Direct Buys Vs. Media Buys?

[salhammers]

I'm loving this new section, and it's proving to be a wealth of information. One question though. Is it worth searching Alexa, Compete and quantcast etc to find the top sites in any niche for traffic?

I'm thinking this could be a way to contact the website owner direct to get a deal on.

What's the success rate of getting a response back from website owners?

 

[thedorf]

Success rate is pretty small. Alexa used to have the top 100k websites list, but I think you have to buy it, unless you can find someone on here with it.

Direct buys seem to be the way to go.

big-boards.com is good for finding forums in a niche.

 

[seoactive]

I am sorry if you find this question a little side tracked, but whats the difference between media buy and direct buy?

Not sure if I got this right, but is direct buy: buying directly from site owner, and media buy: buying from a third-party like site scout?

If so, whats the pros and cons of each? Thanks

 

[thedorf]

Not sure if I got this right, but is direct buy: buying directly from site owner, and media buy: buying from a third-party like site scout?

You got it right. Considerations include is the traffic legit or being pumped up by artificial means. Most traffic networks have a degree of fraud to contend with from the websites selling advertising space. With a direct buy you "hopefully" have a more legit traffic source. A close cousin to this is to consider that with an ad network you can literally blow through your whole spend without realizing it, if you are not careful. These ad networks have some legit, high traffic websites that are dangerous if you are new to media buys. For instance you can advertise on Oprah .com with SiteScout. Oprah can deliver your spend in traffic in a day.

[rant] Of course the ad networks will not tell you this. They make a lot of money off people "testing the water" with media buys. We as affiliate marketers need to get our act together, share more information with each other, and quit making the same mistakes everyone else is making. There are people banking money on our inefficiency as a group (not BHW, but IM people in general, BHW rocks). I believe we can raise the bar and make ad networks more accountable for the results they deliver, if we would work together more as a group.[/rant]

Another consideration is that you lose transparency on your campaign if you use an ad network. These guys and girls know what you spend, when you spend it, and can duplicate your efforts pretty easily, if they want to. A straight-up company won't do this to you, but who knows which ad network is on the up and up. Seriously I could make a business plan off letting other people do media buys and just watching what they do, as long as I had access to the statistics.