How to Smartly Use Ad Exchanges to Get FREE Promotion

By Kevin Nunley
Posted Friday, August 27, 2004

Bigger ad networks and exciting innovations are making ad exchanges the Net's biggest promotion machine. SendFree introduces first email ad exchange with free autoresponders.

Nothing is more powerful on the World Wide Web than people agreeing to display each other's ads. Ad exchange networks were one of the first things to appear on the Internet. Get someone else to display your ad on their web site and you have just doubled the number of people who know about you. You can explode the number of prospective customers by getting your ad on a big group of web sites. That's the idea behind popular banner exchanges and one new service that is bringing the ad exchange concept to email. Now you don't even need a web site to take advantage of an ad exchange.

LinkExchange.com was one of the first free ad exchange networks and now has over 400,000 participating web sites. Microsoft recently took over the network dedicating lots of cash to making ad exchanges bigger than ever. Here's why.

BIG PROMOTION MEANS BIG SALES.

The key to Internet success is to get your name, products, and service in front of a maximum number of eyeballs. Profits grow only when you can reach BIG groups of people. If your web site isn't selling as much as it should, your problem can almost always be solved with plenty of promotion.

How do you afford it? Most ad exchanges let you participate for free. You put another member's banner on your web page. When two people visit your page, your banner is automatically displayed on someone else's site. Your ad message can be spread far and wide across the Internet. "But my site is specialized. I want my ads to run only on sites that are similar to mine," you say. Ad exchanges let you choose to have your banner or ad show up on particular kinds of sites.

GETTING MORE EFFECTIVE BANNERS.

Here are some tips to make your banners more effective:

**Give the reader an incentive to click on the banner. A prize? More information?

**Include the phrase "click here" on your banner. It ranks tops in tests.

**Don't use too much text. A banner is like a billboard. Simple is best.

**Use colors that stand out.

**Animate your banner. Animation gets attention, plus a 3-way rotating animation allows you to include more information in your banner.

Just in case free banner exchanges are a bit slow for your needs, most ad exchanges let you buy additional ad displays at some of the lowest costs in advertising. Three dollars per 1000 views is not unusual and rates have been inching down over the past 18 months. BannerSwap.com guarantees your banner will be seen by 15,000 people for $100. For $400, they will guarantee at least 1,000 people will click on your banner and go to your site.

The average click-through rate on banners is 2.6%--about the same as regular direct mail. Just as in direct mail, banners placed on very targeted sites can reach a click-through rate of up to 30%. The news isn't all good, though. Banners have been getting less and less effective. Just like radio and tv commercials, we are starting to click past banners without paying much attention to them.

AD EXCHANGES COME TO EMAIL.

Internet biz experts are excited about a new ad exchange service SendFree.com. SendFree's network brings the free ad exchange concept to email and autoresponders. When someone asks for your autoresponder message (sales letter, free report, price list, etc.) you get an ad placed on someone else's autoresponder. A popular article or report that lots of people ask for can help spread your ad throughout the SendFree system. This gives businesses a terrific way to improve on the sagging response their banners are getting.

SendFree.com gives you as many free autoresponders as you need and it isn't necessary to have a web site to use them. Your SendFree address can be included in your contact info at the bottom of emails. SendFree sends you a list of all the people who have accessed your autoresponder. It is OK to use these addresses to build your own opt-in email list.

If your web site isn't giving you the results you want, give yourself a boost with free ad exchanges. The huge and growing community of banner networks, and now SendFree's email network, are making ad exchanges a massive, low-cost tool for small businesses.

(Kevin was asked by the founders of SendFree to write copy for their site months ago when the concept was first under development. Now that SendFree is up and running, we are free to tell you about it. Take our advice...Get your own SendFree autoresponders right now before everyone on the Net finds out about it. If you don't have anything to put on an autoresponder, feel free to use some of Kevin's articles. Include the contact info at the bottom along with your own ad ;-)

About the Author
Kevin Nunley provides marketing advice and copy writing for businesses and organizations. Read all his money-saving marketing tips at (http://DrNunley.com/). Reach him at kevin@drnunley.com or (801)253-4536.