Customer Spotlight – HealthyAds & the Power of Niche Networks
When publishers demand high quality ads, and advertisers need to target a choosy demographic, niche networks are a win-win. Adzerk is the perfect home for niches like HealthyAds, because they can take advantage of the features used by broader networks and still stay true to their focus and values. An alliance of two health bloggers, HealthyAds has found success through Adzerk, and we’re happy to share these insights from founders Andrew Wilder and Sarah Wu:
Describe HealthyAds and tell us a bit about it.
HealthyAds.com is a boutique advertising network connecting ethical companies with health bloggers and their audiences.
How long has your network been around?
After about six months of planning — including hours and hours of conference calls and research to find the right ad server for us — HealthyAds.com launched in June 2012.
How did it get started?
Andrew Wilder and Sarah Wu are health bloggers who started blogging within the last few years. They met in the fall of 2010 at a blogging conference. After building audiences for their blogs, they both looked into possible advertising including AdSense, existing ad networks, affiliate programs, and individual negotiation with companies. When they didn’t find advertising that promoted healthy products exclusively, and also learned about plenty of other health bloggers with the same woes, Andrew approached Sarah about starting their own healthy advertising network.
Where are you located?
The company was founded in Los Angeles, where Andrew is located, but Sarah lives in Chicago. The internet makes it possible!
What’s your biggest challenge with online advertising?
Our biggest challenge with advertising is balancing bringing aboard new blogs while at the same time signing on new advertisers. While there is significant interest among both parties, it’s tough to manage our inventory of impressions and trying maximize the return for both companies and bloggers. It’s sort of a chicken-and-egg situation right now!
How do you find advertisers? Any tips or tricks?
We pursued leads in a very traditional way: Conferences and sales calls. We also have a network of contacts from the blogging community. Our tip is what most experienced salespeople understand and that is to build relationships over time with a client and make them happy so that they continue to come back.
Most effective network or remnant inventory monetization?
We’re being extremely particular about the ads that are being shown on our network. So we haven’t yet found a remnant solution that will meet our standards. In the meantime, we’ve decided to run Public Service Announcements for non-profits that promote health.
Why did you choose adOS? Anything it really helps you do well?
We needed an ad server that could run a network, including revenue sharing calculations and reporting. We also wanted a hosted solution that had support, since we’ve had a bit of a learning curve. And, we needed one that didn’t have huge setup costs and monthly minimums. We love that adOS is easy to use. It’s a nice balance of the features we want, but isn’t cluttered with the features we don’t. It’s also been especially nice being treated like we’re an important customer, not just some small-time network.
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