Impression-based advertising works ... I'm speaking of banner ads, text ads, etc...
Too many websites / advertisers worry about click-throughs ... but many big advertisers understand click-throughs are only part of the equation, especially when this is explained to them properly.
Most visitors are not in the mood to buy at the exact moment they see an ad - so it's important for advertisers to get exposure and build their brand ... that way when people are ready to buy, they know where to buy.
Two suggestions for DNF:
1. Sell most ads in larger impression blocks, and guarantee only the ad run time with the impression count only as an approximate estimate.
Example: offer a full banner product that rotates throughout the entire site for one month for say $500; adjust the number of banners / display frequency so that all banners sold at say $500/month are shown say approx 300,000 times per month.
1a. it's easier to sell large blocks of advertising like $500/300,000 approx impressions than smaller ones like $2/1000, etc; more profitable too since managing many smaller advertisers tend to cost more money (speaking of customer service staff, etc) than managing a smaller group of larger advertisers. With that said, offering a few lower priced ad products is good for getting new advertisers in, but should be of limited importance for the bottom line.
2. Put text links under all banner ads.
2a. serve banners graphics from the same domain name as each site when possible - speeds things up and more importantly is a bit more difficult to block with hosts.txt etc; yes, the ad graphics can still be easily blocked with many ad blockers, but the text underneath likely won't be, thus my suggestion in
#2 above to add those.
Lastly, the advantage of selling advertising by flat-rate/impression is that nothing goes to waste ... regardless of whether an ad gets a lot or little clicks, every ad shown is earning the site money, predictably without guesswork nor worrying about session tracking, click-spam, etc.
Ron
