No Money From ISP Banner Ads

Members of the ISP-Marketing list share a variety of ideas for using banner ad space on dialup Web portals. However, nobody is making money selling banner ad space. Many cannot even fill banner space with free advertisements.

[February 12, 2002]

On the ISP-Marketing list in January, RH inquired,

"I am in the process of building a community Web portal. How much do you charge per month for local businesses to advertise on your community portals?"

HB warned against trying to make any money at all from portal advertising:

"About 75 percent of all ad space for sale online is unsold, so don't expect too much from that."

Others suggested looking at alternate ways to make use of the space:

[RY explained] "In six years in the business, we've only gotten a small handful of business to give us even a token amount for banner space, so we finally gave up. We put our business hosting customers in a banner rotation, as an incentive for them to host with us."

[HB agreed] "Use that ad space to sweeten other deals you are trying to close, such as a hosting account: 'Sign up today, and we'll advertise your site on our portal for 60 days for free!'"

[RF added] "I provide free advertising to local companies on my portal if they have an offer of some type. So if Bob's Chicken Hut is willing to run a '$1 off a bucket of chicken' web site coupon special, I'll give them free advertising space. I get content with value for my subscriber base, which will build traffic and retain visitors. The subscriber gets some deals on things they want. The advertiser gets more exposure, and does so on a no-risk basis, because they aren't out anything up front. It's win-win-win. If the site were to become massively popular and the demand for advertising was greater than the space I could provide, then I might consider charging advertisers for the space. In reality, though, I don't see that happening."

—End