Ever been approached by a brand that wants to directly buy advertising on your blog? We think that's great and we support it. While BoardingArea has the exclusive right to represent your display advertising, we can also support these external campaigns.

When you sell your first direct ad campaign for your blog, you'll first be asked from BoardingArea the following information that is necessary to make that campaign active. There will be some learning and things you likely will miss unless you follow this checklist. This article will help you feel a little less lost as you work with a potential advertiser.

Let's explore how to get started and what's required. Here are our guidelines for direct campaigns you’d like us to traffic.

First things first: to ensure that there is time to flight the campaign properly, it is a great idea to submit all the information needed at least two days before any go-live date.
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Yep, this is the first question—how long? We use Google Ad Manager to add any direct campaign to a blog and one of the first requirements is to identify the length of the campaign. This allows us to know available inventory for all ads on your blog. A typical campaign might run one month or three months, however certain campaigns may run by impression count—three months or three million impressions?
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One of the most important aspects of any campaign is to align the creative of your advertiser to available ad sizes. Often when trying to book a one-off ad campaign from a non-standard advertiser, they will provide non-usable creative. It is important that you let them know in advance that we can only accept creative in the following IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) standard (required) sizes:

Ad Unit: Desktop | Mobile

Above Content: 728x90 | 300x250

In Content: 300x250

Sidebar Top: 300x250 | 300x250

Sidebar Middle: 300x250 | 300x250

Sidebar Bottom: 300x250 | 300x250

Below Content: 728x90 | 300x250

Adhesion Leaderboard: 728x90 | 320x50

Creative images should be JPG or PNG format in standard resolution of 72 ppi.
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While some advertisers might want to run campaigns for what is called "top of mind" advertising where they are just trying to build brand awareness with no call to action, most advertisers do want some sort of CTA and thus we need to know what links to attach to each creative so that when a reader clicks on the ad it will know where to send them.

Links should include the full URL to be embedded in the creative which redirects a reader to your advertiser. For example, Capital One might choose capitalone.com/small-business/credit-cards/venture-x-business/ if they were advertising that product (along with a pixel tracker).
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For this we need to know what you have sold. Is this for a blog "takeover" where your advertiser is buying the entire ad inventory for a specific period or more likely they are buying within an ad budget and might be interested in certain placements such as a/ sidebar, b/ above-the-fold, c/ header, etc. We need to know exactly what they think they are buying from you. We highly (as in really, really highly) suggest that your campaign placements are into the same slots you currently have as that will not hurt the viewability of your other ad units if you were to add in another ad position.
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Another detail of any campaign is knowing what readership they are targeting. Some advertisers might want only U.S. readership while others might want U.K. The standard for most campaigns is called "run-of-site" which refers to your ads running on all pages to all readers. Here's an example why knowing what is to be targeted is important in committing to any direct campaign: American Express generally targets US based traffic on desktop devices with a 3 impression per day frequency cap with high viewability placements only. The metrics and projections (targeting) for this data specifically would be much different if we were to include all of your blogs mobile and international traffic for all placements. As you might guess, the devil is in the details for a successful direct advertising campaign.

Tip: any targeting should a premium in any direct campaign. US readership is more valuable than run-of-site; desktop is more valuable than mobile, etc.
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The headline for this question asks it best—what metrics of reporting might they be wanting from you. Most advertisers do their own tracking but we can provide these more common tracking statistics*:

Impressions: The number of impressions is the total number of times the ad was served. This doesn’t count the number of readers that have seen your ad, though, as the ad may be shown to the same reader more than once.
​Visitors: this is a similar sort of number to the impressions, but instead of counting the number of times the ad is served, it counts the number of different readers which have seen the ad.
​Click Through Rate: Click through rate, or CTR, is exactly as it sounds. It measures the number of readers which actually click on the display ad. This is often viewed as a reliable metric as it represents a tangible action taken by a reader as a result of seeing the ad.

* We use Google Ad Manager (GAM) for ad serving and reporting. There may be impression discrepancy between GAM and your advertisers tracking system. These discrepancies can vary 5-10 percent and are common between different systems. We view GAM as our accurate data point.

One of the most important factors in adding an external ad campaign to your blog is understanding the continuing rev share that we have in place with you. Typically direct campaigns will earn a higher CPM than the open market of programmatic display advertising. And we think that is a great if you can bring a direct campaign to your blog. We aren't interested in what your arrangement is with your advertiser so what we do is calculate the trend of CPM from your current display advertising for the period in which your external campaign will run and bill you for that. We can take it out of your future rev share earnings or you can pay direct. The upside from this is all yours as we are not attaching anything to your arrangement. Keep in mind that the task of hosting/managing any ad campaign whether internally or externally has costs associated with it. Our Google Ad Manager system is not free.

Bottom line: The revenue share will be the same as your programmatic ads. We will be doing all the heavy lifting and technical work to make sure your advertiser is getting what they ask for in terms of audience, fill, impression count and viewability. And through GAM we will provide them with reporting as requested. If you are managing the invoice, you will owe us a revenue share. If we are managing the invoice the revenue share will appear in your bank account on a NET 60-day payout as normal.
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No. Affiliate ads you can run on your own by placing those within your content or via widgets that you can add in other places outside of the ad slots reserved for your network display advertising. We can only assist you with defined display advertising campaigns.
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Absolutely. This type of display advertising remains wide open to sell. The typical campaign here is to include a 300X250 ad within your newsletter content.

We both have the same goal and that is to maximize your revenue. While programmatic advertising typically pays more than most flat rates on a CPM basis, the key is to not sell yourself short with a campaign that would earn less. We often recommend seeking CPM rates that are 2-3 times higher than what you typically earn from BoardingArea allowing for IVT (invalid traffic) and other types of deductions from the campaign. Flat fees are also welcome with the caveat that social spikes can often dilute your true revenue vs. CPM campaigns.

And while direct campaigns are often for certain impression runs, we also can work with you and your advertiser on what is known as a "takeover", where they own all your ads, not just certain slots or impression count.

Nope. This type of request is consistent with a third-party ad network and we do not offer traffic to them - only direct advertisers.

Handling direct ad sales from start to finish isn’t really the best use of your time. You should always be writing the next best blog post ever, not trying to collect this information, invoices, tracking reports and negotiating the art of the deal! If you like, we can step in and take care of all this. We often find that the back and forth with direct advertisers is time that you can never replace... and it is expensive. Bottom line: "Leave the driving to us" and we'll make sure that campaign benefits both the advertiser and you.

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​If you have any more questions that you’d like answered, contact us here @ help desk, and we’ll get those answered for you.