Advertising Generic Reply

Hi,

Thanks for your e-mail. As you can probably imagine, we get a couple dozen just like yours every week. Seriously, 2 or 3 of them are just like yours and the others are pretty similar. We got so tired of replying to all of them that we decided to write this 1-size-fits-all reply. And to prove that we didn't write it just for you, we posted it on the site.

First off, stop asking us when we're free for a call. You know what you sound like with those constant, desperate attempts to get us on the phone? Like a guy on a first date who is constantly begging for.... That shit might work with fresh-out-of college kids and neophytes, we've been running an ad-supported platform since 1998.

We'll be free for a call after you've given us sufficient information for us to decide if a call is worth our time.

What kind of information?

First, and most importantly, your e-mail better tell us what your service is. Is it banners, is it pre-roll, is it advertisements hidden inside a survey, is it advertorial, wtf is it??? Honestly, if you're first e-mail didn't tell us that, you're lucky to even get this e-mail, we should have just marked your e-mail spam.

Other things we need before we consider getting on a call with you:

• We want to see examples of your service.
• Live examples on other websites would be great! (keep in mind, our staff are mostly outside the United States. Make sure that we'll see your ads when we visit the example site from another country).
• Mock ups of how they would look on ANN would also be great.
• Average CPM rate, fill rate, etc across your network right now. Yes, we know this varies from site-to-site, stop hiding behind that excuse.
• Rev Share percentage.
• If you want to do do a trial, offer us a minimum guaranty. Offer us a flat rate for X impressions during a 1-week trial.
• Give us referrals, preferably sites that are similar to ours.
• Tell us who your advertisers are, we're an entertainment site with mostly young readers, we know what advertisers work with our readers and which ones don't. If your ads don't fit with our site, we'll tell you. If we don't know who the advertisers are in advance, we're less likely to work with you.
• Got new or special technology? Explain it to us. Our CEO was an engineer, our CTO is an engineer, nothing gets added to the site till they are both satisfied with it.
• What DSPs and exchanges are you connected with?
• Do you work direct with clients or agencies, who are your biggest agencies and clients?
• Show you know who we are and researched our site before contacting us.
• DONT BE VAGUE.

If you can't do at least half of the above, do us both a favor, and stop wasting our time... it's a waste of your time.

A custom e-mail would be nice, but really, you should have most of the above prepared in a deck or on your website. Have this information ready, it saves you time, it saves us time, and it improves your conversion rate.

Once we have the information above, we'll evaluate it and decide if we're interested. The less information you give us, the less chance that we'll be interested.

A few pet-peeves that you may have touched with your e-mail:

• Stop saying "You site would be perfect for our units," you say that to every website, it's a load of shit, we all know it, and it makes us hate you. (If you researched our site and really believe this, explain why we're a perfect fit different than every other site).
• Buzzwords.
• Stop saying "It's a new revenue stream in addition to your existing advertisements, it will cost you nothing." YES, it will. It might be a new form of ad, but it takes up screen-space, it contributes to reader fatigue, etc... It doesn't matter if we're adding another IAB unit to the site, or something "integrated" every new ad has a cost...
• Don't use piracy sites as examples; seriously, we get this a lot, and the stupidity of it blows our mind. If you monetize the POS sites damaging the industry that supports this site, we're not going to work with you.
• Stop claiming to "have clients" when you aren't dealing directly with the clients and/or their agencies.
• Stop saying "a trial will take no effort," they do, and we're not inclined to spend a significant amount of time every quarter trialing new advertising platforms, especially when it means taking impressions away from the reliable platforms that have been consistently paying us for years.

One thing to keep in mind, our readers are important to us. We don't run any advertisements that will piss them off. No sound-on-load, no auto-play-video, not pops, no redirects, no interstitials, no installers, etc. We also won't run footers advertising shitty click-bait articles (mgid / Taboola type crap) on other sites.

By the way, we referred to advertisements above because most of the people contacting us every day are ad networks / platforms / whatever. But everything above applies pretty much to all sales people who contact us.

Regards,

Anime News Network