In This Chapter
Joining an Ad Network
Twitter as a vertical ad network
Selling your own ads
One of the most obvious ways of monetizing any Web site or application is through advertising. However, just because advertising is obvious doesn't mean it can't earn you excellent revenue.
Many Web site and application owners have built their businesses through advertising, including the mighty Google. I can't promise you Google-sized revenue, but I can show you how to make money through advertising.
Online advertising has been around since the early days of the World Wide Web. The industry has had time to mature and produce numerous advertising networks. Ad networks are companies that bring advertisers and Web site owners together, streamlining the transaction of buying and selling ad space on the Web.
As a Twitter application owner, you can partner with an ad network as a publisher. Your partnered ad network will sell ad space on your site, give you a percentage of the earnings, and keep the rest. This is beneficial because integrating an ad network into your site is usually incredibly easy and instantly starts generating revenue for you.
However, you need to consider the best ad network for your site. Not all ad networks are created equal, and many perform well on one type of site but not another.
Tip
If your Twitter app is a desktop or mobile client, make sure that the ad network you choose allows non@@ndWeb-based applications in the term of service. If you own a mobile app, note that there are ad networks like AdMob (http://admob.com) that cater specifically to mobile advertising. You can see an example AdMob ad in Figure 16-1.
Ad networks also pay on different criteria. There are four basic flavors of ad networks: pay per click (PPC), cost per thousand (CPM), pay per action (CPA), and cost per time (CPT).
PPC networks pay publishers only when a user clicks on an ad. The amount an advertiser pays for each click is called the cost per click or CPC.
PPC networks are popular with advertisers because they pay only for traffic that is sent to their Web site. It also ensures that the publishers' and advertisers' interests are aligned in driving ad clicks.
However, this model is open to abuse in the form of illegitimate clicks from unethical publishers trying to increase their earnings and from the advertiser's competitors trying to waste the advertiser's marketing budget. This type of fraud benefits the ad network but is harmful to their reputation. Because of this, many PPC ad networks try to defend against click fraud.
Tip
You're probably familiar with the biggest PPC ad network, Google. Google has made billions through online PPC in its search results and in the form of a network called Google AdSense. (Figure 16-2 shows a sample AdSense ad.) It's incredibly easy to sign up for Google AdSense and integrate it into your Web site. Due to its low barrier to entry, I suggest trying AdSense first in your attempt to monetize your site. However, Google's PPC network has some disadvantages. When you sign up for AdSense, Google will start crawling your Web site to determine what type of content is on your site so it can serve related ads. It may be that your Twitter application is low on textual content and high on functionality. In this case, Google may not be able to match appropriate ads to your content, which will cause your site to have a low click through rate (CTR) and consequently decrease your earnings. If this happens, you should investigate alternative ad networks.
In CPM networks, advertisers pay simply to have their ad displayed on a Web site. Each time an ad is displayed is called an impression.
Note
CPM networks generally deal in units of 1,000 impressions, hence the Roman numeral M for 1,000 in the abbreviation CPM. Publishers are paid for each ad impression their site generates.
Popular CPM ad networks usually have high qualification for publishers. Tribal Fusion (http://tribalfusion.com), for example, requires your site to have a minimum of 5,000 unique visitors per day. However, if your site meets such qualifications, you can earn excellent payouts for your Web traffic.
Some other examples of CPM networks are
Casale Media (
http://casalemedia.com)ValueClick (
http://valueclick.com)Gorilla Nation (
http://gorillanation.com)
PPA networks pay publishers only when a user performs an action desired by the advertiser, such as follows:
Purchasing a product
Signing up for an e-mail newsletter
Note
The amount the advertiser pays per action is called the cost per action or CPA.
