I understand the thought process and the simplicity of just paying for ads. Exchanging ads is a bit archaic, a bit of a throwback to the days of bartering. People used to exchange what they had in excess for what others had in excess—milk for wheat, wheat for wool, and even cows for wives, etc. Over time there was a migration from trading to the use of currency. Currency makes transactions simpler, faster, and more efficient…as long as there is plenty of cash to go around. When cash is tight, people get a little more creative.

Tough economic times are good for everyone involved, even though it doesn’t seem like it sometimes (I don’t wish them on anyone…well, maybe I do). Difficult financial times spark a new level of creativity, once you get yourself out of depression. Financial stress forces people to get back to basics and make better use of the things they’ve been given: talents, abilities, relationships, and assets.

A business’ website is an asset, often times a much underutilized asset. Traditionally, smaller websites are used only to help market the goods and services that the business is offering. However, through the Ad Exchange Program, we are helping business owners with websites of all sizes better utilize their website and grow their business. We are helping smaller guys use their website to monetize their website and generate free advertising to drive more traffic to their site and increase revenues. The larger sites, those with more traffic, already perhaps have advertisers on their site—however they know that it is difficult to monetize their site below the “fold”. With our system they are able to take advantage of the real estate below the fold and put it to good use.

I love the fact that this ad exchange program is set up to help businesses of all sizes get more exposure without having to increase their budgets. And if they do want to buy advertising, they will do it once they know they have a campaign that will deliver the desired ROI. Through good times and bad, we’ll be able to help businesses grow.

Technorati Tags: business owners, business website, economic times, exchange ads, exchanging ads, free advertising, roi

In my view, “impression” based internet advertising is riddled with problems.  That said, if you just want to get your message out there without a concern for response rates, you can negociate a good deal.  On the other hand, pay for performance (click, lead, acquisition, subscription) campaigns don’t always do online “rich media” advertising justice–what I mean is maybe you intended to drive an online response, but the ad actually gave you a foot in the door that isn’t tracked.

Due to these issues and others we chose to partner with a company called RealVu Technologies, www.realvu.net.  RealVu technology tracks when our ads actually come into view on a person’s screen, and is then tracked as a “view“.  You can see this in action on www.exchangemyad.com, or by going to the RealVu site linked above.  Look above the upper right hand corner of the ad and watch for when the red checkmark appears in the RealVu logo.  This gives us a few advantages when it comes to exchanging ads. 

1.  Whether or not someone places exchange ads on the bottom of a page or buried on some obscure page in their website, credits on ads will only be earned when they are “viewed” by someone for a full second.  By the way, this is great for someone that hasn’t been able to sell the remnant space on their site.  Let me restate that, you can now monetize remnant space on a website with this technology–or at least use it for earning exchange ads.

2.  You will get the reporting to show when and where on the network an ad was “viewed”, and the ability to compare impressions to views as well as click rates.

3.  Since you can see the response rates of your ads on the sites it showed up on, you can stop your ad from showing on sites with lower response rates–making your campaign more effective.

The list of benefits for the RealVu technology goes on and on, but that list will provide subjects for future blog entries.

Suffice it to say, you can rest assured that your ads are fairly exchanged.  That is the bird’s eye “view” of the Ad Exchange Program.

Technorati Tags: ad exchange program, exchange ads, impressions, internet advertising, RealVu Technology, view