At Web Advertising '98 media buyers from around the net were asked for their best media buying tips. Here are the top ten: Number 10 Avoid having your banner included on web pages that lead a user through a process. If user is in middle of filling out forms to finish a task, they are not likely to click on ad banner. -- Marshall Hays, President, Hays Internet Marketing Number 9 Don't buy your competitors' trademarked product names as keywords. Though it sounds clever (and it is), someone will eventually get sued over this and you don't want to be the test case. --Richard Hoy, Vice President, The Tenagra Corporation Number 8 If a media property claims to be sold out of the inventory you need to secure for a client, try having the site create a button placement for you. Creation of a new ad position is often a possibility and can help you get around inventory problems. Rather than negotiating the buy on a CPM or CPC basis, assume a worst-case scenario click rate and then offer to pay a flat rate for the button. This strategy works awfully well with large sites and high-traffic pages. -- Tom Hespos, Media Manager K2 Design Number 7 We installed a back-end tracking system on our client, Pandesic's site. With this software, I was able to track every single visitor coming to the site from every single piece of creative on each site on which we advertised. After setting a benchmark, any sites that fell below that benchmark I was able to negotiate more favorable rates. --Laura Mitrovich, Interactive Media Supervisor, Thunder House Online Marketing Communications Number 6 When negotiating renewal contracts, the best thing to do is take your average cost per action and determine what kind of CPM you'll need from the site to achieve it. For example: I execute a buy for 100K impressions at a $30 CPM. My run yields 5363 clicks, about 5% click-through, generating a cost per click of $.56. But my average CPC for the campaign is $.50. To yield a $.50 CPC were I to run the exact same campaign at the exact same levels with the exact same click-through, I'd need about a $27 CPM. Go to the site and tell them you'd like to renew, but you need the $27 CPM. This is by far one of the most successful tactics I've used. --Jim Meskauskas, Media Planner, Hawk Media Number 5 Don't place buys on default pages. People often do not change the default page on their browser. They launch a Web browser and then, as page starts loading, they jump elsewhere. Depending on the way sites measure an ad served, you may actually be 'charged' for ads that a user nevers sees. Sites often ask for a premium on default home pages, a spot where I loathe to buy even at a discount. (Examples of default pages are Netscape or an ISP's homepage.) --Steven Heath, General Manager - Western Division GreyInteractive Canada Number 4 Surf. Sometimes the most effective sites are the ones that don't have ads right now. Hunt them down and tell them you'd like to give them money for running ads on their site. They love it. --Jeremy Lockhorn, Account Manager, i-Frontier Number 3 CPM be damned - if you negotiate a guaranteed clickthrough relative to the CPM, you get what you want and the publisher is often unaware of bottom line results. Example : $10 CPM with 2% clickthrough guarantee is the same as $20 CPM with 4% guaranteed clickthrough when your objective is visitors (.50 cents per visitor) --Mark Grimes, President, Eyescream Interactive Number 2 When making a network buy, be extremely careful about the sites your ad may be showing up on. Many of the warez, adult and low quality sites are participating in the small to mid-sized networks. Your ad's presence may convey your tacit support of their content. Put some language into the insertion order that penalizes the network should your ad show up on the wrong side of the net. --Andy Bourland, Publisher ClickZ Number 1 You'll never know unless you ask. The best deals I have gotten for our clients have been packages for which I was almost embarrassed to ask. All they can do is say no. --Brian Monahan, Media Supervisor Left Field