Advertising on the Web - Part 3 - Where to Place Your Ads
Who are you trying to reach and how can you find them? What do you know about your desired audience/customer base? How well do you know your existing audience, or the audience you're trying to reach? Because the Web is incredibly diverse, you'll want to make sure you get the most for your dollar.
Affinity: Content is king The Web's enormously diverse content is the best place to start. If you're working for a big ad agency or have a large corporation as your client, you could start by using a subscription-based tool like @plan to research which sites meet your desired demo-, webo-, and psychographic criteria. But since this probably isn't you, start with the freebies and figure out which sites feel like the best matches for your product and message.
While advertising networks like DoubleClick, 24/7 Media, Burst, and others can help you target almost any audience you want, you might also have a hunch about other sites that would be good for your product. If you're just looking for a list of the most visited sites on the Web or want to get a feel for the online landscape, free lists like 100hot will give you a basic sense of what's out there. Larger research and measurement companies like RelevantKnowledge, Jupiter Communications, and MediaMetrix also make regular announcements of which Web sites are the most frequented, and you can usually get the basic list for free.
Search engines are usually a good starting point - they've got massive amounts of traffic, are relatively inexpensive, and can help you target the audience you're trying to reach via keywords (that is, your ad for cat sweaters can be served when people search for the keyword "cat"), category-specific rotation (your ad shows up on Yahoo's Business_and_Economy:Companies:Animals:Cats:Gifts page), and other tools.
Also, don't be afraid to let word-of-mouth recommendations from friends or business acquaintances - or a good night of surfing - pre-empt a no-brainer banner buy on the top five sites. If you've got a hunch about a site, by all means test it.
Once you've got a list of sites, get in touch with their sales departments over the phone or via email and find out what sorts of opportunities they can offer you. Many sites have a publicly available rate card, which can give you a basic idea of what rotations are available and how much each site charges.
