for groups not comfortable spending the money to go to an outside party, who might also want to provide ad space for other groups. Affiliate Programs This are referral services from other websites (usually commercial) to a specific website. The traffic generated by a participating websites (called associates) translates into money that is earned, and enables participating sites to perform e-commerce tasks without significant cost. Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and other large e-tailers offer such services. If you are lucky, you can get 5-15% of the sale, but these require participants to aggressively market the affiliates program. Banner Exchanges These are services where your organization, upon joining, offers to display the banners of other members on your site a certain number of times in return for being allowed to do the same, working out to one exposure on another site for every two you offer on your site. You also get statistical reports on how many times your ad was viewed and clicked upon. LinkExchange and SmartClicks are two examples. Web rings Web rings are collections of reciprocal links, wherein each participating website is linked in a chain directly to two other sites, forming a ring or chain of sites. This provides a quick and free way to establish a built-in affinity network for more targeted users (especially on more obscure interests that are harder to market online). There is a central Web ring that maintains the larger networks of all rings. Ryan TurnerNPT Project OMB Watch Links Cited (in order of mention) Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) http://www.iab.net Nielsen/Net Ratings http://www.nielsen-netratings.com Media Matrix http://www.mediamatrix.com "The Truth About Eyeballs," The Industry Standard, 7/27/00 Peg Wallace http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/1,1151,17212,00.html?nl=shg "Capturing Evolving Visit Behavior in Clickstream Data," Professor Peter Fader and Wendy Moe http://fourps.wharton.upenn.edu/~wendy/VisitPaper.pdf (Adobe Acrobat required) “Lyin' Eyeballs” Forbes magazine, 8/7/00 Scott Woolley http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0807/6604118a.html “A Rude Awakening: Internet Value-Drivers in 2000” Elizabeth Demers, University of Rochester Baruch Lev,New York University http://www.stern.nyu.edu/%7Eblev/ARudeAwakening.pdf [requires Adobe Acrobat] Fortune Magazine, 6/12/00 Justin Fox http://www.fortune.com/fortune/investor/2000/06/12/inv2.html eCompany Now, July 2000 Justin Fox http://www.ecompany.com/articles/mag/print/1,1643,6727,00.html “How Much Are Your Eyeballs Worth?” Fortune Magazine, February 2000 Erick Schonfeld http://www.ecompany.com/articles/mag/1,1640,1238,00.html Hitbox http://www.hitbox.com About.com's website http://www.about.com NetZero http://www.netzero.com Poor Richard's Web Almanac http://PoorRichard.com/newsltr Wall Street Journal article on unsold Web ad space http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB962069775457234209.html [Paid subscription required] Mark Welch's Adbility Website http://www.adbility.com LinkExchange http://www.linkexchange.com SmartClicks http://www.smartclicks.com Webrings http://www.webring.org Resources Guides CNET Banner Ad Primer (1997) http://www.builder.com/Business/Advertising/?tag=st.cn.sr1.dir Web Ad Placement Checklist http://www.builder.com/Business/Advertising/ss05a.html Banner Ad Software and Design Tips http://graphicssoft.about.com/compute/graphicssoft/ msubwebtipsban.html?rnk=r1&terms=banner+ads Microscope Magazine's reviews of ad banner campaigns http://www.pscentral.com Four Corners' Comparing Click Through Rates & Tips for creating successful banner ad campaigns http://www.whitepalm.com/fourcorners Reference Advertising Online http://adsonline.about.com/industry/adsonline/ ?rnk=c1&terms=banner+ads/ HTML and Banner Advertising http://html.about.com/compute/html/ msubadvertising.html?rnk=r2&terms=banner+ads Studies Internet Advertising Bureau Online Advertising Effectiveness Study (IAB/Millward Brown, 1997) http://www.mbinteractive.com/site/iab/study.html Relevance of "Eyeballs": A Web Traffic Study Shiva Rajgopal, Suresh Kotha and Mohan Venkatachalam http://www.netesteem.com/Studies/studies_traffic.html) Organizations Internet Advertising Bureau http://www.iab.net Articles How do you measure an audience anyway? http://www.ecompany.com/webguide/1,1660,18040|125|0|0|1|a,00.html How much are eyeballs worth? http://www.ecompany.com/articles/mag/1,1640,1238,00.html A Matter of Metrics: Using Web Data to Improve Sales Performance http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/articles.cfm?catid=4&articleid=162)