1. I already have advertisers. Why should I join ADSmart.net?
ADSmart.net can help you efficiently sell 100% of your ad inventory each month.
Supplementing your own sales efforts with ADSmart.net can help you sell your excess
inventory.
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2. I already have an existing advertising sales force. Won't having two sets of salespeople confuse the advertiser/agency?
Because ADSmart is selling a network, we represent your site
as part of a targeted buy for a specific campaign which differs
from how and when you might present your site. Furthermore,
the market for advertising space on the Web differs markedly from
the market for more traditional advertising space on television
and radio and in print media. Web advertising is placed through
a combination of traditional agencies, inhouse advertising staff,
interactive agencies and direct marketers. Consequently, it is
difficult to cover this fragmented Internet ad space marketplace.
Finally, because the market is still embryonic, additional coverage
means valuable added awareness and exposure for your site, regardless
of who sold the space to the client.
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3. I use a rep firm to sell my advertising inventory. What are the advantages of the ADSmart approach?
ADSmart takes a different approach from that of rep firms
because we are selling an online network. Rep firms represent
many different sites, and they may not think of you as a candidate
for a specific campaign or may not be in front of the media planner
when a campaign is being considered. And they certainly don't
know your site as well as you do.
ADSmart, by contrast, is providing conceptual tools that enable
advertisers and agencies to plan their own online campaigns
without having to depend on a particular rep's knowledge or decision
to include or exclude your site. When media buyers use these
tools, they are exposed to your site every time a campaign
they are planning is targeted to your site's audience . We
promote your site down to the page level, with as much detail
as you wish to provide. You control the quality and consistency
of how your site is represented.
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4. What is the background of your sales force? What geographical areas do you cover? What are your plans for expanding your coverage?
The ADSmart sales team consists of sales professionals from
both traditional media and the software business. The team hails
from Lycos, one of the highest ad revenue sites on the Web, and
GeoCities, one of the pioneers in Web advertising and segmented
content. We have the Internet advertising contacts to promote
your site to potential buyers. We concentrate on building longterm
relationships with advertisers and agencies, assisting them with
Webbased campaign planning, and making them selfsufficient.
ADSmart's sales force covers New York, Boston, Los Angeles
and San Francisco, and we are expanding the team to include a
presence in the Midwest and the Southeast by early 1997.
Our True Targeting Planner is a full campaign planning
and management system that includes online media kits and can
be used by media planners and advertisers all over the world.
Every time they plan a campaign, your Web site is presented to
them if it meets their campaign criteria.
ADSmart will promote the use of the True Targeting Planner
through our Web site and our sales team. It is more efficient
and effective for our sales team to empower agencies than to maintain
a daily presence.
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5. I am currently using another ad server. How does yours compare to others?
Before ADSmart was formed, our sister companies evaluated
the top ad servers available, but they didn't fit the needs of
growing Web sites like theirs. ADSmart learned from the evaluation
process that we needed to focus on 3 key areas to build a superior
product: scaleability, comprehensiveness and pagelevel targeting.
Our software is scaleableit was built based on the demanding
needs (present and future) of Lycos, which generates over 6 million
ad spaces per day. It is the most comprehensive system on the
market, based on the entire Internet advertising process, not
just a laundry list of features. We cover every aspect of the
process, from promoting the site online to selling, scheduling,
managing creative, targeting ads, reporting and
billing. Automating only one or two steps of the process creates
costly bottlenecks in others. Finally, we feel our pagelevel
targeting capability can help Web sites classify and promote every
facet of their content and audience including special events
and sponsorships and target ads based on those characteristics
to maximize clickthrough rates.
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6. Can I purchase your software and run it inhouse like I can with some other ad management software?
We are committed to getting into the software business. Advertising
software is more than a nifty Web gadgetit runs your business.
That's why we wouldn't think of selling software that wasn't
multiplatform, databaseindependent, faulttolerant and fully
documented and supportedand you wouldn't think of buying anything
less. So for starters, we're running the software for sites as
a remote service. You benefit from trying the software firsthand
(and with our Webbased reporting capability, you'll
have as much control as you would if you were running it yourself)
without committing to servers, license fees, or operations and
administrative staff up front. When we release the software in
the coming months, you can buy your own copy, or stay with the
service. Either way, you're minimizing your risks.
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7. We have our own inhouse ad management system, but it's becoming a real headache, so we're evaluating vendors. Why should we choose ADSmart?
Since we've run large advertisingsupported sites before,
we understand all the processes required (and the headaches that
come with the territory). We've taken the time to think through
which processes can be automated through technology and which
ones still require human intervention. But, more importantly,
we've built our system to deliver results. Our classification
system and targeting methodology is designed to
significantly increase your clickthrough rates. And through
our extended engineering team (with CMG sister companies),
we have the resources to keep you in the forefront of the everincreasing
demands of advertisers.
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8. ADSmart.net is new in the marketplace. Why shouldn't I wait to see how well it works for others before I join?
There are a number of advantages to joining our network early.
You get a jump on the competition we'll provide
test results that prove that your targeted ads get better clickthrough.
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9. Other services also say they offer the most highly targeted audience on the Web. How are you different (and why are you better)?
Sure, everyone talks targeting, but ADSmart actually
delivers. Our TrueTargeting approach means we
fully classify each aspect of each ADSmart.net member site's content
and audience up front, to ensure that we deliver the best match
possible between campaigns and sites. We can target by domain
and by operating system, like other networks, but in addition,
we focus on specific interests in addition to demographics
and psychographics to deliver an audience of qualified buyers.
In addition, we can leverage the technologies and resources of
our CMG sister companies to provide extremely precise levels of
targeting through customized content (InfoMation), geographic
targeting (Vicinity), feeds customized by location (Planet Direct)
and cybertargeting (CMG Direct Interactive). Access to these
kinds of sophisticated technologies will let us continue to develop
everincreasing targeting precision, so our methodology will always
deliver better clickthrough rates.
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10. Your system doesn't allow flighting by day of the week or hour of the day. Why not?
We believe ADSmart's unique targeting methodology lets you
reach your qualified prospects when they are most receptive
that is, when they are actively involved with content or searches
that are related to your product/message. Increasingly, we live
in a 24/7/365 world in which people no longer work, play or live
on traditional schedules. Today, people work from home and surf
the Web for personal reasons at work.
The key determining factor for clickthrough is the user's degree
of interest in your message. If someone is actively involved
in a subject, he or she is likely to be receptive to an ad related
to that subject; the time of day or day of the week is irrelevant.
Early analyses seem to bear this out the difference in click
rate by day of the week shows only minor variation.
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11. How frequently are your reports updated?
Up-to-date reports and results for your campaign are available at any time. Select from a wide range of reports that let you analyze various aspects of your campaign... even download the data into a spreadsheet to perform your own analyses.
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12. Does Microsoft's recent investment in CMG Information
Services affect ADSmart's product strategy?
ADSmart is committed to developing products and services based
on Microsoft's Internet platform.
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