G.I.M. 101 – How to Sell Private CPM-based Ads Using Google Ad Manager!

Here’s the first lesson in what I think is going to be a whole series of G.I.M. (Guerilla Internet Marketing).

A lot of small to medium sized bloggers sell private ads based on fixed, monthly rate and that’s good if you are selling them on a consistent basis but let me show you how you can sell private CPM-based ads using Google Ad Manager and make more money.

Why CPM-based private ads?

Well, as a publisher(blogger), you need to maximize income while providing a clear, definite way for advertisers to maximize their advertising money.

If you take a look at Federated Media, these guys are basically selling blog ad spaces based on CPM.

Now, clearly, you will make more money by providing advertisers CPM-based rates while the advertisers only pay for your blog’s performance or number of impressions.

The most important question is now, “How do you setup a CPM-based advertising on your blog?”

Well, it’s a good thing Google has made Google Ad Manager available just in time, FREE and many customizable options such as providing your advertisers “geo-targetted” ads, CPC/CPM, and lots more.

By “geo-targetted”, I mean that if you use Google Ad Manager, you can control which “countries” your advertiser’s ad will show up.

How cool is that?

Well, before you get too excited, let me walk you through the Google Ad Manager setup.

First, you will need to sign up for an account here.

1) Go Click on Inventory tab, and click on “New Ad Slot”.

2) Fill in your Ad slot name, determine the size of your ad, fill in the description if you want to, then hit “Save” at the bottom.

3) Once you have a new ad slot, you will need to create a new Placement. Click on “New Placement”.

4) Name your Placement, Click on “Add” for the Ad Slot you made in step 1-2, then hit “Save”.

5) You can skip Targeting for now, Click on “Ad Products” tab, then Click on “New Ad Product“.

6) Name your Ad Product, select “Premium”, select CPM, set your rate card/minimum (this is your rate per CPM or 1000 impressions), click on “Add” for your Ad Slot, then hit “Save“.

7) Now, you are pretty much ready, but you will need to place some javascript codes in your blog so your ads will show up. Go to Inventory->Ad Slots and click on “Generate Sample HTML“.

Click on “Add”.

9) Hit “Generate Sample HTML”.

Now, there’s 2 different codes, one for your <head> HTML tag and one for where the ad actually goes.

So copy the head section code into your blog’s header file, header.php for Wordpress.

Copy the ad code at the section of your blog where you’d like it to appear.

10) Now, let’s test out our new CPM beast, go to Orders and click on “New Order“.

11) Fill out an order name, pick “Unlimited” for end date, make a test company for Advertiser, then hit “Save“.

12) Now you need to click on “New line item“.

13) Click on “Add” for your Ad Slot then hit “Save“.

14) For delivery options, you can set Delivery rate as “As fast as possible“, Creative rotation as “Even“, then hit “Save“.

Of course, you can also set “Frequency cap” if you want to limit impression per ad per user but for our testing, we will do it like this.

15) Now, check the Test Order line item and click “Appove“.

16) Once you approve an order, you will need to click on “Needs Creatives” so you can upload your sample ad.

17) Select your appropriate Ad slot size, select Creative type as “Standard image hosted“, find your sample Image File on your computer, set the Click-through URL to where you want the ad to click through, then hit “Save“.

18) Now, you need to click on “Activate this line item” so your ad will go live.

19) Now, you will have to wait about 5-10 minutes before the ad shows up on your site.

You can preview what it will look like by clicking on “Preview Creative” as shown below:

20) There, I just told you how you can setup your blog so you can sell CPM, geo-targetted ads.

You can see an example of what it looks like on Bedzine blog here.

More advantages explained

You will notice that now all your private ads using Google Ad Manager will be javascript so you don’t have to worry about any PageRank loss or stuff like that.

One of the things I do is take the successful blogs’ models and apply it to my blogs. In this case, you will be able to sell ads based on CPM, just like the bigger blogs using Federated Media.

Basically, you now know how to apply power of Federated Media into your blogs by using free Google Ad Manager.

How cool is that?

Now, go on ahead and setup your blogs and start advertising your CPM-based, geo-targetted ads using Google Ad Manager.

There’s still a lot of things to play with such as stats and whatnot, I will have to cover that next time.

This is the simple and clear way to maximize your private ad spaces. No more selling fixed, monthly private ad spaces, that’s simply dumb if you know how to do this.

A lot of “big” companies will look for ads based on CPM, not monthly rates, and if you have this setup, I am sure they will come to you.

Here’s some more HOWTO guides and Plugins on Google Ad Manager for your reference:

RustyBrick has some good info on setting up your Google Ad Manager for 125×125 pixel ads.

Google Ad Manager for Joomla users

Google Ad Manager Wordpress Plugin

Tags: ad spaces, advertiser, advertisers, bloggers, consistent basis, cpc, customizable options, federated, google, guerilla, impressions, inventory tab, money, private ads, step 1, targetted ads

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Ad Manager, Advertisements, Blogging, Make Money Online, marketing.