Advertising on Library Webpages

[Mary-Ellen Mort]

On Thu, 23 Oct 1997, Donald Barclay wrote:

> I know that there are some library webpages out there that get large
> numbers of hits every day. Does anyone know of any library webpages that
> sell advertising space the way commercial webpages do? Do any libraries
> have plans to sell advertising? Have any libraries thought about it?


JobSmart California Job Search Guide (http://jobsmart.org), while funded
with LSCA grants to a regional library agency, was set up from the
beginning to attempt self-support through web site advertising. We partner
with KPIX Television, the San Francisco CBS affiliate, to help us sell
advertising thru their sales & marketing department.  KPIX, as a
contribution to the community, also hosts JobSmart on their webserver. 

While we *did* manage a year's worth of support through banner ads, we 
are now re-evaluating this approach. Even with JobSmart's fairly high 
media profile (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, major California 
papers, PC World, Wired) and high ratings from the search engines (Lycos 
rates us number 3 of the top 10 career sites) as well as goodly "hits" 
(running now at 125,000 weekdays)---selling banner ads is very difficult.
[There are currently no banner ads on the site, but we have had such ads 
from Sept. 96-Sept.97.]

We will be focusing for the next year on creating another business plan 
to achieve self-support, perhaps involving corporate sponsorships or 
partnerships, perhaps content licensing or other means. The trick is to
keep the content free and focused on the job seekers while meeting 
private sector needs...kind of like what public television has worked out 
as a model. (Or not. This is what we will be discussing.)

I'd love to hear of any other site with similar ambitions, problems or 
experiences. At some point we may need to take the discussion off-list 
(if folks are interested) as many of the arrangements may be in a private or 
sensitive stage of development.

Mary-Ellen Mort
JobSmart Project Director
http://jobsmart.org