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Why Ad Rates Drop To Start The Year, Quarter & Month

October 1, 2022 by igspub

To start every month, quarter, and year, publishers see ad rates decline and even see ad rates drop as these periods end. January sees the worst drop, while quarters are next and then months are typically less volatile but still decline. But why? We’ll cover those reasons here.

Why Ad Rates Drop To Start The Year, Quarter & Month

Supply & Demand

To begin, it’s important to understand that ad rates are determined by the basic economic principle of supply and demand. As there are more advertisers spending in the ecosystem, the higher the ad rates. If enough advertisers stop advertising than ad rates will decline and that is exactly what happens at the end of the year, quarter or month.

Advertiser Media Planning

The most important thing to understand is how advertisers and media agencies plan their advertising campaigns, which is usually monthly, quarterly or annually. This is called flighting, which refers to the period when advertising campaigns are being run, while the periods of no advertising is known as a hiatus or simply paused. Flighting isn’t always by these periods but the majority of advertising is planned this way. It’s how humans and legacy media and billing systems work, whether it makes sense or not.

Additionally, many campaigns are booked monthly, quarterly and yearly, but with every intention to resume the immediate next period. However, there are often delays that prevent an immediate start to the next period. Here are a few reasons why:

Campaign Planning & Budget Approval: New flights, often require new campaign planning and budget approval. This process can be timely and slow, especially as internal departments and media agencies coordinate with each other throughout the process. This can often times causes a delay towards an immediate start to the next period.

Creative/Strategy/Budget Changes: A new flight often calls for new creative or strategy, which may not be ready in time or may arrive prior to the start of the period, but not in time for campaign setup.

Slow Communication/Time Off/Errors: People and corporations are involved here so there are always reasons for delays to get campaigns started. The person approving the budget is on vacation, follow-up questions on the strategy, bureaucratic tape, no available time on a calendar for everybody to meet etc. There are always reasons, not on every campaign, but it adds up across advertisers.

Weekends/Holidays: Weekends and holidays create a confluence of events when a period ends on these days. For the reasons mentioned above, campaigns don’t always start (or re-start) on time. Thus, if a campaign is not ready to go on a Friday and Saturday starts the next period, that campaign won’t go live until at least the next week. It’s worse if there is a three-day weekend in there as well. Again, this isn’t every campaign, but it’s enough to impact ad rates.

Conversely, holidays may help ad rates as advertisers will almost always make sure they are live during important events. Black Friday would be a great example, as it’s a 4-5 day weekend but advertisers will make certain their campaigns are live and ad rates are actually higher.

The January Effect

So we covered the many reasons why ad rates drops but why is January so drastic? Well, simply put it’s all of the above happening at once, plus ad seasonality. The obvious issue is ad seasonality, where many advertisers spend big in the fourth quarter and January budgets are significantly lower. This is definitely a contributor, but it’s not the only one.

First as we mentioned campaigns typically end at the end of year, quarter and month. Thus, in December all three of these types of flights end on December 31st.

Another thing to understand is how the ad agency world works. Most advertising agencies take Christmas through New Years day off. Advertisers are also taking time off. Thus, little to no planning for the coming month is taking place. Typically, what happens is that everybody returns from vacation after the New Year and starts planning for January in January, causing even further ad rate declines.

The only campaigns starting on time are the ones deemed important ,so you can guarantee a health club chain or education company will start their campaigns on time, but not most of the rest.

There is also the Chinese New Year to consider where millions of people take weeks off in January and leaves a small window for Westerners to get campaigns live before the Chinese New Year begins. If it wasn’t for the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day perhaps it would take advertisers even longer to ramp up ad spend.

End of Month Ad Rate Drops

As advertising campaigns come to a close, advertising budgets reach their limit. A good campaign manager will pace the budget evenly for the entire month but this process is more art than science and there are also valid reasons a budget would cap early. This causes some budgets to cap before the end of month is over, so in the last few days industry ad rates often dip a bit, especially on the last day.

Ad Seasonality

We’re not ignoring ad seasonality here and it certainly causes ad rates to fluctuate but these are more predictable, explainable events. Within the advertising industry, it’s easy to visibly see and predict spikes and dips that repeat at given intervals.

Major/Catastrophic Events

This isn’t particularly relevant to end of period ad rates but we thought we would cover it here. When major or catastrophic events happen advertisers will often pause all advertising campaigns. Typically for two reasons, first the media performance may decline as people are focused on the event. Second, out of respect for what is occurring.

A good example is when the Queen of England died. Immediately following her death, many advertisers in England paused spending out of respect for her death and ad rates in England dropped by more than 50%.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

What is Direct Traffic in Google Analytics?

September 29, 2022 by igspub

Direct traffic in Google Analytics is often defined as when someone types or pastes in your URL to visit your site directly or clicks a bookmark. However, that is a misnomer and often times the majority of Direct Traffic you see in Google analytics is NOT a result of users directly visiting a site. Below we’ll break down the many ways traffic to a site can be defined as Direct but actually isn’t, including one big reason most people miss.

Quick note: While this article is about Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics and other analytics platforms work similar and this explanation will apply.

What is Direct Traffic in Google Analytics?

To begin this is Google’s definition of Direct Traffic. Notice it makes no mention of users typing in the URL or using a bookmark. Google is very careful here because they know it’s often not the reason for traffic being classified as Direct.

“A session is processed as direct traffic when no information about the referral source is available, or when the referring source or search term has been configured to be ignored.

Google Analytics Default Channels

Here are the default channel groupings in Google Analytics, thus if Google cannot identify the channel the source will most likely be classified as Direct Traffic.

