Lijit

(This is Court, from Points in Case, and his first ever Christmas tree!)

To all of our Lijit publishers…

We hope your searches are successful this holiday season and into 2010!

As Lijit’s Ad Services continue to grow, we’ve had a number of questions which we’d heard on more than one occasion…so time for an FAQ! Below find a list of the most frequently asked inquiries of our Ad Services staff. This list will grow over time so check back here to review the FAQ list and learn more!

What are Lijit Advertising Services?

Lijit makes websites more engaging, keeping readers on site longer, and uncovering rich and interesting content. At the same time, Lijit provides you, the publisher, valuable intelligence about what readers are interested in and searching for. Lijit Advertising Services helps publishers get more value from the unique audiences they attract with the great content they produce.

Why does Lijit Advertising Services work better than other solutions?

Using the data and information Lijit delivers publishers in their stats pages each week, Lijit Advertising Services enable publishers to monetize their site’s ad inventory by providing premium ad campaigns and unmatched optimization techniques in order to maximize revenue per page.

Where do you get the Ads for my site?

Lijit’s sales team sources premium campaigns from leading consumer brands or from the advertising agencies that represent them.

What exactly are the services provided by Lijit?

Lijit provides the technology to make it easy for publishers to install and manage their ad placements, receive prompt payment, and enjoy campaigns that match the context, demographics and specific intent of a highly engaged audience.

How do I sign-up and start making money?

Easy. You need a Lijit account first. Log-in and go to your “Wijits” tab. Then the “Ad Wijit” tab. You can create 1 or more ad tags based on the size and layout that best fit your site. Once you create a new ad tag, then it’s an easy cut-and-paste, or 1-click install for most major platforms.

What if I already have ads on my site?

No problem. In fact, many of the publishers in the Lijit network have current relationships with traditional untargeted ad networks. Our offering is designed to co-exist with all of them. You can run Lijit’s ad tag and we will optimize revenue for you with our premium ads as well as across multiple ad networks – or if you prefer – Lijit can work with your existing advertising relationships to hand off to them in the case where Lijit doesn’t have a premium ad to return. Either way, we work to make you as much money as possible.

What is CPM and eCPM?

Advertisers buy ads by something called CPM or Cost Per Millia. That translates to cost per thousand ads that are shown, or impressed. Different campaigns cost the advertiser different CPM’s depending on the target audience. When these campaigns all run on your site they blend into an “effective” CPM (eCPM). Lijit reports your eCPM in your Lijit account stats dashboard. An eCPM will fluctuate day-to-day as different campaigns come and go.

How much money will I make?

The amount of money you will make depends on several factors all related to the size, demographics, readership and content of your site. Lijit strives to either directly sell premium advertising and/or to optimize multiple ad channels in order to make as much money for you as possible while at the same time making sure the ad creative is consistent with the audience of your site.

What eCPM can I expect?

The type of site you have and the type and location of audience that visits your site influence the eCPM potential. Lijit sells both premium ad campaigns as well as optimized ad inventory across multiple channels to get you the highest eCPM possible. Lijit reports to you daily on the eCPM performance of the ads on your site.

Is Lijit competing with ad networks?

No. Ad networks don’t have access to the unique targeting data available to Lijit. Lijit understands your content and your readers thus making a higher value transaction possible. We encourage publishers to try traditional untargeted ad networks along-side or in rotation with Lijit Advertising Services and compare the quality of brands and creative. Lijit’s goal is to be a set-it-and-forget-it solution for our publishers that works better with their site and makes them more money.

If you have existing ad tags from a traditional ad network let us know and we can schedule those in rotation with Lijit Advertising Services tags. You’ll continue to make money from your existing traditional ad network relationship – you’ll just make more with Lijit.

How does Lijit’s ad targeting technology work?

The same information that publishers see each week in their Lijit dashboard are the key ingredients of how Lijit matches audiences with advertisers. Indexing site content for search uncovers the frequency of words and terms. The frequency match of these words and terms along with demographic and intent information indicate audience targeting that highly aligns with an advertiser’s message. Lijit scans across tens of thousands of publisher audiences to find readers that advertisers are looking for. When Lijit finds an audience match for an advertiser campaign, that campaign is offered to participating Lijit publishers using Lijit Advertising Services. Simple and effective.

What is an ‘ad tag’?

An ad tag is a piece of code which communicates with ad servers via the internet to serve advertisements on your web site. This term is synonymous with ‘ad unit’ or ‘ad block’ or ‘ad wijit’.

