Dealing With Paid Ads For Directories

[PAPABEAR1126]

I have a customer who has one occassion wanted a banner or similar ad on some of the more popular directories for their given subject matter.

Having asked me to investigate and report back to them who is worthwhile advertising on I ended up on a rather interesting journey if you will.

What I ended up doing was searching on the top 3 engines for certain targeted terms, see who dominates the most for those terms and contact them for pricing and details.

Among a list of requested information was;

I requested the # of unique visits for the page the ad will appear on and for the last 3 months.
I felt that was fair no?

Well in most cases I am greeted with some very odd replies ranging from, we have no way of knowing, (= run to me)
we cant divulge that, (again = run to me)
we will get back to you, (never to be heard from again)

So and I asking the impossible here?
Am I asking a wrong question?

Anyone care to share a link, guide, article, etc, on evaluationg and selecting directories for running paid ads that would include what they look for and how they guage value for cost?

Thanks
Frank

[JuggoPop]

bump

[John Scott]

Most directories get very very little traffic.

[MelH]

Originally Posted by JohnScott

Most directories get very very little traffic.

Define very very little traffic

awstats said I got 3513 Unique Visitors last month.

Is this very very little traffic?



Honest question, not trying to be a smart-ass.




MelH
MySoccerLinks.com

[John Scott]

It's all relative. 3,500 would be very very little for a general directory, but for a niche directory it might be fine.

[PAPABEAR1126]

I should clarify using a good fictious example.

I will skip widgets and use weddings because of what the client is offering is a regional service geared to a spefici industry and wedding is the closest example I can think of giving.

I should have clarfied directories to say industry or niche specific directory and/or companion sites to trade related magazines.

Many searchers will start their search non-region specific, in this case let's say, Weddings or Wedding Reception.

Now for the clients service term with the regional term I have first page.
EX: Wedding Reception (City)

Great but many searchers will start with the non-region term just the service and competing their is tough for me anyway in fields against say 18 million results.

So what would come up for the non-region term are these niche directory / magazine companion sites, like a bride magazine will have a bride website that ranks high for something like Wedding Reception, once clicked on gives a list of cities, click that page and up comes up a page with that regions vendors for that subject.

Again if you searched the service and the city, I have them first page but since we are missing a lot of traffic that starts with the non-region term it would make sense to explore advertising on these sites that dominate the service term alone, then place an ad on the city or region page.

So when I asked the advertiser for the traffic for that city specific page I am met with lame resistance in most cases. (See original post)

That leads me to my original question of asking those of you who do such advertising on such industry specific / niche sites how you approach such paid advertising vendors?

That is my real clarified original posted question.

Just wondering how some of you go about determining a good advertiser and make sure your client is getting their moneys worth.

I just felt in cases such as what I described there is a good untapped market for the initial non-region specific searcher as I described.

Thanks for the assistance and patience.

Frank

[cldnails]

Maybe it depends on how you asked the question. I dont' think I would know how to track the stats on a single page...that wasn't the homepage. However if you were interested in knowint eh stats on homepage or sitewide that I could provide and be happy to.

[PAPABEAR1126]

I personally dont run analytics tools that would tell me how much traffic left from a specific page on every page, just the top ten exit pages.
I can tell how much traffic each page gets with a basic application.

But if I were offering paid advertising on various pages I would expect to provide that to my advertisers and I would use more in-depth analytics tools, but maybe thats just me?

Thanks
Frank