adsdaq doesn't like webcomics

December 8, 2008 11:50 AM

Why is Adsdaq dropping webcomics?

Across the board, webcomics are being dropped by the ad service Adsdaq. I understand that certain webcomics don't meet a professional standard, but that goes for any website, not just webcomics. Some webcomics, like Pvp , The Abominable Charles Christopher and Sheldon, are quite popular and professional, and I'm sure bring in good advertising numbers for them. So why cut them off wholesale?

posted by ishmael to work & money (3 comments total)

From what I've picked up on the web, it's a mix of a) an ad network setup that doesn't work well with large images, b) a bit of elitism, and c) stupidity.
posted by SansPoint at 12:09 PM on December 8, 2008

Not all traffic is created equal. It's not a question of how many viewers see the ads, it's a question of who they are. There are a lot of viewers who are essentially worthless to advertisers, and if it is viewed to be the case that the vast majority of visitors to a certain site are in that category, then advertisers won't pay for ads there.

One problem for advertisers is that if a given site gets an extremely broad selection of readers, but the advertiser's product has a narrow customer base, then most of those viewers won't become customers, but the advertiser still has to pay for them all. That's why such advertisers would prefer to advertise on a site with lower total traffic, but a higher percentage of readers interested in their product.

To take a specific example from the world of magazines: Celestar doesn't advertise in Newsweek. It advertises heavily in Sky & Telescope, which probably has less than 1% of the circulation of Newsweek. On the other hand, General Mills doesn't advertise Cheerios in Sky & Telescope.

I don't have any inside information here; I'm only speculating. Why cut off those strips? Because the readers are not ones advertisers are interested in.

Who are the readers of PvP? What kinds of things do they buy? More particularly, what kind of product is there which might sell to half or more of those readers? Aside from things like groceries and gasoline, which don't advertise on sites like that, it's hard to think of anything which would have that kind of penetration there. So what that means is that the site's high traffic is a bad thing because it means the advertiser has to pay a lot for an ad there, which is still only read by a small number of potential customers.

This idea that "all eyeballs are equally valuable" was one of the myths during the dot-com boom which didn't survive contact with reality. Advertising space on broad-interest high-traffic sites isn't actually worthwhile for most advertisers.
posted by Class Goat at 3:09 PM on December 8, 2008

(I meant "Celestron", not "Celestar".)
posted by Class Goat at 8:35 PM on December 8, 2008