How do I create my own ad tags?

Log into your account on Lijit.com and visit the ‘Wijits’ menu option. Proceed to the ‘Ad Wijit’ page to select, create and manage your ad tags.

What ad sizes are available?

Four IAB-standard ad units are offered on the “Ad Wijit” page: a 728×90 Standard Banner; a 160×600 Wide Skyscraper; a 468×60 Full Banner; and a 300×250 Medium Rectangle.

How many ad tags can I create for my site?

Lijit allows you to create as many ad tags as you desire for your website or blog. The ad tags should be installed in a prominent location for optimum reader visibility and engagement. It’s highly recommended that you only install one unique size per page and you place the ad tag near the top of the page to maximize your ad revenue.

Once I create an ad tag, what do I do with it?

Once your ad tag size(s) are selected and uniquely named, simply copy and paste the ad tag script into the location on your site where you want the ad to display – or – use the simple one-click installer for Blogger and TypePad sites to automatically place the ad tag in the appropriate location on your site.

After I install my ad tag what happens?

Once you install your ad tag(s), Lijit will begin serving advertising from our different partners which may include ads from Google. Over time as we learn more about your audience, we will begin including your site in premium campaigns.

Do Lijit’s premium advertisements show all of the time?

No. Lijit closely monitors fill rates and applies optimization techniques to maximize revenue for you, the publisher and optimal ROI for the advertiser. This means that there are cases when premium advertisements may not be displayed at all times. Campaigns have different fill rates depending on frequency capping and or targeting that the advertiser requests at the start of a campaign. In the event that a premium campaign is not displayed Lijit will either enable the publisher to supply their own ad tag (see ‘pass-back’ below) or provide the publisher with the option to use our high quality channel of advertiser partners to fill the impression.

Does Lijit support pass-back of tags if I use traditional untargeted ad networks?

Yes. In the case where Lijit’s Advertising Services don’t serve a premium ad, we can accept custom pass-back ad tags from traditional ad network providers and/or ad servers. Please contact adops AT lijit DOT COM  if you have a custom pass-back tag or need help with implementing your pass-back tags.

What is a fill rate?

A fill rate is the percentage of time an ad shows. For example, if a campaign has a 20% fill rate, the ad will show a maximum of 20% of the time.

What is frequency capping?

Many advertisers only want a unique reader to see the same ad a few times within a set period of time. Common frequency caps are 3 impressions per each unique reader in 24 hours. For the publisher this means you want to find the best ad targeting possible to maximize the revenue you receive within the frequency cap.

Is there any frequency capping?

For most premium campaigns there is a frequency cap based upon unique readers who view and/or interact with the ads being served. These caps are defined by each individual advertiser and each individual campaign. This is why Lijit sources premium campaigns from a variety of advertisers and advertising agencies to ensure high fill rates and meet your revenue objectives.

Is there a contract I need to sign?

Yes. We require all publishers either physically sign or electronically agree to a Publisher Agreement. This agreement is available at http://www.lijit.com/publisher_agreement and is a required step when you sign-up for revenue sharing with Lijit. This agreement ensures that our network of publishers is of the highest quality and adheres to certain standards of conduct. The strength and quality of this network allows Lijit to confidently sell and place premium campaigns from premium advertisers.

Is this agreement exclusive?

No. You can run ads from traditional ad networks in addition to Lijit. In fact, our model is designed to work alongside your revenue strategy whether or not that includes ad networks or your own direct sales capabilities.

How do I get paid?

Before you create your own ad tags, you will need to sign up for revenue sharing with Lijit. You can do this by visiting your ‘Wijits’ Administration Page and then ‘Ad Wijit’. First time publishers will be greeted with the Publisher Agreement and a simple Opt-In For Revenue screen before you are granted access to build and install your Ad Widget.

After you accrue a minimum of $25 in your account (see this in your ‘Account’ / ‘Earnings’ page), a link will appear next to the amount you have earned, enabling you to request prompt payment.

How do I request and receive payment?

Once you accrue a minimum of $25 a link will automatically appear to request payment in the ‘Earnings’ tab within your ‘Account’ menu option. This is viewable when logged-in to your Lijit.com account. All payments are made via PayPal. After clicking the request payment link you will be prompted for your PayPal ID and asked for required tax information (tax information is required for U.S residents only).

When will payment be processed?

Payments requested before the 20^th of the month will be processed at the end of the current month. Requests after the 20^th are processed at the end of the following month. All transactions will be completed on the 28^th of each month.

