ActiveRain Ad Network

The bidding system is the same used by Yahoo and Google for their ads.  It works just fine.

Now if I could just get my ads to show. 

Wow - I totally forgot to follow this post... sorry!  Here's what the code monkey who wrote this has input on... as usual the views and opinions of what I say on AR probably doesn't always fall on party lines (because I STILL haven't gotten that memo :)


@Evan:  CPM is clicks per 1000 (M being the roman silliness).  When you bid $1 you're saying I'll pay up to $1/1000 every time my ad is shown.

@I DON'T SEE MY AD:  This is fairly complex... here's a brief tour... I'll be doing up exhaustive docs this week ... this usually has to do with targeting (see my post on that http://activerain.com/blogsview/187040/Tips-on-Ad-Targeting ).  Also - if your ad is "active" you'll only see it 5 times... if it's "active-unlimited" you can see it as many times as you have money for.  Who your logged in as effects what you see - if you do an ad for MA and are logged in with a location in WA you won't see your ad except on the MA regional page ( http://activerain.com/states/MA )

@Celeste:  it's pay per impression (which means, every the ad is displayed you're debited).  It's good for as long as you have cash or until you stop it.

@Heather: Just go to http://ads.activerain.com and sign in - you're already signed up since you're a member

@Roberta: I do all the site development on a mac - what browser are you using?  Safari is not well supported on our site - but everything works in FireFox http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

@Lane: I believe Localism is coming - should be pretty quick to implement once we iron out the kinks here.

@Hemet:  2.01 beats 2.00 - it's a cruel world  :)  Key words are probably a long ways out - that would be very tricky to implement.  You can already bid on pages (Home page, blog post page, etc.)

@Celeste again:  Yes - your bidding against others.  If you're in the top three (or two, depending on how many ads we're showing) you don't necessarily need to be the highest bidder - just the in the top 3.  We're working on making this easier to figure out ... it's evolving as rapidly as I can type.

@Cheryl - because google does it this way and made billions... Zillow is still working on that  :)  (teasing)

@Kathy - there shouldn't be any advertising on your blog (the part the public sees) so not(SOL)  :)

@Doreen - should be opening in a new window now... my bad - sorry!

@Hemet re dead wood:  unfortunately companies are valued on member counts in .com land.  So, while they might be dead wood, they're still worth something in investment circles.  In virtually all communities the % of active members is rarely much more than 1,000 or so and, within that, 90% of most content generally comes from less than 100.  I haven't run the stats in months - but we're close to those numbers...

@Lenn - I've received all your emails - I'm in the middle of implementing your bank idea... and will reply when I'm done with that.

Next question?  :)

-ben

Thanks Ben!  Got to talk to Bob last night who was very helpful and pleasant (I like when people don't act like I'm dumb about this...even though I am haha)  and very patient explaining everything to me. Thanks for your input.

My impression is that this is for vendors to advertise to agents and lenders currently, but with the advent of localism advertising that will change.  When will localism come on line with this, and will we get notice? 

Ben: I am on iMac/Firefox--and I think my account is all jumbled.  Could you check? Thanks!

 

 

Roberta - what is "all jubmled".  I just logged in as you and things seemed to be working.

Bravo... I can appreciate these little ads.  I don't feel they are too intrusive.  I've been saying it for awhile.  I like free.  If I want to advertise I can...I love it.

Is there a possibility of bogus impressions? (hostile hits)

I knew the time would come.  And ActiveRain deserves to do it because they have provided a great community for the real estate professionals.

I've read some really good comments and concerns above.  First, AR is right not to charge a fee to participate in the community; this is why it was popular to begin with and you don't want to change a good thing.  Hence, there won't be an annual flat fee to be a member as opposed to their current CPM ads. 

We all knew this was coming (at least I knew and most of the people here knew that as well).  In any business, revenue is key.  ActiveRain has provided us with a great community and this is a way for us (and other advertisers) to return the favor.  Think of it like Realtor.com.  It used to be free (still is, but you have to pay additional fees to have more exposure, more photos, virtual tour, videos, etc..)  Although this is not a fair analogy as ActiveRain is not even remotely as excessive as Realtor.com (my opinion).

Lastly AR is just following suit of the normal way to advertise, which is CPM or CPC.