Some PPA networks include the following:
Commission Junction (
http://cj.com)LinkShare (
http://linkshare.com)
PPA is a perfect fit for an application in some scenarios. For example, say you develop a Twitter application that allows users to share the books they are reading with other users. You could integrate an Amazon affiliate code in every recommended book link. Then you will be paid each time a user purchases a book based on your affiliate links. As I mention in Chapter 4, the music-sharing site Blip.fm makes a portion of its revenue doing iTunes and Amazon affiliate music sales, as shown in Figure 16-3.
Advertisers may pay to have their ad displayed for a set amount of time (like a billboard) regardless of the amount of impressions, clicks, or actions.
The amount the advertiser pays is called the cost per time.
The advertising agreement could span days, weeks, or months. When purchasing CPT ads, advertisers look at the traffic history of a site to estimate what the cost per thousand impressions might be. This is called the eCPM. Advertisers can then use the eCPM to compare offers and get the best deal.
Selling ads in blocks of time is a great way to start selling your own ads. It requires little to no infrastructure to place an ad for a set amount of time on your site. You can also cut out the ad network position as the middleman and pocket 100 percent of the ad revenue.
Tip
However, selling ad space still requires quite a bit of effort. If you aren't interested in booking your own ad space, you can use a service like BuySellAds.com (http://buysellads.com) to automate the process and help sell your inventory of ad space. Figure 16-4 shows a screenshot of BuySellAds.com.
Vertical ad networks are networks that contain sites that target a specific topic. An example might be an ad network that contains only high-quality Web sites about cooking. Businesses selling cookware will then have an excellent place to run an advertising campaign.
Note
The opposite of this is a horizontal ad network that contains sites about all sorts of topics.
One vertical ad segment that may be obvious to you, given the topic of this book, is Twitter. There are several companies trying to leverage Twitter for advertising.
The Magpie network (http://be-a-magpie.com) marries advertisers and Twitterers. Through the help of the Magpie network, advertisers draft a tweet for their products, then pay Twitter users to post that tweet to their profile.
If you have an application that requires users to follow a particular Twitter account (like the Twooshes game example that's built in this book), you can post occasional ads from the Magpie network to that account.
Warning
Don't post too many ads. You don't want to annoy and run off your application's users. However, users usually accept a small amount of relevant ads.
Featured Users (http://featuredusers.com) is my own creation. It's a network of Twitter applications that advertises Twitter profiles. Twitter users purchase impressions on Featured Users to gain new followers and increase brand exposure. Ad revenue is split between Featured Users and its publishers. It is much like a typical CPM ad network except that it focuses on a tight vertical niche, promoting a Twitter account.
Integrating Featured Users into your Twitter application is about as easy as integrating Google AdSense:
Apply for a publisher account.
Once approved, simply add the javascript code to your Web site.
The ads are the benefit that Featured Users has over other ad networks, since the profiles of Twitter users are relevant to a Twitter app, and the payout is very competitive. A Featured Users profile ad is shown in Figure 16-5.
It's possible to sell your own ads. By selling your own ad inventory, you don't have to share your revenue with an ad network. You keep 100 percent of the revenue.
Here are the basic steps for selling your own ads.
Determine where you will place your ads.
What are you offering a potential advertiser? A high-profile, large banner ad above the fold of your Web site, or perhaps a text ad in the sidebar? You can request more money for high-profile ad locations.
Price your ads competitively.
Tip
Check the rates on an ad network that sells ads by CPT (
http://BuySellAds.com, for example). Look up sites like yours and see how much advertisers are paying to be on those sites.Attract advertisers:
Add placeholder "advertise here" banners where your paid ads will go.
Promote your ad spots via your Web site, blog, and Twitter account.
Once you sell some ads, show your advertisers that you appreciate them.
You may consider offering discounts if they purchase several months in advance.
Tip
If keeping track of ads that you have booked is getting out of hand, consider using ad management software, such as Google Ad Manager or OpenX. These software tools will help you manage ad bookings, placement, and performance tracking.
If you're truly adventurous, you might consider building your own proprietary ad management system. This is how I created Featured Users.