For more information or if you’re question was not answered, please contact us at: adops@lijit.com

We’ve known the guys at Filtrbox for a while. Whether it’s at a major conference or a local event, we really enjoy hanging out with the Filtrbox team. Our two companies have been around for approximately the same amount of time and it says a lot about the Boulder startup community that we’re as supportive of each other now as we were back when.

It doesn’t hurt that Filtrbox has the sweetest office location in town–up above a popular cupcake shop.

But that’s not the best thing about Filtrbox. And I really like cupcakes. The best thing about Filtrbox is what they can help you to do.

They clue you in to what people are saying about you–whether positive or negative. With Filtrbox, you can track mentions of your company, your client or your brand on Twitter, social networks, Facebook, blogs and across thousands of online news outlets. Whew.

We all know there’s a lot of noise. That’s why it’s essential to have a service like Filtrbox. You can set different filters for your monitoring terms, letting your alerts become as focused as they need to be. There are also reports, trending stats and graphs, oh my.

With Filtrbox doing the hard work, you can rest assured that a daily briefing will be delivered to your inbox every morning, preparing you for the conversation. People are talking about you. With Filtrbox, you can know what they’re saying.

And let’s not forget that the Filtrbox team is simply fantastic. Don’t believe me? Check out what they did in Movember, to raise money for prostate cancer research…

How can you not trust guys with 70’s porn staches?

See for yourself how Filtrbox can make your life easier. I’m a happy user and I know there are some freshly-shaven gentleman ready to help answer any questions you might have.

You can read their blog (where they’re using Lijit!) for more information and follow them on Twitter.

Just watch out for this one…

Nice face Ari! Also? This was Defrag ‘07.

Baby Einstein vs. Sesame Street?

The Wiggles vs. Yo Gabba Gabba?

High School Musical vs. Hannah Montana?

In today’s world, with so many options, parenting just seems to be getting harder and harder. And knowing who to trust for parenting advice is probably the toughest decision of all. That’s where the Center for Media and Child Health comes in. They exist to help parents make informed choices when it comes to their children and media use.

The CMCH has not one, but two blogs to help you sort out all of the research and information that is out there on this topic. And fortunately for you, they’re using Lijit on both blogs, making it even easier to find the most relevant search results. Whether you’re wondering if your preschooler should hop online or looking for computer games that are okay for your seven year old, chances are the answers are just a Lijit search away.

Also fortunate is that the nice people over at CMCH agreed to answer a few questions for us about how they got into blogging and how it’s helped them with their mission.

How long have you been blogging and why did you start?

We get a lot of questions from parents about how and whether their kids should use TV, video games, the Internet, and other media, so in 2009 we started our Ask the Mediatrician blog, where Dr. Michael Rich answers these questions. He started his career as a Hollywood filmmaker and then became a pediatrician, plus he’s also a parent of four, so he’s definitely got some good advice!

We started the CMCH blog in 2006 because we were regularly sending out email updates about newly published research on media and kids’ health to our own staff of researchers. We figured that other researchers could benefit from these updates as well, so we switched to putting the research alerts into a blog format.

What is the mission of the CMCH and how has blogging helped with that?

The mission of the CMCH is to conduct, coordinate and compile scientific research to improve the understanding of how media affect children’s health in positive and negative ways. Our two blogs help us fulfill both parts of the mission. The CMCH blog helps us connect with the media effects research community to provide updates about research we’ve conducted and compiled, and Ask the Mediatrician allows us to use that research to help parents understand how to use media in healthy ways with their kids.

How has the increase of time spent online affected children and families in general?

As with all media, there are positive and negative ways that people use them. On the up-side, many families use email, social networking sites, and instant messenger to stay in touch when kids go off to college, and some parents even IM their kids when it’s time to come downstairs to eat.

On the down-side, being connected to the online world means families are often less connected with each other at home.  Parents are distracted at dinner by emails coming in on their smart phones, kids spend their free time playing games on the web instead of playing with siblings, and researchers are even looking into the issue of whether there is such thing as Internet addiction. Since having strong relationships with your family is one of the best predictors of kids’ health and happiness, it is concerning that family connections are being replaced by Internet connections.

What do you recommend in terms of media consumption and children?

**Pay attention to content because children learn from what they see and hear. All media are educational; some teach accurate, healthful lessons, while others teach misleading and harmful lessons.

**Pay attention to which media are appropriate for your child’s age. Children see, understand and make meaning of media differently than you do.

