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Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Google AdSense Ad Formats
Case study : ApartmentRatings.com : www.apartmentratings.com
ApartmentRatings.com
Case study : ApartmentRatings.com : www.apartmentratings.com
Case study : ApartmentRatings.com : www.apartmentratings.com
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Business
Jeremy and Katie Bencken were fed up with the driving, bother and rushed decisions associated with finding rental housing in the San Francisco Bay Area, and decided to do something about it. In 2000, they started ApartmentRatings.com, a site for apartment hunters to obtain information such as peer reviews in order to make informed rental decisions. What started as a sideline for the couple has grown into the largest independent apartment-hunting site on the web, with 560,000 pages and traffic comparable to larger, commercially-funded sites for rental housing. Today, the company is located in Austin, Texas, and the site reaches approximately 30 percent of apartment hunters nationwide. Site users praise ApartmentRatings. com as a "brilliant resource," saving grief for a countless number of users in the process of apartment hunting.
Approach
"Google serves up very relevant ads. The content matching is impressive, which makes the ads helpful for our visitors." Jeremy Bencken |
Advertising is the company's exclusive source of income; however, the Benckens face several challenges in selling ads. With a staff of five, they don't have a large pool of resources to sell directly to advertisers. To remain unbiased, the Benckens don't accept ads from apartment complexes and instead rely on movers, renter's insurance providers, and roommate locators to fill their inventory. To add to the challenge, the rental housing market is highly localized, yet the Benckens note that it can be difficult and time-consuming to find and recruit advertisers in smaller markets.
"We were in a 'Catch 22' situation," recalls Jeremy Bencken. "We weren't big enough to have a sales force dedicated to selling ads, but we couldn't become big unless we sold advertising." In 2003, the Benckens learned about Google AdSense contextual advertising and realized that it could "move them along the growth curve."
Results
The Benckens are now running AdSense ads across virtually all of ApartmentRatings.com, their blog, OhMyApartment, their forums, ThinWallsTalk, and their classifieds, Apartments-and-Rentals.com. Jeremy is pleased that advertisers come from across the U.S., including smaller metropolitan areas. He notes that AdSense complements his use of other Google products such as Google AdWords campaigns that drive traffic to his site, and Google Sitemaps, which make the newest content on the site available on Google search.
Besides being pleased with the revenue he's generating from AdSense, Bencken notes that "Google serves up very relevant ads. The content matching is impressive, which makes the ads helpful for our visitors."
After gaining experience with AdSense, Jeremy further improved his results by making adjustments to ad placement and size. He uses 300 x 250 medium rectangles containing four ads each and 160 x 600 wide skyscrapers – both with colors that blend well with the site. He also places ads at the end of apartment reviews to enhance the user experience by giving visitors a useful next step once they've finished perusing a review. With just these minor ad format and ad placement changes, he was able to improve his CPM by 45 percent and his clickthrough rate by 91 percent without disrupting the user experience.
AdSense also helps the Benckens adjust to seasonal fluctuations in advertising demand. During summer, call for rental properties is at its peak, and advertisers tend to less aggressively promote their services. Other times of the year, advertisers are hungry. "AdSense is flexible and adjusts to whatever the market is doing, without us having to intervene by raising and lowering prices, which can be difficult," says Jeremy. In addition to AdSense, the Benckens rely on Google business tools such as Google Sitemaps*** and Google Analytics to increase visibility of new site content in Google search results and to gain valuable insight into their site's audience.
Since they started the company, the most important lesson the Benckens have learned is that real estate requires a local focus. Concludes Jeremy, "AdSense does the work for us and has allowed us to tap 100 percent of our market, since we can reach both small and large metropolitan areas, versus serving only a few big advertisers. AdSense has made a tremendous difference in our business."
Google AdSense Case Study:Univision
Univision
Case study : Univision : www.univision.com
Case study : Univision : www.univision.com
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Business
Univision Online, Inc. is the interactive division of Univision Communications Inc. (NYSE:UVN), the premier Spanish-language media company in the United States. Univision Online owns and operates the most visited Spanish-language Internet destination in the U.S., located at www.univision.com. Each day, users visit Univision.com nearly 850,000 times, accessing everything from the latest entertainment and sports news to classified ads and reader forums. Univision Online, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Univision Communications Inc. Univision Communications Inc’s portfolio includes television, radio, music and Internet offerings that entertain and inform more Hispanics each day than any other media company in the country. Television operations include the Univision Network, TeleFutura Network, Galavisión, and Univision and TeleFutura Television Groups. Other operations include Univision Radio and Univision Music Group.
Approach
“We’ve had significantly better results since switching to Google. Google helps us monetize our site better.” Javier Saralegui |
Maximizing revenue from its popular online property is one of Univision’s chief goals. Univision Online discovered early on that contextual ads are a meaningful way to do just that. As a result, Univision.com began delivering contextual ads in January 2004. Although the ads immediately generated income, Univision Online sought to increase revenue even further, as well as improve click-through rates and ad quality. “We were doing relatively well with contextual advertising,” recalls Charles Walter, Director of Product Development for Univision Online. “But we also had a suspicion that we could improve our metrics manifold, including click-through rates, revenue per thousand impressions and overall income.”
In addition to boosting revenues, Univision Online sought to ensure that they delivered ads that were relevant, tasteful and useful to visitors – ads that meshed well with the content and site design of Univision.com. Among the biggest considerations was the ability to deliver a mix of ads in both English and Spanish. This is especially important because of the prominence of the Spanish language among the more than 40 million US Hispanics. The US Hispanic population makes up approximately 14 percent of the total U.S. population, and is driving the nation’s population growth. Analysts predict advertisers will spend more than $3.4 billion this year to get their attention.
With these goals in mind, Univision began investigating contextual advertising more fully and changed ad vendors, implementing Google AdSense for Search and AdSense for Content in June 2005.
Results
Walter reports that it was easy to get up and running with AdSense, and that AdSense “runs itself.” According to Walter, Google ads are highly appropriate. He notes that he was immediately impressed with Google’s content matching and ability to crawl the Univision website with unmatched accuracy.
In terms of revenue, the Univision team immediately saw positive results. Gauging the success of AdSense a year later, Univision has seen AdSense for Search revenues grow by 160 percent. Revenue from both Google AdSense for Search and AdSense for Content increased by 103 percent. Univision has subsequently expanded its use of Google tools by implementing site targeting with the goal of attracting advertisers who want to promote their brand specifically to Univision’s highly sought after user base.
“We’ve had significantly better results since switching to Google,” said Javier Saralegui, President of Univision Online. “Google helps us monetize our site better.”
For Univision, AdSense has become an exceptional complement to traditional advertising. It produces revenue without requiring an internal sales staff, providing a way to fill ad space at lower fixed costs and letting smaller advertisers benefit from the broad reach of Univision Online.
“Google is an important strategic partner,” says Saralegui. “Not only are we pleased with the relationship, but we believe both users and marketers on our site are benefiting as well.”
About Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a program enabling online businesses to earn revenue from serving ads precisely targeted to specific web content and search pages. With service levels ranging from online sign-up to dedicated support management, a broad range of sites profit from AdSense. Thousands of Google advertisers also benefit from AdSense by gaining exposure on sites across the Google Network, which includes many of the Top 100 Media Metrix sites such as AOL, About.com, Amazon, Ask.com, and Lycos.
source:GOOGLE
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