The traffic source I am going to reveal now is absolutely immense. It’s about having your advertisement placed on the sites that are getting a lot of traffic. There are millions of established websites in every niche and these sites anywhere from a few thousands to millions of visitors a month. Media buys have been used by a large fraction of successful online marketers to generate insane number of leads and sales.

Just look at this banner ad at the top of iVillage.com

According to Alexa,this site has a traffic rank of 2,268,that receives tens of thousands of visits every day. The traffic is predominantly US and is dominated by Females. Just imagine about having your banner before such a targeted audience!  I am certain that this ad is receved a few thousands clicks everyday.

Online media receives huge volumes of traffic everyday and with enormous volumes, a great misconception has developed around this fantastic traffic source, that media buying is the sole right of big companies with deep pockets ……..

The truth is completely otherwise…… Anyone with just a few dollars in hand, can test his products(or offers) with media buys.

There are several reasons why I am advising you to include this traffic source in your arsenal:

1) Media Can Provide You Much More Traffic Than Google (or any other search engine) :

Though Google gets more than a quarter billion searches everyday, there is an upper cap on the number of searches a particular keyword receives. So the traffic you get from search engines has a limit, no matter how many keywords you bid on. Media buys on the other hand can be scaled up almost infinitely.

2) You Have To Perform Much Less Work :

In order to satisfactorily pass Google’s criterias you’ll need to do much more than just creating an ad and a landing page. If have some experience of Adwords, you’ll be aware that Google doesn’t prefer one page sites. To get around this problem you’ll have to create a content rich site and build backlinks to it. All this is a lot of work for the newbies.

3) You Don’t Have To Live In Constant Fear Of Big G :

Google has kind of become infamous for it’s constant changing of algorithms and it’s putting the IMers to the sword.

No matter how much optimized your landing page is,no matter how much you follow their quality standards,you are always at the mercy of the Google lord. They can nuke your campaigns whenever they like and if you get all of your traffic from Google, that may be the end of your business.

So it’s better to diversify your traffic sources even if you are doing great with Google.

With media buys,you get to target your prospects with as many parameters as you want. Sites like Yahoo! Collect a lot of information when a person signs up with them and you can use this information to laser target your prospects.

The Factors That Will Decide How Much Profit You Make

There are 3 factors that will directly affect your conversions:

i) Attractiveness Of Your Banners :

The first impression counts.An ad that instantly generates curiosity is much more likely to get clicked on. You can’t hope to see good ROI if your advertisements doesn’t attract people’s attention,no matter how much optimized your landing pages are and how great sales copy you have.

Before starting a campaign,you should create at least 4-5 banners and test them alternatively.

ii) Your Landing Pages :

This is no doubt the ultimate decider. A highly optimized and well tested landing page is the key to get your visitors fulfill your desired action.

I would advise you to create (or get created) multiple landing pages before you stat out your campaigns. Keep the one that produces best performance and ditch the rest.

iii) Targeting Your Traffic :

The quality of traffic you get also plays a big role in the ultimate conversions. There are two things that decide how targeted your traffic is :

a) The Sites You Are Targeting :

If the sites, you have placed your ads on ,have very little in common with your product, or these have a very broad appeal, the chances are that the traffic you’ll get, will convert very poorly.

For example,you are promoting a weight loss product and you have placed your banners on an astrology site. In this case, you would get some conversions because the niche carries a wide general appeal, but not as much as you would have gotten if your banner was placed on a weight loss review site.

b) The Prospects You Are Targeting :

Prospect targeting is very important.In order to get maximum conversions, you’ll need to target your prospects according to their geographical locations, their gender, age, education, interests and income.  All this seems a lot of work, but all you need to do is initially testing on a small scale.

For example, if you are promoting a weight loss product then you’ll be making more by targeting women aged 18-50 than men in the same age bracket. It has also been proven that such products mostly appeal to mid to high income
groups…… In a similar way, the appeal of any product varies according to the demography.

When you are buying media on a heavy scale, it becomes imperative for you to first ascertain your target market. Different sites collect different amount of information and you’ll have to test all of your traffic sources before allowing heavy budgets. The representatives at the ad network can be of great help in this respect.  They’ll tell you what combination is working best for other products in your niche.

Types Of Media Traffic

Media traffic comes in many forms.The most prominent of these are :

i) Banners :

The prevalent form of media advertising. According to IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau), banner ads account for more than 50% of all the online US advertising.

Banners come in all shapes and sizes. I would advise you to create (or get created) 5-10 unique banners (and then their variants in different shapes and sizes) before you role out your campaigns.

There are BILLIONS OF UNIQUE IMPRESSIONS are up for grab every month. Try to capitalize on the maximum possible no. of traffic pools. When you test out multiple combinations of ads, landing pages and traffic sources, you’ll find that only 20-30% of them turn out to be winners.