**Pay attention to where, when, how, why and with whom your kids use media. These factors can strongly influence whether media help or harm them.

**Pay attention to how often your kids use media. Too much media use (more than 1-2 hours daily, depending on age) may be harmful for your child’s health and development.

**Teach active, critical media use. What we feed children’s minds is as important as what we feed their bodies. Teach children to develop a healthy media diet, and engage them in the process of thinking about the media they use, rather than passively consuming it.

How has Lijit helped to make you a better blog publisher?

We first turned to Lijit to help us with the CMCH blog. With 3 years’ worth of posts, we were always getting that feeling “I swear we’ve written about this topic before…” but we did not have a way to search through all our content. Lijit helped us find out whether we actually had written about topics before or not, and if we had, we could incorporate links to previous posts and then build on those ideas.

Lijit is absolutely critical for Ask the Mediatrician since parents are coming to the website with questions and want to know whether they’ve already been answered. As the publishers, we can then focus on new questions and let people use the search engine to find common questions.

If you’re a concerned parent, both of these blogs should be required reading for you. We appreciate all the hard work this group has been doing and encourage you to follow them on Twitter. As Whitney Houston so aptly pointed out, the children are the future and I thank everyone who is attempting to help make it a better one.

How to top last year’s holiday party?

Mix in even more employees, add bigger pint glasses and sprinkle some humor at the management’s expense. Judging from the looks of everyone in the office today…you could safely say the party was a success.

And many thanks to Greg Keller for the amazing pictures to prove it.

Following are a few highlights from last night’s Annual Lijit Holiday Party…

The roof was raised.

As were the pints.

With speeches made,

jokes told,

and the band back together,

the crowd couldn’t help but have a good time.

Some folks were hanging ten,

some finance guys (almost) got licked,

and some new guys were hazed…in the most innocent sense of the word.

(It’s not like we spanked him or made him drink all of that beer.)

And of course, smiles aplenty…

Here’s hoping your company’s holiday celebrations are this much fun!

(Did we mention the cops showed up? Because that’s always the sign of a good party!)

We love supporting our local community.

BlogFrog is a Boulder startup doing something different for bloggers - allowing them to create instant community on their blogs by letting readers connect, interact and share content. BlogFrog is like attaching a social network to your blog.

If you’re wondering where you’ve seen BlogFrog before, the answer be found in the sidebar of your favorite mommyblogger. BlogFrog widgets are all over the place - by initially serving women and mom bloggers, BlogFrog has become the largest network of mom blogs on the Internet. (You do know about these mom blogs, yes?)

With BlogFrog, it’s easy to create a forum where readers can ask questions, post links and extend the conversation beyond a specific blog post. And that’s not all. BlogFrog communities can help drive traffic, generate more revenue and increase loyalty among visitors.

Signing up is super quick and painless. Over on the right there, you can see that we’re rocking our widget in the sidebar and we’d love for you to check out our BlogFrog community. We’re just starting out, so if you have any questions or discussions you’d like to start, we encourage you to help get the party started.

For more about BlogFrog, you can read their blog, check out their community, follow them on Twitter or shoot Holly an email. See what BlogFrog can do for you and your blog readers.

And stay tuned…we’re excited to share one more Boulder company with you before the year is out.

Our VP of Market Development, Perry Quinn, was interviewed at Blog World by Geekazine about the value of Lijit’s service to both blog publishers and blog readers. Enjoy.

And many thanks to Geekazine for posting the video and using Lijit to power the search on your site!

Boulder is normally pretty mild in terms of winter, but recently, we’ve been in the grips of a cold spell. Six inches of snow fell on Wednesday and it’s been bitter cold since then. So cold that it’s been a topic of conversation around the office and complete strangers have been asking “Cold enough for you?”.

In the hopes of torturing ourselves heating things up a bit, I though I’d share some pictures of our publishers in warmer climates. Because I’m pretty sure that we don’t have any publishers in colder climates.*

This is BJ, with Harry and Lhasa, on a summer day in Boulder.

This is Joe, in San Francisco, after riding his bike across the country.

This is Laura, on vacation in Thailand.

And this is Jay, on his fixie and rocking a vintage Lijit shirt in Denver.

Not sure if that helped anyone else, but just seeing people in shorts and Lijit t-shirts gives me hope that my legs might see the sunshine someday too.

Cold enough for you?

*If you’re blogging in Antarctica and using Lijit, then I stand corrected. And I’d like to hear from you!