  • Organic Search
  • Direct
  • Referral
  • Social
  • Email
  • Paid Search
  • Affiliates
  • Display
  • Other Advertising
  • (other) or (unavailable)

Reasons Why Direct Traffic is High

For all the following scenarios when a user clicks through to a site no referral data is passed over and the traffic is classified as Direct Traffic.

  • A user directly types in the URL and visits the site.
  • A user clicks on a bookmark to the site.
  • Not setting Campaign variables/ (UTM parameters/code) on traffic such as email or paid media.
  • UTM parameters are set incorrectly
  • A UTM link breaks while connecting to a site.
  • Referral traffic from a secure (HTTPS) site to a non-secure (HTTP) site.
  • “Dark social” traffic from links such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, etc.
  • “Dark search” from in-app searches, image searches, secure searches, etc.
  • Traffic via native mobile apps.
  • Links that are embedded in documents such as Adobe PDF, Word and Google Docs (.docx, .pdf, .xlsx, .csv).
  • Broken cross-domain tracking
  • The link is set to  rel=”noreferrer”

Direct Traffic & rel=”noreferrer”

The HTML attribute noreferrer directs that the browser should not send HTTP referrer information to the opening link. This means, when the user clicks on the link, the site that the link points to, will receive no referrer information. Thus, Google Analytics will classify the traffic source as Direct.

This is a Direct Traffic source most people overlook when discussing Direct Traffic because it seems like not many people would intentionally use noreferrer. However, WordPress automatically sets the noreferrer attribute whenever somebody creates a link to open in a different tab. Thus, unintentionally causing linked domains to see only Direct Traffic as the source. The correct rel HTML attribute to open a link in a new tab should be rel=”noopener.” However, WordPress defaults the attribute setting to rel=”noopener noreferrer” which opens the link in a new tab AND does not send referring information to the linked site.

WordPress does not explain why they do this and unfortunately it creates a situation where millions of links send no referring information to Google Analytics. It’s good to understand that this is happening while also knowing there is nothing to be done to prevent this aside from removing any noreferrer attributes from your own site.

What should I do to prevent all of this?

Unfortunately, there is little to be done but one thing you can do is make sure you’re using UTM tagging on any traffic source you’re sending to the website.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Where to Sell a Website

September 15, 2022 by igspub

Looking for a place to sell your website? Here are some of the many options for selling your website and what type of fees to expect.

  • Domain Broker – Brokers typically start around 10% with the fee being higher or lower depending on the website value. A few of the bigger ones include Empire Flippers, FE International, Quiet Light Brokers, MotionInvest, The Website Flip, Niche Pursuits, Website Closers and Website Properties. The bigger brokers typically only manage website sales for established websites where the sale price is 5 figures or more.
  • Website Auction/Marketplace Sites – Flippa is the market leader when is comes to websites sales volume and their fees are typically 12% to 15% depending on the sale price. Other auction websites include BuySellWebsite or Webmasters Marketplace but again Flippa is the leader in this space by far.
  • NicheWebsitesBuySell Facebook Group: This is a private group with no sales commissions.
  • Shopify – If you have a Shopify website you can list your website for sale in their market place.
  • Digital Point Forum Market Place – Digital Point is a great place to list your site for free. However, most listings in this site are not established websites or even high quality websites. Attracting the right buyer here might be difficult.
  • eBay – You can sell your website on eBay but like Digital Point it probably isn’t the best way to find the right buyer. Most listings are typically starter sites making it difficult for buyers to find the right site to buy.
  • Private Buyer – This typically takes effort like reaching out to people in your niche, even competitors that might be interested in purchasing your site. This can be an effort in itself but may prove to be the most valuable. We always recommend an escrow service if this is a private transaction to ensure a third party who can safely transfer the money, domain and website assets.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Website Seller Frequently Asked Questions

September 10, 2022 by igspub

Answers to website seller’s frequently asked questions when trying to sell your website.

What is my website worth?

Everybody values a website differently but generally websites are sold at 1 to 4 times the profit on a website. Thus, if a websites is making $100/month or $1,200 a year a buyer may be willing to pay $1,200 to $3,600 for the website. Factors such as level of effort to maintain a website, length of consistent earnings history, diversification of traffic and revenue streams, unique value propositions and any branding value are strong considerations.

What are factors that many website sellers like to include but buyers do not value?

Time or money spent on a website. Buyers are looking at how they can make money off a site so if you put 2,000 hours into a website that makes $100 year unfortunately the effort will have little value to buyers.

Potential – Yes, if somebody invests time and money into a website by publishing more articles, re-designing the site or adding more revenue streams it will most likely be more profitable. However, there is a cost and time for this to happen. If you want to be paid on potential, a seller must make these changes themselves which will take time and then the earnings consistency needs to be demonstrated. This is why buyers put some value into potential but potential is still a lot of work for the buyer.

Should I trust online valuation tools?

They’re fun tools to use but rarely accurate. These tools generally can only look at domain, age, page rank, backlinks etc. but don’t account for many other factors e.g. a social media following, mailing lists, traffic and revenue diversification, barrier to entry, site maintenance level and much more.

How can I value my website?

Flippa and other auction sites are a great source to compare similar sites and value. Be sure to look at the completed auctions and not the asking prices that are never met. Many auctions will be for $10,000 but it doesn’t mean that anybody will pay that amount. Domain brokers will also give you good feedback on the value of your website. It never hurts to talk with them.

Is there a way to sell my website without paying broker or marketplace fees?

Yes, typically the best way is through private buyer but finding a buyer can be difficult. The best way is to typically put the word out through the contacts within your niche or reaching out to competitors can also attract interest.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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