Small businesses warm up to online ad networks

Online Advertising network Tyroo recently conducted a survey to figure out the preference and usage of online ad networks by small publishers, which primarily consists of blogs, review sites and regional language websites.

Around 400 small publishers were selected across various categories such as education, entertainment, automobiles, travel, business, cricket and finance. Sites were selected based on the quality of content, frequency with which they update content, and the traffic they receive on the site. These sites usually get their traffic from search engines. To get unbiased results, the respondents were not informed that the study was being conducted by Tyroo.

The study also brings out some of the key issues faced by small publishers with their ad networks. The issues include lack in variety of advertisers, repetition of similar ads, irrelevancy of ads, payments through cheques, similar revenue for banner and text ads, delay in payments due to manual processes, and improper sharing of revenue.

Publishers have provided suggestions for improvement, such as preference of banner ads over text ads and blacklisting of URLs that direct users to irrelevant pages. They have also pointed out that similar ads should not be repeated, ad networks should provide video ads, the payment process should be made transparent and payment options should be automated.

Tyroo is a part of the Smile Interactive Technologies Group, which owns an interactive agency called Quasar. In 2007, Yahoo! bought 35 per cent stake in Tyroo Media.