Creating a Media Kit for Your Web Site

Home > Profit > Advertising > Getting Started

by Dan Grossman

When you decide it's time to start selling advertising space on your Web site you'll need to prepare a page, or pages, of information about your site for potential advertisers to read. This section of your site, called a media kit, includes important information about your Web site that is relevant to those companies that may want to advertise on it.

Whether you choose to separate the information into several pages or put it all on one longer page, you need to break your media kit into several sections of relevant information for the advertiser.

The Main Page

The very first page a potential advertiser should see in your media kit should include a short description of your site, one to two paragraphs should be plenty. If you have multiple Web sites and a single media kit each site should be described separately. You will also need to let the advertiser know your approximate traffic level, in pageviews per month and unique visits per month.

The media kit should also point out the key reasons for advertising on your specific site instead of the competition. If your site caters to a highly targeted group, say so. If you appeal to a very general audience, put that in too. You may also want to name a few of your past advertisers (if you have any) and any testimonials you have from them.

Demographics

Provide all the information you can gather on your site's traffic here. You definitely should try to include age, gender, browser type, operating systems, and country information for your visitors. It's best to express these numbers as percentages for easier reading.

Other information you could possibly include, depending on what information you've collected, includes education level, time spent on your Web site, or anything else you might have collected that could be in any way relevant to advertisers.

If you don't have a lot of this information, try running polls on your Web site or trying different Web traffic analyzing services that offer more information. A good one is available free at http://www.webtrendslive.com.

Ad Specifications

This page or section should include information about the various forms of advertising available at your site. Depending on your layout you could provide top and bottom full-size banner ads, odd size banners, buttons, text links, or newsletter sponsorship.

You may want to provide a rate card with your media kit, where you specify how much you are charging for each type of advertising (usually based on CPM, or cost per 1000 impressions), or you can specify prices along with each type of advertising you offer.

This page should also include information about the way you serve and track advertisements through your site. If you can't provide advertisers with reliable data on their campaigns you won't sell much space, if any. You may want to purchase an ad serving package that allows advertisers to log in and view their campaign in real-time, or pay an outside ad serving service to serve and track ads across your Web site

Contact Information

Here you simply state how a potential advertiser can contact you. Include a phone number if you're available during the day, or an email address. You may also let potential advertisers fill out a contact form by the Web, but you should still include an email address for those that prefer it.

Once you've set up you're media kit you're ready to start talking to potential advertisers. When you get an inquiry via email you can simply point the advertiser to your media kit for information about advertising on your Web site