Business.com - Small Business Guide to Advertising Networks

http://www.business.com/

Why you should use an ad network and how to choose an ad network

BIO: Matt Gussin is a Marketing Consultant at Business.com

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, I'm Matthew Gussin, Senior Marketing Consultant at Business.com, and today we're going to discuss what an ad network is, where to get started, and how it can help your business.

An ad network is an advocate of multiple sites that will actually take multiple sites' information and allow you to actually purchase from one single provider. Think of an ad network like a mutual fund and a search engine like a stock. So, instead of being on just one and purchasing one stock, you're spread across multiple sites that are relevant back to your industry. You can also show up on a broad network, which your ad will actually show up on multiple websites across the internet. There is no rhyme or reason. It's just multiple websites driving a lot of traffic to your website.

Now, how to decide what ad network works for you. Well, there's over 500 ad networks out there, so that's really a difficult way to get started. Well, the best way to look at this is, "Do they provide the audience that I want to be reaching? Can I target the people that I want to get my brand and my product in front of?" Those are great questions to ask yourself and ask the different ad networks out there. When you're also looking for an ad network, you have to decide, "What's the quality of the content and where my ads are going to show up? Are these places that I think are good for my business or could they do harm?" So, after you figured out the quality, one of the most important things is actually deciding what keywords and key phrases you want to use. Very similar to online pay-per-click advertising, you have to figure out, "Am I able to get my messaging across? Are these the keywords that I want to be using? And, after I have that and I have everything set up, how do I track and monitor my results?" Tracking and monitoring is actually one of the most important things to any ad network, because you get to discover whether I'm getting in front of the right audience, and is it converting to sales or leads for me and my business? When you're figuring out that, you have to look into the quality of the ad network as well as the quantity of leads that are coming in and then optimizing based off of that -- how long a person stayed on my website, what kind of results and what kind of metrics that I'm getting.

Why would you want to advertise on an ad network? Simple and plain: it's the audience. That's the true value behind an ad network. For example, if you're a nutritional supply company, you can get on such websites that are blogs that are related back to weightlifting. You can get onto magazine websites that are relevant to your industry, as well, whether it's a sports-related magazine. The true value is the audience, because they're so passionate about what the product you have to sell is or at least the industry, and it gives you a higher chance, more probability, of actually developing new business.

Finally, one of the most important things: you have to be able to monitor your results. The importance for monitoring your results allows you to track what's working and what's not. You can learn about your users that are actually coming to your website, how long they're staying on your website, what keywords are keyword phrases are driving those results, as well as what are turning into sales and leads for you.

So, thank you. I'm Matthew Gussin, Senior Marketing Consultant with Business.com, and today we discussed what an ad network is, where to get started, and how can it help and benefit your business.

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