Creating and Booking Your Online Advert

Paying the Advertising Site to Create It – Some sites provide a service where they can create an ad for you. You provide the designer with your logo (if required) and details on what you wish the ad to say; and they create it for you. The cost and quality of these will vary depending on the abilities of the person at their site who creates the ads. You should always ask to see examples before you agree to it, and make sure you have the final say over what is suitable. Although this will probably be significantly cheaper than paying a small business advertising company to create your ad; you are less likely to get the best from the ad as the staff at the advertising site are unlikely to be experts in that field. So as a rule of thumb, the more your online advertising budget, the more likely you will benefit from paying an online advertising company (with small business experience or speciality experience in your industry) to deal with your ad.

Booking the Advert

Whilst you would be right in assuming that some online businesses mainly deal with their ads online via email; that doesn’t mean you won’t need to use the phone or even the fax. Booking – The process of booking an ad is pretty much the same as booking magazine or newspaper ads. You speak to their advertising sales department (or person if they are a smaller site) through email or on the phone; and ask them to send you details of their prices and other information, this is usually called a Rate Card or simply a Price List.
Once you have identified the size, place and frequency of the ad you wish to place you can book your order. Speak to the sales department and ask to place the booking, and once you have confirmed the details (and have attempted to negotiate a discount!) you will usually agree verbally and be sent (normally by email or fax) an Insertion Order form. You will then usually be required to complete the Insertion Order and send it back by fax or (if possible) email. If you need to pay upfront you can do so, and then finally send the image/images to the site ready for them to put up.
Don’t worry though – If you are spending money with a site they will make sure you know what to do! Payment Terms – Depending on the site and budget, there are usually two types of credit term for online adverts; Pre-payment and 30 day invoice. Pre-payment means paying the full amount of the ad upfront to the advertising site. This is n ormally by credit card, BACS payment or cheque. If the ad is running for a long time you may be able to split the cost over two or three payments. For example: One third in advance, one third after three months and another after six months. A 30 day invoice works the same as most other invoices. You get the invoice, usually immediately after the ad finishes (unless it is running for a long time, in which case you may get several part invoices over the ad period). You then have 30 days to pay the amount; you can do this by cheque or BACS payment, and some places will accept credit card payments. Most first time bookings will be required to prepay, while repeat bookings are often moved onto 30 day invoices (sometimes after a brief credit search). Search Engine Advertising - How Does It Compare to Other Types of Advertising