Ulrich Tausend went from the world of TV production to that of online games. As the web is inherently international, his gaming website www.NeoDelight.com has an international focus as well. Ulrich Tausend is our newest Featured Publisher.

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Vince Panero (VP): How did you get interested in web publishing originally? What were those early days like for you?

Ulrich Tausend: Around 1999 I worked for a German TV production company. As I was interested in web design as well, I came up with a concept and design for the company website which I finally produced myself. The nice thing is that they paid me for learning what I was already interested in. Later I left this company and started my own web design business with some colleagues.

VP: Can you tell us about your website? How would you describe your focus/business model? And are there any particular issues exclusive to your site that you had to overcome to make the advertising model work?

Ulrich Tausend: We are running www.NeoDelight.com, one of the world’s top free web games sites. We want to give our users the best free gaming experience. We do that by playing lots of games on the net (it is a fun job) and placing the jewels up on NeoDelight. Our website is truly international, which is a challenge when it comes to advertising. Trying to find out what ad solution works best for your site can be a tough job. Especially if you have so many different countries to think about.

VP: Did you get into this with the idea that you would make ad dollars from this site? How did you initially monetize your site? What problems did you encounter utilizing these early methods?

Ulrich Tausend: At first it was not our idea to monetize the site, we were forced to do it. Since 2000, my company was doing project work for other computer companies. We also designed some flash games, but just for fun and to play them with our friends. But then one of the games ended up on the biggest gaming website worldwide. Through the links in the game, the traffic on our site skyrocketed. So, at first, we only put some advertising up there to pay for our traffic bills. We still do this kind of “guerrilla marketing”: giving other webmasters our free flash games which gives us some traffic in return. It would be much more efficient to actually put ads in the games themselves and there are actually some ad companies running a beta test for that right now.

VP: Why did you start using Direct Media Exchange as your ad management platform of choice?

Ulrich Tausend: As we got lots of defaults, especially with our international traffic, we started to play around with daisy-chaining ad networks as defaults. Trying to find out which network works good for which country was taking up lots of time. I actually thought about solutions to this problem. Why did the networks not join forces, specializing for different markets? When I found out about Direct Media Exchange, I was just blown away. Having the different networks bidding for the individual impressions is genius – I should have thought of that first!

VP: What statistical changes have you seen since you started using it? For example, have your eCPM and revenue increased?

Ulrich Tausend: Our CPM increased by 25% since we joined. This month our CPM will be at least 50% higher than before! We plan to traffic in Google AdSense and some more European networks [through the Manage tab] which will help us to develop further. But the best thing is, I don’t have to do all the testing myself, Direct Media Exchange does it automatically. So I have more time to care about the content for our site.

VP: What do you like most about Direct Media Exchange? Are there helpful parts of it that other ad management interfaces simply don’t offer? And how does it address the specific needs of your website’s unique niche?

Ulrich Tausend: No other network offers the open attitude and the auctioning part, that is unique. And what makes it even better is that everything you need is there, incredibly simple to use, and even good looking. Take for example your Media Guard. It gives you so much control but is still so easy to use, even showing you how many ads you are canceling out – great job!

VP: Do you have any tips or tricks that you think others using the exchange might find useful?

Ulrich Tausend: Bring in other networks for the auction and let them bid for your ads. If you get a considerable amount of traffic from a specific country, you should find an ad network for it. One tip I can give concerning Europe is working with Response Republic; they have sales teams in all major European countries.

VP: Do you have any final thoughts on this “exchange concept” (network transparency and competition, the utility of having just one login, etc.)?

Ulrich Tausend: This is just the way how it should work everywhere. When dealing with the other networks I often got the feeling they were hiding something from me. That’s over now.

VP: Tausend, thanks for being a member of Direct Media Exchange.