Think buying ads on one of the web's top properties is complicated? Up until now it has been. MSNBC.com, ranked by Alexa the #6 most visited site on the web is allowing local real estate agents, home builders and lending specialists reach local customers through their innovative new program.
For those of you who are new to "display" advertising on the web, this means displaying a banner or button on a webite that you hope someone clicks on. With AdReady from MSNBC.com, they have already made the creatives, you simply drop in the text, phone, pic (of you or a listing), background color and website address you want to go on there and voila you are done.
MSNBC then displays your ad (in this case a small rectangle) to only visitors to the site that are from the geographic area you want. So if you are serving the San Diego area, only those people coming to MSNBC's properties from the San Diego zip codes you specify will see your ad. Totally targeted!
It's cheap too, you can now launch banner campaigns on the news site for as little as $50. It is fast and easy to create several different size banners as well as customize them through their easy to use interface. When a potential customer sees your ad, they will definitely believe you are the "big dog" in town for real estate since you are on one of the top sites in the world.
Hope this helps.
Jim Lillig
www.jimlillig.com
This is great information. A question that I would have is are there possibilities that multiple agents can advertise for the same zip code? If you are able to lock in a specific zip code all to yourself for $50, that is a pretty good deal. Also, how long is that ad good for? $50 per month?
Thanks for reading. I went through and created a campaign using your information to see what you will need to go through. Here is a screen shot of the Flash ad that you can create in just a few minutes:
As to the customization and targeting, well there are some concerns.
First, you can add in your phone number and also make the ad go back to any page you want it to. You can add in a logo as well as small amounts of text and headlines. You can also change the background. All good.
But the targeting and pricing are a little off. They want $16.50 per 1000 impressions (normally referred to as CPM or Cost per Thousand). Folks, normal CPM rates for even targeted sites range from $1.00 to $7.00. In addition, the $50 is your MINIMUM DAILY Spend. So for one day, you would have it seen 3,030 times.
Targeting is another matter. No zip codes only a short list of cities by state. In AZ for example, you have only Phoenix and Tuscon. You can pick a channel on MSNBC to show it on which could reduce the number of impressions per day and help increase your targeting. Here are the channels:
- News - Business - Entertainment - Health - Politics - Tech - Today Show - Travel
You can also schedule when you want the campaign to run, but you cannot cap the daily impressions except through spend. So if I only wanted to show 1000 impressions a day and keep it to $16.50 a day, I couldn't.
Does this help?