Arve Overland and Leo Chung of Overland Agency, Inc. gave an informative session called “How to Sell Your Website to Advertisers” during the 2007 Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) Convention in Portland, Oregon.

Visit the 2007 AAN Convention blog at Portland2007.AAN.org for more on convention programming.

Overland and Chung walked the room through the job of a media buyer; the intermediary responsible for purchasing online ads to meet specific advertisers needs.

My background is editorial, so I found this an especially helpful approach for understanding media buyers and how alternative newspapers can structure their websites to deliver value to advertisers.

Understand the process of buying online ads from a professional media buyer’s perspective, and then use that understanding to guide smaller clients into lasting relationships.

A media buyer’s job is to deliver a certain numerical goal to their client - a certain number of pageviews for a promotional site, or a certain number of coupon-downloads. Online advertising is all about stats - everything is measured, nothing is guesswork.

It is all math.

The media buyer needs to deliver 1,500 coupon downloads to their client.

About 1 percent of your site audience will click through the ad to the promotional site featuring the coupon. About 3 percent of those folks will download the coupon (that’s called a site conversion rate). [These percentages are garnered from industry standards, and then tweaked accordingly.]

To get 1,500 coupon downloads, they’ll need 50,000 people to visit the promotional site with the coupon. And since only 1 percent of your audience will click through, they will need their ad to be seen 5 million times in order to deliver the promised 1,500 coupon downloads to their client.

So, they need their ad seen 5 million times. If you can deliver that amount of pageviews within the campaign timeframe (Chung and Overland stated an average campaign lasted an month or so), then the media buyer will spend their client’s money advertising on your site.

A media buyer wants to spend their money wisely, so they are willing to spend a little more for a targeted audience that is more likely to click through to their promotional site - great news for alts, who can deliver local audiences passionate about specific issues.

By creating sections of your website that feature deep-well interest content, you can garner targeted audiences that your sales reps can help connect with interested advertisers. Putting together an “environmental news” section, for example, would be a great way to appeal to advertisers trying to reach environmentally-minded consumers.

4 Keys to Successfully Selling Your Site

Slide 29, Overland & Chung presentation
1. Understand Your Advertiser/Buyer

• They need to maximize return and show results against quantifiable goals
• Go beyond selling inventory and “space” to selling solutions

2. Communicate Your Website’s Value

• Demonstrate your local, demographic and flexibility advantage
• Leverage your unique position to differentiate and deliver relevance

3. Plan by the Numbers

• Every dollar is accountable and ROI drives online advertising
• Use the ROI model to price your products; demand more for what converts higher and understand what is driving an advertiser’s price pressure

4. Measure Results to Drive Sucess

• Data is key to success during the campaign as well as for ongoing strategy and relationships
• Provide your advertisers with knowledge to improve their campaigns and results and they will come back