Why would anyone want to advertise on your website?

If you can’t easily answer that question, then you aren’t ready to sell advertising on it.

There are no set qualifications for selling ads on your site. Generally, if your website has a decent PageRank (4 or better, at least), has been in existence for a few years, and ranks well for specific keyword terms, then your site is probably attractive to advertisers.

Unfortunately, many advertising buyers place too much importance on PageRank. Even if you do not have a very high PR website, your advertising offerings can more than make up for it. Contextual links, fixed banners, ect., can be far more useful to an advertiser than a tiny footer link.

Consider what ad opportunities you will provide. The most common include:

Additional Tips:

Create a rate sheet for prospective advertisers that state what opportunities are available. Be sure to know your website stats (visitors, page views, ect) and have that information available.

When selling banner or button ads, make sure you specify you use standard ad sizes.

Even if your site does not have a large number of visitors, your rankings and niche may make the site an excellent candidate for direct linking.

Selling TOO much advertising on your site can be detrimental to your advertisers, and even your own website rankings. Moderation is key, and every site is different. Try several types of advertising over time, and discover what works best for you!

See also: Refusing An Online Advertising Opportunity

If you are into SEO or you want to know more ‘technical’ data about how a particular website or web page is designed, ranked or linked, consider using the Firefox web browser. Firefox has a slew of add ons for all sorts of purposes.

To quickly gather information about web pages, I use the SEO Quake, SEOpen and the SearchStatus extensions. The SEO Quake is usefull when pulling up search engine queries and you want to know more about the pages served. SEOpen and Search Status toolbars provides extensive search-related information about a site or web page.

These are useful if you are performing SEO work, or you want to know more about a particular publisher before you exchange or purchase links from them. They’re great for those of us who like to “trust but verify” a webmaster’s claimed traffic stats.

Check out some other Firefox SEO Extensions.

Are there any other ones worth listing?

In the early days, banner ads were the standard ad unit across the Web, with a size of 468X60 pixels. Over time, standard ad sizes changed. (Anyone remember microbuttons?) Nowadays, with average higher screen resolutions and larger monitors, ad units are larger than ever. Where there was once banner ads, now Leaderboard ads (728 x 90 pixels) reside.

So who sets these standards, and if these standard ad sizes change from time to time, where can they be found?

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is an association dedicated to helping online, Interactive broadcasting, email, wireless and Interactive television media companies increase their revenues.

IAB Ad Unit Guidelines are intended to create a set of standard ad sizes for interactive marketing and advertising. Almost all marketers and publishers use these standards when buying and selling advertising. In addition to banner sizes, they also list guidelines for email, pop-up and pop-under, and rich media advertising.

As an advertiser, these standards make it easier to offer similar creatives across different publishers. As a publisher, these standards in mind when determining your advertising opportunities.

While the standard banner and leaderboard ads will remain popular, ad sizes will continue to evolve. Who knows? Maybe the microbutton will even make a comeback!

Standard Ad Sizes (in pixels):

Rectangular/pop-up ads
Medium Rectangle: 300 by 250
Square Pop-Up: 250 square
Vertical Rectangle: 240 by 400
Large Rectangle: 336 by 280
Rectangle: 180 by 150

Banner/button ads
Full Banner: 468 by 60
Half Banner: 234 by 60
Micro Button: 80 by 15
Micro Bar: 88 by 31
Button 1: 120 by 90
Button 2: 120 by 60
Vertical Banner: 120 by 240
Square Button: 125 square
Leaderboard: 728 by 90

Skyscraper ads
Wide Skyscraper: 160 by 600
Skyscraper: 120 by 600
Half Page Ad: 300 by 600

Links: