Entries from February 2008 ↓

Place My Product Dot Com is still new; it launched just 3 weeks ago and traffic to the site is increasing. There are, currently, a few auctions that are receiving bids. The most successfull, so far, is Michael Kwan’s auction for a bundle that includes a review and a 2-month text ad on his blog, Beyond The Rhetoric.

The auction has received 8 bids and is currently valued at $30. Why is this the most popular auction currently running? Here’s a few reasons:

• Michael has created value for his advertisers. He’s not vague. His auction answers any question that advertisers may have, including how long the text ads will run and the amount of traffic his blog receives. Advertisers want to know these things. Already, I’ve been seeing a few auctions where the product placers are way too vague about the value that advertisers will receive. They’re bad at selling themselves.
• Michael wrote a blog post announcing his auction to his audience. What better way to get bids than to actually tell the people that read your blog about it? They’re the most likely to actually place a bid.

Michael’s auction ends in 7 hours.

A few other well-valued auctions currently running are 2 separate auctions placed by Super Blogging Tips and areview and 3-month banner ad placed by Island Sports Media.

UPDATE: Michael’s auction sold for $40.01. It started at $10. That’s a 4X increase.

There are many ways to monetize your blog these days. Some are good. Some are not. The normal way to do it is through ad networks that will automatically place the ads on your blog (which doesn’t require much work from you, you just add the code they give you to your blog) or to sell ads direct.

Selling direct ads takes more work. You need to actually find advertisers yourself. That’s, partly, the reason that I started PlaceMyProduct.com; it provides a marketplace to sell ads without actually searching and negotiating with advertisers directly. You just provide an offer of what type of ad you have available, where it will be placed, and for how long. Then it goes to the highest bidder. We provide the payment processing. You just sit back and wait for the bids.

You can auction off absolutely any type of ad, sponsorship, or product placement on Place My Product Dot Com. It could be a banner ad, a text ad, a sponsored review, an overlay, or, even, a combination. It could be a one-month ad, a two-month ad, or even a permanent ad.

But the best reason to use Place My Product Dot Com is to sell non-standard ads, sponsorships, or product placements. This is a little tougher to come up with ideas for. Just use your imagination. Keep an eye on our own ad sales page for PlaceMyProduct.com for ideas. We’ll normally have multiple auctions running at any given time for both standard and non-standard advertising opportunities on the site.

Product placement may just well be the best form of advertising. It allows for the most creativity. Here are the 10 greatest product placements ever, some paid, some created just for humor:

1. Duracell powered escalator:
2. Diet Snapple makes its way into a video by Sarah Silverman (the one where she f**ks Matt Damon):
3. Diet Coke finds a spot in front of Jason Calacanis in the Mahalo Daily trailer:
   
4. Welch’s Grape Juice Lickable Ads: Next time you’re at the doctor’s office and you see the person sitting across from you is licking his magazine, relax, it’s just a lickable ad for Welch’s Grape Juice. The magazine ads have taste strips for your taste buds:
   
5. Lonely Girl15: Youtube phenomen, Lonelygirl15, signed a deal with Hershey’s to include a product placement for Icebreakers Sours in one of the episodes. Here’s the episode (The product placement occurs at about the 3:30 minute mark:
   
6. Product Placement in a presidential speech: Dell computers in a presidential speech. WTF George Bush???
   
7. Tab Soda in The Sarah Silverman Program: Hilarious!
   
8. Product placement in the opera: Bruster’s ice cream, a local Pittsburgh ice cream store, was featured in Pittsburgh Opera’s performance of, Elixir Of Love.
   
9. McDonald’s product placement in childrens report cards: McDonald’s placed an ad in report cards of kids in Seminole County Public Schools in Florida:
   
10. Wayne’s World: Classic clip from Wayne’s World where Reebok, Pizza Hut, Pepsi, and more make an appearance.
    

Creative Bube Tube did a little promotional video for Place My Product Dot Com. The goal was to show people that it is possible to sell ads, sponsorships, and product placements directly if you produce videos for YouTube.

Count the number of product placements in this interview:

Here’s the list of product placements appearing in the video:

1. Lifehacker: On Steve’s Tshirt
2. Creative Bube Tube: On the site overlay
3. Lucky Charms: Placed on the table
4. 7Up: Steve takes a sip

None of the above paid to be in the video, but they could have. We just wanted to show a quick few examples of how you can make money by selling ads and product placements in YouTube videos. Of course, if you produce videos for YouTube, you could do even better. Just use your imagination for ways to place ads in your videos and auction it off to the highest bidder on www.PlaceMyProduct.com.

**Note: If you plan to auction off a product placement in a Youtube video, email Tino to put you on the Place My Product Dot Com homepage.

Michael Kwan of Beyond The Rhetoric created an auction in preparation of a reviewPlaceMyProduct.com, which will be posted on John Chow’s blog.

Have a look at his auction and place a bid. It’s an ad package worth $120 and the bidding starts at just $10!