You shouldn’t worry about the losers. That is just nature of online advertising. Your job is to test out your campaigns as quickly as possible, ramp up the winners and ditch the losers.

The beauty of media buys is that it allows you to test your campaigns in a very short amount of time and you can find out the winners in a few hours of testing.

ii) Pop-Ups :

Pop-ups, though less popular than banner ads, are the most converting form of media ads. Though pop ups are costlier than banner ads, the conversions you’ll get will easily compensate for the cost.

Ad copy plays a very important role in conversions, as there will be quite a substantial amount of text. But you don’t need to worry. Just see the “How To Create A Magnetised Squeeze Page” part . The pop-up is very similar to a squeeze page, you can use the same strategies in creating a pop-up ad copy.

iii) Interstitial :

These are very similar to pop ups and PPV ads. Oftentimes you come across sites (file sharing sites are an example), when an advertisement covers the whole landing page. In the media buying circles, these ads are called “Interstitial”. This type of ads are almost as effective as pop-ups and receive very high click thru rates.

iv) Text Ads :

Text ads are more effective than the banners and oftentimes require much lower CPC(Cost Per Click).

Some media networks like Adbrite specializes in text ads and they have reach across a variety of sites.

Media text link ads are very similar to the Adsense ads, the only difference is that in adsense ads, you need to pay on a CPC basis while in media buys,you are required to pay on a CPM basis.

To succeed with text links,you’ll need to create an attractive ad copy.See the “How To Create A Click Magnet Adwords Ad” section for more guidance.

So these were a few types of media ads.Include all of them in your marketing arsenal and optimize each one to extract maximum amount of profit.

Targeting is another aspect you need to pay close attention to……and this is the part that most newbies ignore and it’s the number1 reason behind the failures of their campaigns.

Without proper targeting, it’s almost impossible to make your campaigns profitable, as far as large scale media buying is concerned.

Several type of targeting methods is being used nowadays.Most prevalent of these are :

i) Behaviour Targeting :

Behaviour targeting tracks users’ internet activity. It includes tracking ads and links people click, and websites they visit. Once such person clicks on any link or visits a site, the tracking system starts following him as he visits more  related websites. Once the system determines his interests, you can start serving him related ads.

Before purchasing an ad server, you should confirm with your merchant that if their tool has this feature. Some of them may allow you to use a demo version, free of cost. Make sure that the merchant offers these features:

–> Targeting, optimization and ad serving technology .

–> The tool can deliver ads on high traffic sites based on the ad clicking,purchasing or website visiting behavior of the potential customers.

–> The tool can deliver ads on high traffic websites ,when the traffic is at it’s highest.

ii) Channel Targeting :

This one is obvious and all of the Ad Networks offer this option.Once you login to your advertiser dashboard, you’ll see categories you can target. In major ad networks, every category has hundreds or thousands of related websites.

If your niche has a wide appeal, you should target as many related channels as possible, even if you just break even with the traffic provided by a particular channel, you should include it in your bidding list.

iii) Geographic Targeting :

Most of your campaigns will generate the best results if you focus it on a particular region and this is especially true if you are generating “offline” or “local marketing” leads.

It’s a matter of fact that if you are selling information products,most of your Customers will come from North America, UK, Australia and Western Europe. In any campaign, you should always start small. Test out all the regions, with small budget, increase your spend on the ones that are making you profit and remove the ones that send you non-converting traffic.

iv) Day Time Targeting :

Day time targeting is another parameter that will decide your conversions.In many niches, you’ll notice that “At Job” traffic produces very different results than the “At Home” traffic. Only elaborate testing will tell you which one is generating better results.

Please note that the “Day Time Targeting” goes hand in hand with Geographical targeting. In combination of some niches and some regions, you may find out that the “At Home” traffic converts much better than the “At Job” traffic.

Example: I can tell from my personal experience that if you have an “Internet Marketing” product, you’ll get the highest conversions with the “At Job” traffic and if you have a “Weight Loss” product, better conversions will come from the “ At Home” traffic. A “Self Help” product will get almost equall conversions from both kind of traffic.

Also, remember that certain niches like Recipe, travel, sport betting, gambling, Facebook gaming and all the sub-niches under the mega niche “Hobbies and Recreation” converts better in the weekends than in the weekdays.

v) Demographic Targeting :

Another very powerful parameter to decide the effectiveness of your campaigns.In every niche, you’ll notice that your product appeals most to a certain combination of gender, age and income group.

Example: I can cite so many examples in this case. In case of “Weight Loss” info products, I have found that these products appeals more to the women than men. Self improvement and IM products equally appeal to both the genders and dating products’ appeal is overwhelmingly tilted towards the male audience.

Now After learning the lingo of ad networks and understanding the common “targeting” techniques, lets proceed to another vital part of the system……