In advertising sales, there's nothing worse than trying to wedge a customer into a website they have no business being in. That's what we call the old "Dog in the Bathtub." Why? Because they are tough to get in, you get dirty putting them in, and--once they ARE in--they're impossible to KEEP in. You just don't need advertisers like that.

Sure, you can pick up some quick short-term revenue by getting the dancing monkeys mortgage ads on the site for a month, or delivering a few hundred thousand pop-unders for Career Builder. But your readers will hate you and--when the campaign is pulling sub .01% clicks--so will your new advertisers. But what about those companies that are somewhere in the middle? The ones that MAY do well on the site, but you never know?

I like to encourage customers to run test campaigns before they commit to a major ad spend. It may sound counterproductive to not look for the maximum dollar amount for every new customer when you can get it, but I believe in creating long term customers, not one-shot deals. I consistently encourage new advertisers to try test campaigns valued at under $1000, and make sure they receive a variety of different ad types across the site.

This gives us two things: an almost 100% conversion rate among new clients (they will "risk" a small amount to try our site), and valuable market data I can use to optimize subsequent campaigns after the test run. After delivering a campaign with a new advertiser, I like to compile the campaign stats from our ad server, and see what the client-side feedback is. In most cases, the client has the best responses from the portion of the test campaign with the higher CPM, and will initiate a subsequent campaign priced at a higher value than originally budgeted (if the results are good). If the results are not effective, you just saved an advertiser a lot of money--and ensured that their word-of-mouth feedback was "those guys are very fair" rather than, "Mediabistro.com--what a rip off!"

It's a great way to make friends, and a lot easier than putting the dog in the tub.