I could see it working well for publishers as advertisers tend not to like paying for small 100,000 impressions campaigns or similar, and with a network of similar sites grouped together they could offer millions of impressions per month combined.

Also, there could be aggregate data offered mini-network wide, so advertisers could see not only demographic data for each site, but also combined - which is always useful.

I don’t see this as something to have in the application form. I think it should be more of an invite only network, where the site owners involved in the network admit or deny other sites from their mini-network (therefore making it different to a content channel).

I imagine something like a directory of mini-networks within the sYMple interface where after becoming part of sYMple they are able to apply (but they could also be invited by current members).

As to the administration of each mini-network, the easiest way would be to have a president or similar which has control over new members and the like. However, equally valid would be a more democratic option, where all current members of the mini-network can see sites that have applied to become part of the mini-network, they can then have a yes/no vote over the period of a week after application (and the highest number of votes decides).

Also, as an incentive to finding advertisers for the mini network, there should be some form of referral scheme in place where the person that finds the advertiser gets 5% (or something like that) of the total ad buy.

Advertisers could also be able to set what percentage of the impressions they buy go to each publisher (if they so wish - I imagine most wouldn’t bother though). This could be worked out mathematically from available monthly impressions within sYMple so it works properly.

I’ve actually been thinking of setting something like this up for a while myself (with some like-minded contacts), but have just been lacking the capital and time to do it justice - which I hope you guys could do.

Tim

Thanks for the comments. Regarding the “unofficial mini-network” idea, we’ve had some thoughts along these lines. If you don’t mind, could you explain in more detail how you’d imagine that working well for you? For example, how you’d want to use that mini-network to attract advertisers, what you’d want to present to those advertisers, etc. Also, any comments on how you’d like to see that group formed in an application.

I wouldn’t really want to share data for my site though, and I doubt direct comments would be particularly useful.

A feature I would like though would be able to make a ’social group’ of publishers where then you could share data, and you could also then maybe represent yourselves and get advertisers independently. An unofficial mini-network type of thing.

Tim