Managing Directly Sold Ads

akia

akia

Well-known member
How do you guys manage your directly sold adverts in regards to billing and invoicing etc,

Do you do it all manually? or do you set up paypal subscriptions? How do you keep track of invoice due datas ect?

Any tips you want to share on best practice etc.
 
No best practises realy, just what works for you.

We invoice monthly and manage the ads accordingly, no automated system, no billing links, just send an invoice, and add in or remove ads as required, by hand.
 
I'd rather poke myself in the eyes than manage all that stuff manually. :) We never once let anyone buy advertising directly on our site until we had a 100% automated system to do it. For us, we built our own (we needed the flexibility to allow advertisers to target specific forum categories and stuff). Ultimately if you want something that is very specific to your needs, you'll end up needing to build it.
 
We sell most all of our by the year and don't deal with smaller clients (tell them to use adwords, we'll get their banners anyway).......

So that's maybe 20-30 clients per year. We rarely have to speak to them, just make up invoices and email or mail.

On my main forum, adsense prices per click have started to catch up with what I charge clients....so, if this trend continues, I'm likely to allow adsense to sell most of my ads.
 
Thanks guys for your feedback.

I think I'm just going to manage it manually. there arn't that many of them so its not that much of a problem.
 
digitalpoint said:
I'd rather poke myself in the eyes than manage all that stuff manually. :) We never once let anyone buy advertising directly on our site until we had a 100% automated system to do it. For us, we built our own (we needed the flexibility to allow advertisers to target specific forum categories and stuff). Ultimately if you want something that is very specific to your needs, you'll end up needing to build it.
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If you had a way to plug into Google DFP's API like BSA does I'd be on board yours.
 
BamaStangGuy said:
If you had a way to plug into Google DFP's API like BSA does I'd be on board yours.
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Never used DFP myself... but if it's something you'd like, probably best to make a thread about it in the support forum and outline what exactly you would want it to do ("use the API" doesn't really give much direction on what problem you are trying to solve with it). :)

Either way, best to do it over there rather than hijack this thread about it.
 
akia said:
How do you guys manage your directly sold adverts in regards to billing and invoicing etc,

Do you do it all manually? or do you set up paypal subscriptions? How do you keep track of invoice due datas ect?

Any tips you want to share on best practice etc.
Click to expand...
If you approach clients, you have to do some personal stuff (cold call them, write them mails etc.). What you need is a word processor for invoice (winword, microsoft notepad, anything) and an Banner Delivery system. There are lots of choices available, the biggest are in my eyes the best. Don't automate until you have lots of clients.

It's simple: Imagine each client pays a few hundred bucks a year or month. You can invoice them with a simple word processor. Now imagine thousands of clients, each paying hundreds of dollars per month or per year. In that case you hire someone for your day to day work as you are a rich guy then, and your clients get a personal touch by personal messages. Now imagine thousands of clients, most paying just a few dollars. You can only do that with an automated system.
 
Douglas Taylor said:
Have any of you guys tried to integrate DFP with responsive design? I can't be the only person having problems with this.
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It's the one thing really standing in the way of my migration. I don't have a meaningful solution yet.

I was watching a responsive slider in a Wordpress Genesis 2.0 theme actually scale the image as I narrowed the browser. I wish there were a way to make a leaderboard ad (for example) 'shrink' the way it would on a non-responsive design when viewed through a tablet or phone.

If some elements can do that, not sure why others shouldn't -- but then I really have no idea how it works.

I simply don't have access to smaller (generally abandoned by premium advertisers) ads, and can't afford to lose ~30% of my income to ad-less mobile traffic.

So... Yeah, sleepless nights, and I'm a good week and a half behind schedule with only a week and a half left in the window before I have to lock in for 6 months in terms of my site.
 
wcbryant said:
It's the one thing really standing in the way of my migration. I don't have a meaningful solution yet.

I was watching a slider in a Wordpress Genesis 2.0 theme actually scale as I narrowed the browser. I wish there were a way to make a leaderboard ad (for example) 'shrink' the way it would on a non-responsive design when viewed through a tablet or phone.

If some elements can do that, not sure why others shouldn't -- but then I really have no idea how it works.

I simply don't have access to smaller (generally abandoned by premium advertisers) ads, and can't afford to lose ~30% of my income to ad-less mobile traffic.

So... Yeah, sleepless nights, and I'm a good week and a half behind schedule with only a week and a half left in the window before I have to lock in for 6 months in terms of my site.
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Don't let your mobile customer, unfortunately like I did, start using Tapatalk else you're going to need to pay them $29/month in order to run DFP on their platform.

I've spent the last 72 looking high and low for a DFP/Responsive solution (the AdSense guides don't seem to work for DFP even after modification) and I'll shout when (if?) I find something.
 
Douglas Taylor said:
Don't let your mobile customer, unfortunately like I did, start using Tapatalk else you're going to need to pay them $29/month in order to run DFP on their platform.

I've spent the last 72 looking high and low for a DFP/Responsive solution (the AdSense guides don't seem to work for DFP even after modification) and I'll shout when (if?) I find something.
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I'd appreciate that. And no, re: Tapa; responsive design is the only graceful mobile solution for me. There must be a way to show leaderboards, widesky towers, and 300x250s in it.

I still feel like dynamically scaling the ads the way this responsive slider did is the answer somehow, but insofar as ads aren't simple images, maybe that's impossible.
 
I use Adzerk for directly contracted Ads, (they even have a feature where my advertisers can upload their own creatives, and I get an email to activate them), and I just started using Skyscraper.io managing for my budget ad slots automatically.
 
wcbryant said:
I'd appreciate that. And no, re: Tapa; responsive design is the only graceful mobile solution for me. There must be a way to show leaderboards, widesky towers, and 300x250s in it.

I still feel like dynamically scaling the ads the way this responsive slider did is the answer somehow, but insofar as ads aren't simple images, maybe that's impossible.
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I'm experimenting with asynchronous and adsense and it works pretty well for responsive design.

It just floors me that DFP was left out of it. GRR, zero luck so far.
 
At this point I'd be fine with just having the right ad based on the dimensions when the page loads. Clearly having it change on the fly if the browser width changes without a reload is asking too much this early on.

There's a thread here that talks about setting iframe width based on the browser size. I may have to go that route and just accept things won't respond well to someone dragging their browser down to phone width.

If anyone reading this feels comfortable and qualified when it comes to this sort of approach (or any other that would resolve this -- my biggest pre-migration waking nightmare), please feel free to PC. Perfectly willing to pay someone for a timely resolution at this point.

There may be an DfP addon in the works for AVForums that might see an eventual release, and it may resolve some of these issues, but I'm looking at hanging to migrate next week.
 
Douglas Taylor said:
If you hear something, holler! :)

I'm not looking for a dynamic reload, just push the correct size ad at the initial load.
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Same, will do. I'll PC you if I find something, as we're on the fringe of this discussion topic. Frankly I'm surprised there aren't more in this situation.
 
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