 

I did PPC on Overture/Yahoo for a few years. Spent tons of money and had to stay on it a couple times a day to increase my bid to keep my ads in the top 3 for each keyword phrase. The organic benefit of AR allowed me to drop PPC.

My question on AR's PPI is ...

• The links I have set up on my outside blog & web site go directly to my profile ...
• When the public does a Google search and one of my posts is listed, when that consumer clicks on the link, they go directly to my post ...

So in both those examples, the public would never see anyone else's ads ... Right? In order to see the ads, a person would actually have to browse around AR in order to see the ads. Does the public really do that or all those impressions coming from AR members. If so, then it would seem the main benefit is to those companies that specifically want to advertise to real estate agents or lenders who are AR members. As for Realtors, we're still better off just writing good content for Google.

Am I making a correct assumption or not???

 

@Suzi: if your ad is "active" (as compared to "active-unlimited") we will only show that ad 5 times to any given user session... this is cookie based so, they could delete their cookies and keep hitting refresh.  I'm planning to put in some IP tracking to help prevent that.  In short - it's sort of malicious proof but not 100% yet (and really, these kind of things are virtually impossible to completely protect... look at what Google's going through).

@Elaine:  I think those assumptions are correct

 

Quick update: I have run through my budget $50 USD and received 29 clicks from AR to my target page - Works out to just about $1.72 per click, so from a Google PPC comparison perspective this is WAY over the average for my keyword terms (Which are much more targeted) - This may have to do with the fact that I bid $10.00 per 1000 impressions, had I bid $1 i twould have only cost me .17 per click, however my feeling is that at $1 per 1000 impressions, my ad would never be seen, is this correct?

 Incidentally, for those who like numbers this works out to a 2.9% click through rate.

 

@Morgan:  if you've the top bidder for your category your ad will be shown (or even if you're in the top 3, we're working on showing this to users).  The default ads that AR is running are priced at 0.01 per 1000 impressions - so, anything over that beats the place holder (i.e. that's the minimum bid).  We did this like an auction so that it could price itself, just like Google except it's CPI instead of CPC.  

Also - you mention keywords... while we don't offer that type of targeting we do offer targeting.  Your REW Forums ad was to all pages, all profiles... which would be like using "all words" in Ad Words (if they had that) which, I guarantee you, would be WAY more than $1.72 

By all means - if you think Ad Words is more effective then definitely use that.  We're not using ad words on AR because we wouldn't have control over it showing ads that are directly competing with us and/or our users.  And implementing keywords is fairly complex - so we haven't even started that yet.

Also - this is day two... we're working as fast as we can to implement changes, suggestions and improvements.  If you think you got cheated just drop Jon or Caleb a note and we can discuss credits to help lower the price.

I placed my ad for the public viewing, I'm not sure if it's running and where?

Cheers, have an awesome day!

I'm just making sure I understand: 

I placed an ad for a listing (I hope that is not inappropriate?  After all, agents want other agents to know about their listings!)   I went with the default setting or no more than 5 views to each individual, just my local L A County area.  

OK, good.  I've logged on several times since then, and yes, I saw my ad for the first 5 times. 

In subsequent logons I saw other advertisers,  or I just saw the "multiplying fish" placeholder logo.  

So OK, that's one way the limit thing kicks in, and allow all advertisers some air time?

(Ben:  Love your Tease!  Here's to lots of billions for you guys and all AR members!!) <s>

@Cheryl - the limit thing was really put in so that your competition couldn't sit there and hit refresh until your budget ran out.  But, it sort of works as a "allow all advertisers some air time".

I look forward to incorporating this new opportunity into my marketing budget.

Kudos to the Active Rain team for continuing to expand the benefits that members can receive through your platform.

This new Active Rain feature has opened up some real provocative ideas for marketing both our services at PropetryNut but also for marketing our core customer, the Agents we value in this community. We found a way to utilize Sponsored Ads as a "Mutual Benefit" by Marketing the Agent and ourselves. Bob Stewart also needs to be mentioned for his unparalleled customer service in helping us get the maximum productivity out of this new feature and get up and running so fast. Thanks Bob.

Thanks for the post & all the comments, I "think" I now have my head around this.  A tutorial would be nice.  I like the idea of individual ads.

Keep up the good work!  I'm sure you will work it out.

 

Thanks for AR & the opportunity it provides us all.

great posting/   Thanks!