For Sale By Publisher today launched a directory of web sites seeking to sell their own ads and bypass ad networks. Direct sales of ads is attractive to publishers because it allows them to keep 100% of their ad dollars, and attractive to advertisers because it lets them cut specific, long-term deals with site owners.
Many blogs and small site owners go this route, often by selling monthly sponsorships. These ads can be very lucrative, especially for web sites that operate in a hard to reach niche, but they are also a pain for web site owners to manage. Unless you have the luxury of hiring a sales staff, finding advertisers and managing the sale of ads can be a tiresome chore that distracts from other jobs that web publishers face (like site management and content creation).
For Sale By Publisher hopes to create a directory of these do-it-yourself ad sellers so that advertisers can easily locate places to advertise, and publishers can spend more time creating content on their web sites. The service is a simple directory that lets site owners set up a profile for their site that includes a description, traffic metrics, contact method, and the type of ads that are available (text, image, interstitial, email, or RSS). Advertisers can then browse the directory and contact site owners directly.
Though a very simple service, I think For Sale By Publisher could be a helpful one for small time publishers. It can let them focus on creating their sites and not have to worry about locating advertisers, which can be a major time drain. I’m not clear how For Sale By Publisher expects to make money themselves — for now it appears they hope to sell advertising on their publisher directory, which doesn’t seem like it will work long term. But there is certainly the potential to sell ad brokering and management services to publishers, and/or placement services for advertisers, once their directory is filled out.
