It's important to measure ROI when spending marking dollars. Tactics change (both in price and effectiveness) over time, so I regularly evaluate them to see if I can find the ones that will give my clients the greatest bang for their buck.

Today, I'm thinking about online banner advertisements. Why? Because, for all their faults, online banners are one tactic that allow the advertiser to gather hard data on their effectiveness. When I place a banner on a site, I can tell how many people respond - allowing me to make better advertisements. I can even measure the quality of the response once people click thru to my site - allowing me to develop a better mousetrap on the other end.


If you purchase online advertisements, I'd love to read your answers to these questions:

(1) Why are you buying banner ads? What is the purpose?

(2) Branding: Do you place any value on the fact that people may see your advertisement, but never click on it? How much value?

I'd be interested in this study: What percentage of people actually notice a banner advertisement, regardless of whether they click on it?

(3) Response: What Click-Thru-Rate is acceptable?


What am I trying to figure out?

If I buy 1,000,000 banner impressions at $1 CPM (easy math), I'm paying $1,000. If the CTR is 0.3%, then I'm getting a response from 3,000 people (assuming one person doesn't click on my ads more than once, though that'd be another interested study). In essence, I'm paying $0.34 for the opportunity to communicate with each person that clicks on my banner. How does this compare to other forms of marketing?

And related to this... Let's say my 1,000,000 banners are seen by 30,000 unique individuals. Do I place any value on the branding that happens when someone sees my advertisement, but doesn't respond? How does this compare to other forms of marketing?

Enjoy gaming, comics, books, and movies? Hungry for entertaining and informative news, reviews, and interviews? War Pig Radio is for you.

At least, it will be. We have a couple kinks to work out, and we need to work up some more killer content before we're ready to really move on it, but it's live.

The idea? Provide entertainment and information to the gamerati 24 x 7. As we add more content to the line-up, we'll also be developing players so that webmasters can embed War Pig on their websites. I've also been in touch with a number of the people at your FLGS, asking what they would like to hear so that they can play War Pig in their stores.

Listen Now using Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media Player.

Are you a gamer? What type of content would you like to hear on War Pig?

Are you a webmaster? Send me an email; I'll let you know when our flash player is ready.

Are you a publisher? We'd love to help you promote your products.

Are you a retailer? Let me know what content you'd like to hear over the speakers in your store.

A large part of marketing is taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. We've all heard the saying "at the right place, at the right time." Unfortunately, most people seem to think that they are never the person at the right place, at the right time. They think some other person is always the lucky one.

That's not the case. Opportunities are all around us. They present themselves to us every day. It's not a question of whether you have opportunities, but rather whether you can recognize them and take advantage of them.

Recognizing Opportunities
It's about mindset. They're out there, but if you're not looking for them then it's the proverbial tree falling in a forest. Do you have a book coming out? Do you know anyone with a podcast or a blog? Opportunity. Does your mother's best friend mention her company needs a better website? Do you know any programmers? Opportunity. Are you a song writer? Happen to meet a record producer? Opportunity.

Taking Advantage of Opportunities
Part of taking advantage of opportunity is biting the bullet. Get rid of your fear and jump in. Don't worry about being perfect. Half the battle is showing up. Sure, your execution has to be worthy of praise, once you get the job... but get the job first. You won't get anything if you don't stand up.

For me, most of my problem comes from not having enough time to capitalize on opportunities. I'm so strung out with little projects that have little upside I oft times can't capitalize on a juicy tibdit. Focus. Focus on completing something wholly and completely. Don't get sidetracked with a chaotic mess of activities so that you can't think about anything, much less do anything new. Keep your options open.

What's the point? There are a lot of people out there that are looking for someone with your talents. Forget your fear. Become a recovering coward and take advantage of those opportunities.

Ryan Dancey and I sat on a panel at GenCon this year. Entitled "Virtual Worlds: Making Imagination Come Alive," we discussed virtual worlds, from Second Life to MMORPGs like EVE Online. It was a great talk, during which we explored how these platforms can build community, provide unique services, and facilitate commerce.

Click here to listen now.

Last weekend, I was at the Emerald City Gamefest. Dan, from Fear the Boot, was in town. After the show we recorded an episode of FTB, which just popped a couple minutes ago. We rapped about Kobold Quarterly, game days and conventions, game reviews, etc.

Click here to listen now.