Lijit

Lijit Ad Tags are an easy to install option for displaying targeted ads on your website or blog. In this video I’ll show you how to do it.

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

Last night, our CEO, Todd Vernon, and COO, Walter Knapp, were interviewed by Bloggers School on Blog Talk Radio. They discussed the history of Lijit, the business model behind our company and how our search adds value to both the publisher and the blog reader. The majority of the interview centered around questions about Lijit’s premium Ad Network and how we’re making it even easier for bloggers to make money on their blogs. Give it a listen if you want to hear more from the top dogs themselves.

The last few days I was in New York at the OMMA Global Conference. The OMMA Conference gathers Ad Industry experts to discuss where online advertising has been and where it’s going. This year, the title was “The New Socialism” and talked about how social media is often the key to engagement between brands and audiences. Of course, we already knew that. Lijit is based on engaging your readers with your Brand through all the social connections you have. It was fun to see Madison Avenue coming to the same conclusion.

There were lots of good panels including one entitled “The Mommy Bloggers - What It’s Like When Marketers Really, Really Want You”. That panel featured a couple of Lijit publishers and many thought-provoking insights.

OMMA was very interesting to me because lately, we have been approached by some major brands to help them reach very specific audiences within our publisher base. When there’s a convergence between a publisher’s audience and a Brand, we offer the opportunity to the publisher. Sometimes these are specific Ads within a publisher’s search results page, sometimes these are display campaigns that we offer to our publishers for the content pages, and sometimes they are cool interactive applications that run on the publisher’s site.

Of course, we only offer these opportunities to our publishers if they have expressed an interest in monetizing their site with us. We respect that many publishers simply want to deliver a great experience for their readers and monetizing is not important. For those that are interested, major brands are looking for audiences like yours, and we talk with them every day.

If you’re a Lijit publisher and have not heard from us about a specific opportunity, it’s most likely that we haven’t found the right opportunity for you yet. If you are interested in hearing more, please send us a note. If not - no problem, we want to make sure we are the best solution in helping your readers effectively connect with your Brand!

At Lijit, we continually try new things to improve the end-to-end search experience for our publishers. Knowing that revenue is a key driver for some publishers,  we took a hard look at how we displayed ads in search results, and experimented with a few ideas to see if we could increase ad performance.  On April 30, we launched a new ad layout in our search results and asked a few of our publishers if they would try it out. With a couple weeks of data collected, the participating publishers saw an increase in the ratio of clicks to searches ranging from 10% to 300%.

What did we do, you may ask.  We increased the number of ads at the top of the page from 1 ad to four.  We also eliminated the yellow background of the top ad unit, and modified the text colors of the ad. If you would like to have your search results pages displayed with the new layout, please click here to let us know.

While we were under the hood, our developers made some modifications to the way the ads and search results load, resulting in a quicker overall load time for each search results page.  These changes that relate to speed are already in place for all publishers, regardless of the ad layout.  Because they are your search results pages, if you prefer to keep the existing layout, don’t do anything.  You’ll still see the faster load times.

While we expect these changes to bring about ad performance improvements, we will continue try new things to make it even better in the future.

This blog post comes to you courtesy of our amazing Director of Ad Serving, Dave. He loves writing these posts almost as much as he loves me bugging him to write these posts. But not as much as he loves fly-fishing.

This week, Lijit has released the latest version of our ad platform. The two key features for this release are the introduction of commissions that will be paid to publishers for advertiser referrals, and the launch of our closed beta program for ad placement on the content pages of our publishers.

Publisher Commissions

Publishers will earn commissions in two ways for referring advertisers who create keyword search ad campaigns. Direct referrals are made by publishers who send the link found on the “Sell Your Ad Inventory” tab to an advertiser who builds a campaign. Indirect referrals are made when an advertiser clicks on the “Advertise Here” link found on the Lijit Search Results and creates a campaign. In each case, Lijit will pay the referring publisher a commission for each valid click. The amount that publishers earn for clicks on their search results page is unaffected by the commission structure.

Content Page Ad Placement

To provide publishers with additional ways to monetize their sites, we are building upon our existing ad platform to offer publishers the ability to place ads on the content pages of their sites. Publishers will have the ability to choose between placing text ads or image ads on their sites, and what size they want their ads to be.

Publishers will be compensated on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis, meaning that the publisher’s account will be credited based on page views, rather than clicks. Before opening this up to everyone, Lijit is going to run a closed beta program, so that we can gather real feedback from real publishers that we will use to optimize the publisher experience. If you would like to participate in the beta program, please click here.

Please keep an eye out for more information about Lijit’s program for content page ad placement and how you can participate.